Review: SECONDS by Bryan Lee O'Malley

It's probably not totally obvious, but I am a huge Bryan Lee O'Malley fan. I loved his first graphic novel stand-alone, Lost At Sea, and I think Scott Pilgrim might have ruined me for all other graphic novel series. It was that amazeballs. So to say I was looking forward to Seconds would be putting it mildly—I've been wound up like a spring waiting for O'Malley's next project for YEARS.

Was it worth the wait? Well...

The start of the comic is actually pretty strong. The main character, Katie, is the head chef at a hip restaurant named Seconds. She's the queen bee of the place, but she wants more. To that end, she's opening another restaurant across the river, creatively named Katie's. However, the old building is a money pit and renovations are dragging on and on and on, so in the meantime Katie's stuck at Seconds.

Katie isn't the best person. She's selfish, oblivious to the people around her and their feelings, and like many people who work in top kitchens (I'm guessing, based on all the reality TV chef shows I watch), she's a ball buster. But O'Malley manages to make her sympathetic, especially when she uses the mushroom a house elf gives her to rewind time and save a shy waitress from a serious kitchen accident.

Of course, once Katie finds the elf's stash of mushrooms, she uses them to rewind time and erase really stupid stuff like staying up all night watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. Would any of us do any different? Probably, because I'm assuming y'all aren't assholes. But I think we can all understand the temptation, despite the fact that Katie's constant rewinding is obviously going to fuck up the space-time continuum.

Here's the thing with Seconds: it's good, because it's by Bryan Lee O'Malley. But it's not as good as either Scott Pilgrim or Lost At Sea. O'Malley's strength—aside from his visual style, which is slightly muted here but still evident—lies in creating characters that are at once really quirky and yet totally identifiable. As I said in my review of Lost at Sea, I KNOW these people. That's not the case in Seconds. Katie's well-drawn(ish), but the secondary characters? Not so much. I was particularly annoyed with the whole love triangle between Max, Katie's cool ex, and Andrew, the chef she trained to take over for her at Seconds. What either of these bozos see in Katie, or vice versa, I have noooo idea. Their personalities, if one could call them that, were interchangeable, and Katie didn't seem to think of either of them as more than convenient bed partners. I didn't care which guy she wound up with because it didn't really matter, and I was kind of irritated she did settle with one of them by the end of the book.

The story also starts getting really boring and repetitive about 2/3rds of the way through the comic, especially since the solution to the whole problem seems really obvious. Everything is fixed too easily, with too little consequences, and as a result the themes of Seconds—responsibility, patience, growing up—aren't effectively fleshed out.

There's also nothing original in Seconds like there was in Lost at Sea and Scott Pilgrim. It's very self-referential, which COULD be amusing, but turned out to be annoying instead. Just because a joke worked—and brilliantly—in Scott Pilgrim doesn't mean it will work here. There's not enough distance between the two comics that fans of O'Malley will pat themselves on the back for remembering the reference, which is really the only reason to insert jokes like this:

You should be sorry, O'Malley.

Keep in mind that I'm being hyper-critical here because I expect a lot out of O'Malley, and for good reason. Seconds is by no means a terrible comic. But does it stand up to O'Malley's previous works? In my opinion, no. If you're starting out with O'Malley, I wouldn't recommend Seconds; and if you're already a fan, you probably already bought it anyway. I just hope O'Malley can shake off whatever malaise he's got himself mired in and give us something with more energy and a more developed storyline for his next project.




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Graphic Novel Review: SCOTT PILGRIM by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Here are a few things you should know about Scott Pilgrim:

1. He is Canadian.
2. He is 23 years old.
3. He is "between jobs."
   
4. He lives with his cool gay roommate, Wallace Wells.
5. He is dating a high schooler (Knives Chau, 17 years old).

Or at least he was dating a high schooler, until he meets Ramona Flowers, a ninja American who rollerblades through his dreams. Somehow Scott convinces Ramona to date his loser awesome self, which is great. Unfortunately, he has to battle Ramona's Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends to keep dating her.

If God (or the devil) is in the details, then this series is full of both. O'Malley not only gives us a great story with fabulously fun characters and quirky humor, but he fills their world with tons of details that make it seem totally convincing. Some of them are fanciful--the baddy bads turning into coins or bunnies once they're defeated, for example--and some are delightfully practical, like a recipe for vegan shepard's pie or chord charts for songs by Scott's horrible band, Sex Bob-omb.

All the characters in this graphic series are great, but obviously the heart of soul of it is Scott Pilgrim. By all rights he should be total loser--he doesn't have a job, is a complete mooch, doesn't drink because he's too much of a pussy, and his band totally sucks. But he's so lovable it's impossible not to think he's the greatest guy ever! And his character has a lot more depth than you would think--for all his irresponsibility, there are reasons Scott behaves the way he does (not necessarily good reasons, mind you, but reasons). I love how something Scott will do to make you think, "Oh, ha ha, quirky Scott!" has an impact on the story later on.



As for the art, it's elegant and fab. This might be, visually speaking, one of the best manga-style comics I've ever come across. There's an easy flow to the pages that allows you to relax and enjoy the story, yet at the same time O'Malley really gets across all the characters' personalities and moods. Ramona and Envy (one of Scott's evil exes) are the two best-drawn in the whole series, with clothes and accessories that make them instantly recognizable and interesting--not to mention diametrical opposites of one another.

If you've seen the movie, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, then you pretty much know how this series is going to go. In fact, the first volume of the manga matches the film almost scene-for-scene. But the manga is way better because you get to know a lot more about the secondary characters like Wallace and Kim, the whole Negascott thing makes sense, and the final battle is EPIC. Both the movie and the manga use the seemingly silly plot to show how everyone has baggage and you bring that to your relationships. But the manga is also about how people lie to themselves so they don't have to face things, and eventually all those lies catch up with you. Fortunately, Scott and Ramona get to face theirs together.


SO.


Basically... this graphic novel is the shit and you all should read it! The end.