Scott Pilgrim full-color deluxe editions coming soon

[sandoz_iscariot]

At Emerald City Comic-Con, Bryan Lee O'Malley announced that his Scott Pilgrim series will be getting the full-color, deluxe hardcover treatment later this year. (More info here.)

Cover and a few preview pages under the cut!

Comments

[mrstatham]

I'll be honest, I am a little disappointed O'Malley's milking the series like that, but then I don't think he's behind this decision given he's currently doing his new series, and I don't hold it against the guy for making some more money. The colouring does look nicely done, although I'm more interested in Volume 4, since Lisa Miller is my favourite character in the series.

So.. Yeah. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to buy these all over again.

[sandoz_iscariot]

I'm looking forward to seeing the later volumes' more polished art in a larger format, and I'm curious about the promised extras. It would be great to see odds and ends like the Free Comic Book Day issue collected in the hardcovers.

[mrstatham]

O'Malley's already proposed an 'Art of Scott Pilgrim' book, as I recall, which would presumably include all his design work and posters and the like, which I'd definitely enjoy. It'd be easy to put that out as a taster for what's to come.

And I still want Volume 4 in colour the most. To me, that was like, the pinnacle of O'Malley's work on the series - it was a nice balance between the earlier volumes and the later two - which just.. Well, Volume 5 and 6 were just a little too stylised and simple for my liking.

[rainspirit]

Volume 4 is easily, hands down, the best volume of the entire series. It was the highest point of Ramona and Scott's relationship, it had some complex issues going on in the background, and it was just a big high in comparison to the major down-hill slope that characterized most of Volume 5 and 6.

So yeah, looking forward to these too. Maybe just as a... library rental though. =_= I already have these books, goddamnit!

[mrstatham]

I'll be honest - I fucking LOATHE Volume 5. It took everything that had been building up fantastically in Volume 4 and trashed it for really horrible and bizarre reasons. I don't understand what O'Malley was thinking, really. I understand the need to make the road a little bumpy for Scott and Ramona, but the grounds on which she decides to leave are just.. So sketchy. I don't get it. Everything's fine at the end of Volume 4, and when we get to the two of them in Volume 5, Scott is back to being a cretin and Ramona's back to being mysterious and evasive - which is the opposite of the development in Volume 4. The tension is just so artificial. Scott wasn't even cheating on Ramona for that long; He dates Ramona for.. What, a week, whilst he's uhming and ahhing over what to do with Knives. And then he breaks up with Knives before he even has a proper dinner-date with Ramona.

I mean, yes, it's bad to go out with two people at once, but what goes on with Scott/Ramona/Knives.. I can't constitute that as cheating when NOTHING is happening with one party. The worst bit is how Knives wriggles her way out of any real consequence for fucking things up that badly; Yes, Scott's a cretin, Ramona's distant, but she deliberately throws a spanner in the works and by the time we meet her in the final volume, she's not even interested in Scott any more.

As for Volume 6.. I didn't hate that as much, but the absence of the regular supporting cast - for the most part - and bringing Envy back and the like, that was just really unappealing. I also didn't know what to make of Gideon; The guy was cool and all, but I'm still not sure what to make of the entire subspace thing - which was a total clusterfuck. What's the intention? What does it do other than piss people off? How does Ramona use it? And that was before we got to the overly simplistic explanation of why Scott was a cretin and and asshole (for the most part); To me, the explanation that Gideon basically rejigged Scott's memories to suit him erased the hard work he'd done at becoming a better person in Volume 4. Would Scott have bothered going to get a job and work things out with Ramona if Gideon were screwing with him?

And it's just inconsistent in general. Gideon claims he's messing with Scott's head, but doesn't know about Ramona's symbolically-named cat, and he doesn't know Ramona's gone.. Which is just.. Why? So I love the series - I still love bits of Volume 5, but by and large, everything that comes before is just so much stronger in terms of development and growth.

[rainspirit]

I disliked Volume 5 as well, though I'd have read to both it and Volume 4 to see if there really was a reversal in the relationship. The way I found it at the time, Volume 4 ended with a big hurdle over the "Are we or are we not serious?" question, which was great, but around 5 they just started getting tired of each other. Scott's still a myopic geek, Ramona's still haunted by past mistakes, and both are beginning to take each other for granted - which made their relationship all the more vulnerable with Ramona's issues about cheating and evil ex-boyfriends.

But I do agree that Volume 6 was a letdown. It was rushed, it was forced out prematurely with the advent of the movie's completion surpassing the book. There was way more of a demand for O'Malley to finish it in comparison to his usual output, which explained why he hired extra artists for the final push, and too many plot threads were implausibly wrapped up. It was so Scott-centric that the other cast members - who made the book shine by adding further complexity to the present drama - were neglected or thrown into the role of perpetual audience.

That said, Envy didn't bother me, and I'd argue she was necessary to help conclude with Scott's ever-present hang-ups with women. The first chapter really was a cycle-through of all the women he'd dated before finally realizing that Ramona was the one worth pursuing. The moment of "CLOSURE!" was kind of cute as well.

Considering the build-up around him in the past five volumes, Gideon was a huge letdown (to me) as a master villain, but I can't say he was the mastermind behind Scott being a massive tool. It was more Scott's tendency to run away and fabricate his own fantasies without GG's help that led him to his character flaws. I think we see only one example of GG tampering directly with his brain, so it's not as if this was anything other than the bad guy being just a dick.

But yeah, with everything else, (including the vague explanation about Gideon "creating" subspace) agreed on all counts!

[mrstatham]

Again, I think I just have a number of issues with Volume 5, most predominantly the ease with which they split up (although in some ways, that is actually fairly realistic), which just seemed like some poorly done drama to give Volume 6 a hook; Like I say, O'Malley uses Knives to initiate the issues Scott and Ramona have, and then we see nothing of her until the next volume, which is just annoying.

And I think Gideon is partially fascinating - If extremely creepy given his own frozen 'evil exes' (I had to thank Scott for being particularly dense enough to give them that definition, given the squicky, stalkery nature of that moment), which adds an extra dimension as to why he's the top of the pile in Ramona's Evil Exes and the offer he makes Scott the offer to control Ramona's love life. So there's parallels to both Scott and Ramona there that are really quite subtle and well done, but otherwise, he's just really inconsistent.

Also - I doubt O'Malley will change too much given he's working on his new series - but in the process of colouring the series, he's apparently tidying up the art and redrawing some panels. So I'm hoping he will tidy up some of the slightly sketchy stuff in Volume 6..

[arise]

Kinda curious about this, but not sure it's worth buying the whole series over again. If they were all collected into a single volume, maybe, but...

The bonus material sounds interesting, though.

[janegray]

I must admit, the main reason I've never bought a Scott Pilgrim comic is that I had an extremely hard time telling the characters from each other. They all looked the same to me! And this is from a manga reader.

So, the colored edition might actually get me into the series now.

[biod]

I'm interested in seeing a few things in colour, but I like my Scott Pilgrim black & white. I'll hold off on this one.

[rainspirit]

Goddamnit, Oni Press! You already HAD my money! I painstakingly bought the books one by one, agonizing wait after another!

...sigh, anyway.

I'm not quite sold on the colored edition, but maybe it's because they're releasing it from the first book onward. The first book's art really was the weakest - O'Malley improved a lot as the book got underway. I think it really hit its style by the time Volume 3 came around.

[mrstatham]

Volume 4's was the strongest for me, as I've said before; I'm not a huge fan of Volume 5 since it veers a little too closely, somehow, to Junko Mizuno or even something like the Powerpuff Girls, which are.. Well, they're fine, great styles - I love Mizuno - but it took the SP series a little too far into being stylised, to me. Like it was less O'Malley's style and more something he'd been looking at. And then he got curiously weak in some sections of Volume 6 anyway.

To me, though, the real problem is that they're releasing these things bi-annually. I don't see continued interest in the books holding for that long, especially now we're about two years in distance from the film.

[mourirdemain]

...do want, so much *-*

[greenmask]

But why is it so.. beige?

BRIGHTER! BRIGHTER!!

[eyz]

Looking...okay actually.
But it is clearly a book and artwork designed to be used in blakc & white. Like Boneyard, the color seems a bit forced, useless and mostly beige/brown-ysh...