Scott Pilgrim

• 1. A Line From a Song

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  Scott Pilgrim began as a line in a song. Bryan Lee O'Malley, the Canadian cartoonist behind the series, heard a 1998 single by the band Plumtree. It was called "Scott Pilgrim." One lyric caught him: "I've liked you for a thousand years." Plumtree's singer at the time, Carla Gillis, describes the song as "positive, but... also bittersweet." That mixture of warmth and ache would run through everything O'Malley drew afterward. He expected very little from the comic. He figured it would sell around 1,000 copies. Instead it earned a devoted cult following. How does a slacker with a bass guitar end up in duels with a stranger's ex-boyfriends? Why does a comic full of duels and extra lives keep circling memory and regret? And what did a Canadian cartoonist borrow from Japanese comics to make it all work?

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• 2. A Slacker in Toronto

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  At 23, Scott Pilgrim lives in a very modest Toronto apartment and has little ambition beyond his band. His roommate is Wallace Wells, whom the books call Scott's "cool gay roommate." The band is Sex Bob-Omb. Scott plays bass, Stephen Stills sings and plays guitar, and Kim Pine, Scott's first girlfriend in high school, plays drums. Stephen's roommate, "Young" Neil Nordegraf, is the group's biggest fan. Scott's pragmatic younger sister is named Stacey. Scott is also cited as the best fighter in Ontario, which turns out to matter.

  Knives Chau is 17, a high school student of Chinese descent, and she is dating Scott when the story opens. Then Scott starts having recurring dreams of a pink-haired girl, and he later spots her at a library. Her name is Ramona Flowers. She is an American who recently moved from New York and works as a courier for Amazon. Ramona travels long distances through Subspace, an interdimensional route that passes through people's minds, and she often uses Scott's head as the way through. Scott's mind is so empty that he can see her in his dreams. She also changes her hairstyle constantly.

  Seven evil exes stand between Scott and Ramona. Scott learns that he must defeat all seven, each with supernatural abilities, if he wants to be with her. Gideon Graves, her most recent ex-boyfriend, manipulates the others into targeting Scott. The fights force both Scott and Ramona to face their pasts, their relationships and their behaviour. When Scott asks Ramona whether Gideon is one of the evil exes, her head begins to glow, and she does not answer.

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• 3. A Manga Hybrid

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  In 2002, a roommate who worked in a comic book store brought O'Malley a copy of Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. The book was by Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma. O'Malley was working on Lost at Sea and planning Scott Pilgrim at the time. Despite its satirical tone, he realized the book worked as a practical guide to how the Japanese comic industry operated.

  O'Malley wanted to write a shōnen-style series, although Ranma ½ was the only one he had read. In the early 2000s, Japanese manga had not yet become popular in North America. He called Ranma ½ the strongest influence on the series. Atsuko Nakajima, who designed characters for the Ranma ½ anime and other anime, mattered to a lesser extent. The "exploded page layouts" of Koudelka, a work by Yuji Iwahara, directly shaped the "full-bleed layouts" of Scott Pilgrim. Osamu Tezuka began creeping into the work during Volumes 3 and 4, and O'Malley called him "a larger inspirational figure to me than just his drawing style." The anime FLCL was an influence too, though "not as much of a direct influence on Scott Pilgrim as people seem to think."

  O'Malley pointed to real differences between the American and Japanese comic industries. American companies specialize in superhero comics, and newer concepts often come out of underground comics. The United States also lacks weekly and monthly comic magazines. American companies generally do not use the story editors and assistants that Japanese companies rely on. O'Malley wanted a "hybrid" that drew on both traditions, reaching "towards the Japanese comics from my own starting point." Asked whether Scott Pilgrim is manga, he said he liked the term "manga-influenced comics," partly because no one else did.

  Japanese creators noticed the blend. Takekuma said the battle scenes feel very much like manga, especially in the panel structure, and that the whole thing develops "a very strange, neither American nor Japanese atmosphere." Aihara said it did not read as a ripoff of manga style but as "a very unique way of expression," and he admired the skilled use of solid blacks. When the series was published in Japan, the cover of the third Japanese volume, which collects the original Volumes 5 and 6, was based on an illustration from Street Fighter Alpha 2.

  Budget pushed the series toward black and white. Colour was more expensive, so O'Malley embraced the black-and-white manga look. He worked in five steps: notes in notebooks, sketchbooks and computer text files, then an outline, a script, thumbnails and finally the finished page. For inking he usually used brushes, including No. 2 and No. 3 brushes. He built most of the screentone on a computer, because he had trouble finding screentone in North America.

  O'Malley made most of the series himself. When production on Volume 6 began, he hired two assistants, and the backgrounds became more detailed. He noted that "most fans don't seem to notice the change." The lettering used the font Swiss 721 Bold Condensed, which the film later used as well. From Book 4 onward, a pixel font called M04 FATAL FURY joined the mix.

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• 4. The League of Evil Exes

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  Matthew Patel crashes through the ceiling in Volume 1, during a battle of the bands. Another act, Crash and the Boys, has just knocked the audience unconscious with a song so it can win by default. Matthew introduces himself as Ramona's first evil ex-boyfriend, though she says they barely dated in middle school. Scott beats him in a music battle between Sex Bob-Omb and Matthew's "Demon Hipster Chicks." Matthew shatters into $2.10 in Canadian currency, and a pattern is set. Every defeated ex turns into coins.

  Lucas Lee, the second ex, is a movie star and professional skateboarder who is shooting a film in Toronto. Over a lunchbreak mid-fight, Lucas explains that Ramona broke his heart, and he mentions the "League of Evil Exes." Scott then tricks him into attempting a dangerous grind on the rails of the Casa Loma stairway. Lucas flies down at supersonic speed and combusts, leaving about $14 in coins and a mithril skateboard.

  Todd Ingram, the bassist for The Clash at Demonhead and boyfriend of Scott's ex Envy Adams, has telekinetic powers. He gained them from being completely vegan. When he dated Ramona, he used his growing powers to punch a hole in the moon for her, and they split when he left for Vegan Academy. The vegan police finally strip his powers for multiple offenses, such as eating gelato. Scott headbutts the powerless Todd into a pile of coins and receives an extra life.

  Roxanne "Roxie" Richter, the fourth ex, is a half-ninja with the same subspace abilities as Ramona. She overturns Scott's assumption that all of Ramona's exes are boys. Only after he tells Ramona he loves her does Scott pull a sword from his heart, called the "Power of Love," and use it to beat Roxie. The fifth and sixth exes are Japanese twins, Kyle and Ken Katayanagi. They send robots after Scott rather than fight him, and they reveal that Ramona dated both of them at once without either knowing.

  Gideon Graves, the last ex, waits at the Chaos Theatre, where he displays his own exes as trophies. He explains that the League began as a drunken rant on Craigslist after Ramona dumped him. He was shocked that she had hurt her exes badly enough that they replied. The glow around Ramona's head, he adds, is a side effect of a weapon he uses to cause depression by trapping people in their own minds. When Gideon finally bursts, he pours out $7,777,777 worth of coins on the crowd.

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• 5. Memory and Mistakes

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  Volume 2 gives Scott a flattering story about his teenage years. He transferred schools, met Kim and Lisa Miller, and started a band with them. A bully named Simon Lee had Kim kidnapped, and Scott fought through the gang to rescue her. The two began dating, then split when Scott had to move to Toronto. In Volume 6, Kim corrects him. Simon Lee was her boyfriend, and Scott stole her from him after attacking him unprovoked.

  Envy Adams has her own history with Scott. In university, he roomed with Stephen and dated a classmate named Natalie, who was a nerd at the time. Natalie recruited more members into their band and got a record deal without their consent, so Scott and Stephen resigned. After she became Envy and cheated on him, Scott insists the breakup was her fault, even though he barely remembers it. Ramona sees the pattern. She grows paranoid over Scott's habit of ending relationships and then forgetting them. A haircut she suggests earlier hits the same nerve, since Scott associates his last one with a previous breakup.

  Nega-Scott, a manifestation of Scott's mistakes, makes the idea literal. In Volume 4 he confronts Scott in a daze, and Scott refuses to fight him and runs back to Ramona. In Volume 6, Scott's head glows as he remembers Kim's version of events, and Nega-Scott appears again. Kim tells him the double will not vanish until he remembers and accepts his past. When Scott acknowledges his mistakes, Nega-Scott stops attacking and merges back into him.

  The finale turns on the same lesson. Watching Gideon objectify Envy, Scott realizes how badly his relationships with Knives, Kim and Envy ended, and that realization creates a second sword, the "Power of Understanding." Ramona wields the Power of Love, which heals her injuries, and the two deliver the final blow together. Envy hugs Scott, which brings their relationship to a proper close, and Gideon's ex-girlfriends are released from their capsules. Afterward Scott becomes a prep cook, learns that Stephen is gay and dating Joseph, and starts a new band with Kim called Shatter Band that plays only covers, just for fun.

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• 6. Writing the Ending

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  The ending was the hardest part of Scott Pilgrim to write, O'Malley said. He deliberately avoided planning it until he began Volume 5. He intended Volumes 5 and 6 to tell a single story, with 5 as the "darkest hour" and 6 as the "redemption arc." He recalled "a lot of stuff to juggle, a lot of plot lines to tie up," and said he had to focus on what mattered most in the time he had.

  The film version hung over the finale. O'Malley wanted his ending to "compete … a little" with the film's, and he knew "how BIG the finale was." He is frank about the results. He said the material with the girls and the relationships works pretty well, while "the stuff with Gideon and the glow is weaker." He added, "But hey, some people love it warts and all, and it's not like I'm gonna go back and change it."

  To explain why he stopped, O'Malley turned to Hergé, the Belgian creator of The Adventures of Tintin, who drew the series from 1929 until his death in 1983. Hergé once told his wife, "Tintin is no longer me," and said the series lived on only through "a sort of artificial respiration" that was exhausting him. O'Malley took the point to heart. "If I was still doing Scott Pilgrim in ten years, I would be dead inside," he said.

  He did not close the door entirely. O'Malley said he had conceived a continuation centered on Scott, Ramona and the other major characters, but without Gideon and the other evil exes. "Maybe in a few years I'd think about playing with Scott Pilgrim some more," he said. He also said "there doesn't need to be more Scott Pilgrim," though he agreed that "more would be fun."

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• 7. Print and Prizes

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  Oni Press, an independent comic publisher based in Portland, released the original six digest-size black-and-white volumes between August 2004 and July 2010. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life came out on the 18th of August 2004. Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour came out on the 20th of July 2010. Oni changed the format of the spine art with Volume 4, and the first printing of Volume 5 had a shiny cover. A collector's box holding all six volumes and a fold-in poster reached North America on the 3rd of November 2010.

  Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, later republished the series. Full-colour hardbacks, coloured by Nathan Fairbairn, appeared from August 2012 to May 2015. They added original sketches, creator notes, promotional material and deleted scenes. The Scott Pilgrim Color Collection followed in July 2019, gathering the series into three larger-format paperbacks. For the twentieth anniversary in August 2024, the books returned in black and white and in colour, along with Scott Pilgrim Collected Extras. On the 24th of September 2024, a print collection offered 21 prints, including never-before-seen art.

  Side stories filled the gaps. For Free Comic Book Day 2006, O'Malley produced Free Scott Pilgrim No. 1, a 32-page comic with a 17-page original story. The 2007 anthology Comics Festival 2007! included a four-page Wonderful World of Kim Pine comic. In 2008, Scott Pilgrim: Full Colour Odds & Ends gathered many of these pieces, with Dean Trippe colouring the 2006 story.

  Honours arrived early. In 2005, O'Malley won the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent for Volume 1, and he was nominated for three Harvey Awards. In 2006, he won the Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist. He was also nominated for an Eisner Award that year for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but lost to Kyle Baker. In 2007, he won a Harvey Award, and the series earned a place on Entertainment Weekly's A-List. In 2010, he won his first Eisner Award, for Best Humor Publication, with Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe.

  Critics kept pace. Publishers Weekly placed Volume 3, Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness, among the best comic books of 2006 in a critics' poll. The A.V. Club called Volume 4 "his best to date" in 2007. Wizard magazine ranked Scott Pilgrim 85th among the "200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time" in 2008. IGN ranked him 69th on its list of the top 100 comic book heroes in 2011.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  On the 13th of August 2010, the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World opened, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The final book appeared after filming wrapped, so a new ending was shot to match the books. Critics liked the film, but it did poorly in cinemas. Its fortunes improved on Blu-ray and DVD, which included bloopers, outtakes, deleted scenes and storyboards showing the ending from the comics.

  The day before, on the 12th of August 2010, Adult Swim aired Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation, produced by Titmouse, Inc. The short adapted the Volume 2 flashback about Scott's high school years. Cera and Alison Pill returned as Scott and Kim. Mae Whitman voiced Lisa Miller and Jason Schwartzman voiced Simon Lee. Songs by Wavves, "Post Acid" and "Beach Demon," were replaced with the film's soundtrack on the disc release.

  Ubisoft Montreal developed the video game Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, announced at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. It is a four-player side-scroller influenced by 8-bit and 16-bit games. Players can choose Scott, Ramona, Kim or Stephen, and unlock NegaScott, while Knives and Wallace came later as downloadable characters. Anamanaguchi provided music and Paul Robertson handled art direction. The game reached PlayStation Network on the 10th of August 2010 and Xbox Live Arcade on the 25th of August 2010. It was delisted on the 30th of December 2014 as licenses expired, then returned as a Complete Edition on the 14th of January 2021.

  HarperCollins and Robot Comics also produced a mobile comic that used movement, sound and vibration, with extra material hidden in the scenes. A Netflix anime followed. Announced on the 7th of January 2022, it was animated by the Japanese studio Science Saru, with O'Malley writing and executive producing. Abel Góngora directed. The film's original cast returned, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off arrived on the 17th of November 2023 as both a continuation and an alternate retelling of the books.

  Scott Pilgrim EX, announced on the 6th of June 2025, comes from Tribute Games, a studio founded by members of the earlier game's team. Anamanaguchi composed the soundtrack again. O'Malley wrote an original story set after the events of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Scott and Ramona are joined as playable characters by Matthew Patel, Lucas Lee, Roxie Richter, Robot-01 and Gideon Graves. It was released on the 3rd of March 2026.

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