Archive for Scott Pilgrim

Friday Night Fights: Dance Dance Revolution!

Well, here we are again. It’s the prize fight segment of Friday Night Fights, and we’ve got a theme designed solely to ruin my day. What’s the theme? Dance battles. Grrrrreat. I don’t have any comics with Vibe or Dazzler. In fact, I’m so out of ideas, I’m going to have to break the rules and go with a fight I’ve used before. So, as originally used back on March 22, 2013, here’s Scott Pilgrim vs. Matthew Patel from 2004’s Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

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Now, y’all go vote for your favorite fight — but make sure you don’t vote for this one, ’cause it sucks to use the same fight twice, and them’s the facts.

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Friday Night Fights: Musical Mayhem!

We went with Scott Pilgrim in last week’s belligerent brawl, and while I normally try to avoid repeating myself, we’re going to go right back to that same comic for this week’s edition of… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

So again, from 2004′s Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley, we continue our battle between Scott Pilgrim and Matthew Patel, as Patel demonstrates his magical abilities by summoning a horde of Demon Hipster Chicks:

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And then breaking into a Bollywood musical!

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And after that comes a scene that I really wished had appeared in the movie: Scott and his friends sing along!

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That’ll take care of things for us for this week — enjoy your weekend, and see y’all back here in a few days.

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Friday Night Fights: Air Juggle!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s pert-near the weekend, and it’s time for us to get it started with a nice fat dose of… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

I think I’m gonna split this battle across a couple of weeks ’cause it’s so good. It’s from 2004’s Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley, as Scott begins his fight against Matthew Patel.

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Things’ll get musical next week, but for now, head on over to SpaceBooger’s joint and vote for your favorite fight.

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The Power of Rock

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I finally (finally) (FINALLY!) got off my lazy butt and watched this movie. I figure I won’t step on any toes if I review it now.

Basic plot: Scott Pilgrim is a Canadian slacker. He’s dating a high-schooler with the endlessly awesome name of Knives Chau! Until he meets the love of his life, Ramona Flowers. Standard angsty romance stuff. At least until Ramona’s evil exes start coming out of the woodwork to engage in video-game-inspired duels to the death with our hapless Canadian bass player. Can Scott defeat all seven of the exes? Can he win Ramona’s love? Can he master the Power of Love and the Power of Self-Respect?

Verdict: A great big fat thumbs-up. I’m really sorry I didn’t see this when it was in the theaters, ’cause that woulda been awesome.

Probably the only thing I didn’t like about this movie was that it wasn’t as insanely epic as the trailers made it out to be. But that’s a problem of my own expectations, not with the movie itself, which is a great big bucket of fun.

Of course, no movie is for everyone. Some people don’t like Michael Cera, ’cause he’s generally played the predictably dorky guy with a shaggy hairdo, but that works out pretty well in this one, ’cause Scott Pilgrim is supposed to be a dorky guy with a shaggy hairdo. If you’re not going to like movies that traffic heavily in video game jokes — like defeated enemies who turn into coins or being able to grab an extra life or power-up weapon from time to time — this may not be the movie for you. If you don’t like movies with over-the-top cartoon violence and stunts, there’s something wrong with you, but you probably won’t like this. If you don’t like movies with comic-book elements, like outlandish written sound effects or superpowers — well, I don’t know why you’re reading this blog, but this movie may not be for you either, you poor soul.

If all of that sounds awesome, then you’re probably going to enjoy this movie.

I can’t compare it to the comics — I haven’t finished reading all of them yet. I can tell you that there are some pretty big changes from the comic to the movie. Some elements are eliminated, some characters are combined or mixed together, but these don’t do too much damage to the final product. Lots of other reviewers have noted that Ramona’s story in the comic is a lot more important — there’s a complete storyarc for her, and she’s more than just The Girl Scott Pilgrim Loves — that’s probably a legitimate criticism, though I’m not sure how they would’ve squeezed more story into a feature-length movie already filled with a whole lot of plot.

I can tell you some of my very favorite bits. Every single bit of the fight with Matthew Patel is brilliant — it’s definitely the best fight in the movie, and it’s too bad they couldn’t re-create some of that mad energy for some of the other battles. I loved the animated sequences designed to look like Bryan Lee O’Malley’s artwork in the comics. I loved the Bass Battle, I loved “Ninja Ninja Revolution,” I loved all the hilarious background jokes. I even loved the way the Universal Studios theme was played as an 8-bit video game theme. And I loved the fact that Edgar Wright, director of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” is now three-for-three when it comes to awesome movies.

And the characters really are excellent. Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, Alison Pill as Kim Pine, Mark Webber as Stephen Stills, Johnny Simmons as Young Neil, Brie Larson as Envy Adams, Chris Evans as Lucas Lee, Brandon Routh as Todd Ingram, Mae Whitman as Roxy Richter, and especially Ellen Wong as Knives Chau. Wong completely owns every scene she appears in, and I’m glad they expanded Knives’ role in the movie, just so we can see more of Ellen Wong acting awesome.

If you haven’t seen it yet, then you should definitely give it a watch. I loved the stuffin’ out of it.

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Merry Turkey Day!

Hey, it’s Thanksgiving! Hope you’re all able to spend time eating good food with friends and family. And for those of you who aren’t — I seriously hope next year is better than this one, both for you and for the rest of us.

It’s hard to find comics that are specifically about Thanksgiving, so instead, let’s look at some prominent comic book Pilgrims.

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Super Pilgrim

Okay, I know absolutely nothing about this guy on the left side of this “Tick” cover. I’ve got to assume he’s a Pilgrim and he’s got superpowers. And since he’s in a “Tick” comic, I reckon it’s a sure bet that he’s very silly.

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Just a Pilgrim

An apocalyptic sci-fi Western, this was written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra, and published by Black Bull Comics. Set in a future where the sun’s corona expanded, burning off the oceans and killing most of humanity, the story focuses on Pilgrim, a former cannibal who has burned a cross into his face to represent his renewed faith. He tries to defend some refugees crossing the Atlantic basin from pirates and in a later series, tries to defend some scientists trying to build a space shuttle to take them to another world. Despite Pilgrim’s badassery, the stories don’t often end very well.

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Deena Pilgrim

Deena is a character in Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s “Powers” series. She’s a homicide detective partnered with Det. Christian Walker, and they investigate murders of “powers” — superheroes and supervillains. She’s a bit of a goofball, a bit of a punk rocker, and she always plays “Bad Cop” to Walker’s “Good Cop.” At one point, she actually developed contagious superpowers and went on the run, but I understand her powers have been cured now.

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Scott Pilgrim

The lead character in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s epic comic series from Oni Press, Scott is a slacker and bass guitarist for a band called Sex Bob-Omb who falls in love with Ramona Flowers. But in order to date her, he must first defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends (which includes one evil ex-girlfriend from college). The whole series has lots of call-backs to video games — all the bands in the series have names based on computer games, and Scott’s battles against the seven evil exes are all reminiscent of video game boss battles. No, I’ve never read this, mostly because I’m too cheap to buy all the previous books.

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Solomon Kane

He’s not technically a Pilgrim, but he is a Puritan. He had a series published by Marvel years ago, and a current series published by Dark Horse, but he got his start as a character created by Robert E. Howard, the guy who wrote the Conan the Barbarian stories. Solomon Kane was a dour, near-humorless 17th century swashbuckling Puritan swordsman who adventured across Europe and Africa fighting evil and rescuing innocents. Howard’s original Solomon Kane stories are great action pulp — to be honest, some of the best action prose I can recall reading anywhere — though it can be a bit of a slog to get past the 1920s-era racism that infects them — the more recent comic stories bleed that part out of them.

So there we have it — five different comic book Pilgrims for you to spend your Thanksgiving with. Make sure they get some of the sweet potato pie, a’ight?

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