Category Archives: Favorite Stories

REVISITING “SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER!” (VOL 4)

Posted by ErikSlader on

Reblogged from Geek to Geek Media!

Check out my previous review of Vol 3: “Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness” here!

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together” (does he though?) is the fourth volume in the Scott Pilgrim saga and probably my personal favorite! It’s also possibly the least like the movie?

Scott vs the Summer

It’s a scorching summer in Toronto, Canada. Scott and friends go to the beach to celebrate Julie’s birthday (at her aunt’s beach house). There are a lot of cute moments between Scott and Ramona in this one, while the two of them awkwardly consider taking the next step in their relationship (aka the L Word: not “lesbians”). During a heat wave, Scott escapes his non-air-conditioned apartment to go hang out at the mall where he runs into Lisa Miller! (see the flashback from Vol 2)

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REVISITING “SCOTT PILGRIM & THE INFINITE SADNESS” (VOL 3)

Posted by ErikSlader on

Reblogged from Geek to Geek Media!

Check out my previous review of Vol2: “Scott Pilgrim vs the World” here!

Scott Pilgrim and the Awkward Silence…

Vol 3 of the Scott Pilgrim saga picks up where we left off last time with The Clash at Demon Head concert, where Scott and Ramona realized that Envy’s bass player / boyfriend is in fact the same Todd that Ramona used to date! For those keeping track, in the movie version this whole volume was basically summed up in one scene: the fight between Scott Pilgrim (23 year old, indecisive loser-hero hybrid) and the Vegan-powered Todd!

Immediately after the concert, Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Knives Chau, Kim Pine, and the others are invited back stage with Envy Adams and Todd Ingram to stare each other down. There’s some fun character interactions going here, and you almost need a flow chart to keep track of it all. Scott’s dating Ramona. Knives is currently dating Young Neil. Envy is with Todd. Scott used to date Knives but broke her heart. Scott also used to date Envy, but got his own heart broke. Knives previously fought Ramona over Scott. Ramona dated Todd briefly.

Scott Pilgrim 101

During this super awkward exchange, Knives jumps up in realization shouting “I’ve kissed the lips that kissed you!” and immediately gets her highlights punched out of her hair, by a chick with a bionic arm! During the exchange, Envy seems to get jealous of Ramona and starts to taunt her about her past. That’s when Scott just loses it and decides to start Round 3 early, yelling at Todd: “That’s it! That is it. You cocky cock! You will pay for your crimes against humanity!!!” – but just as Scott’s leaping through the air at Todd, his eyes start glowing and his hair goes super saiyan!

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REVISITING “SCOTT PILGRIM vs THE WORLD” (VOL 2)

Posted by ErikSlader on

Reblogged from Geek to Geek Media!

Check out my previous review of Vol1: “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life” here!

While a good chunk of Vol 1 made up most of the first act of the movie, Vol 2: “Scott Pilgrim vs The World” really has a chance to delve into some of the characters and their relationships in a way that Edgar Wright’s film adaptation isn’t able to, due to time constraints – which is pretty common for film adaptations and is often why most books are considered better than the movie. This is really where Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels begin to shine!

Scott Pilgrim vs High School

We start with a flashback: Scott Pilgrim in high school, in Ontario, where he meets a girl named Lisa, outside of the Principal’s office, immediately after a fight. It seems as though she has a crush on him, but he appears to be completely oblivious, per usual. The two friends decide to start a band together called “Sonic & Knuckles”. Soon after, Scott meets Kim Pine and they decide to make her their drummer. Scott confides in Lisa that he likes Kim, but before he can make a move, she randomly gets kidnapped by some jerks from a rival tech school!

In true video game fashion, Scott fights his way through wave after wave of enemies until he reaches ‘the boss’, atop the school, right as storm clouds roll in. The two have an epic throw down and Scott uppercuts the guy into the atmosphere. Ultimately, Scott saves Kim and they have an awkward exchange that feels straight out of some dumb heroic dream: “I didn’t know who’d rescue me from that maniac, but I secretly hoped it would be you Scott.” “I like you, Kim. We should be dating. Also, do you want to play drums in my band?” “YES, SCOTT! OH, YES!!” It’s so bad, it’s hilarious. It definitely plays up some outdated tropes (the princess is in another castle), but it’s cute and it seems to be self aware enough to know how ridiculous it all is. This whole chapter really reinforces that Scott is the hero of his own story, but we’re clearly only seeing it through his POV.

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REVISITING “SCOTT PILGRIM’S PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE” (VOL 1)

Posted by ErikSlader on

Reblogged from Geek to Geek Media

 

In honor of “National Drop Everything and Read Day” (D.E.A.R.), I figured this was as good an excuse as any to re-read one of my favorite graphic novel series of all time: Scott Pilgrim!

You might be familiar with that name if you’re a fan of Michael Cera movies, or retro-style beat ’em up video games, but you might not have read the original comics by writer/artist Bryan Lee O’Malley that started it all – and I’m here to tell you that you absolutely owe it to yourself to do just that.

saga, titled “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life” opens with the line “Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!” – and right away we meet our ‘hero’, Scott Pilgrim: a mild-mannered slacker in his early 20’s with very little ambition and no direction to speak of, which honestly sounds a lot like myself at that age. Scott’s part of a band (the Sex Bob-Ombs) and they kinda suck, but make up for it with determination.

Bryan Lee O’Malley weaves an intricate plot of weird and interesting characters with laugh out loud humor on every other page, nerdy references sprinkled throughout, and some of the most genuinely heartfelt moments in modern comics, in this ultra meta, video game inspired, coming of age story.

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Favorite Stories: Maximum Carnage Part 3

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Well, look who it is! Back for more, eh? If you’re reading this then I’m SURE you’ve already read parts 1 and 2. Why else would you be here? The smell?

As we round home on our story Carnage and his gang of freaks have kidnapped Venom and have really handed our heroes their asses. Captain America has just arrived, and Iron Fist has rescued Deathlok from the precarious situation Carnage left him in. Will the additions of these heroes turn the tide? Can Spider-Man and Venom get on the same page for once and save the day? Let’s find out!

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Favorite Stories: Maximum Carnage Part 2

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Back for more, huh? Just couldn’t turn down another taste of that sweet 90’s Spider-Man goodness that tastes great going down and then gives you horrible heartburn and you wonder why you keep eating it and then you do it again anyway, could you?

We rejoin our heroes and anti-heroes at a low point. Spider-Man has split from Venom and the Black Cat (who are joined by Cloak, who is still grieving the loss of his partner, Dagger) in their quest to stop Carnage and his maniacs, who seem stronger than ever. They are no closer to stopping them than they were when they started and the casualties are piling up. We’ll cover parts 6-9 here, which is the second rotation through the main Spider-Man titles.

You can read part 1 here and part 3 here.

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Favorite Stories: Maximum Carnage Part 1

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Released: 1993
Took Place In: Spider-Man Unlimited 1-2, Amazing Spider-Man 378-380, Spectacular Spider-Man 201-203, Spider-Man 35-37, Web of Spider-Man 101-103
Written By: Tom DeFalco (Spider-Man Unlimited), David Michelinie (Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man), Terry Kavanagh (Web of Spider-Man, Spider-Man), J.M. DeMatteis (Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man)
Art By: Ron Lim (Spider-Man Unlimited), Mark Bagley (Amazing Spider-Man), Sal Buscema (Spectacular Spider-Man), Tom Lyle (Spider-Man), Alex Saviuk (Web of Spider-Man)
Characters Involved: Spider-Man, Venom, Carnage, Black Cat, Cloak, Dagger, Firestar, Iron Fist, Deathlok, Captain America, Morbius, Nightwatch, Demogoblin, Doppelganger, Carrion, Shriek

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Favorite Stories vol 3: The New Fantastic Four

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The New Fantastic Four

One of the first comics I ever got was a collection of the Walter Simonson and Arthur Adams Fantastic Four issues, which are famous for introducing a new Fantastic Four, complete with all of the most popular characters of the 1990’s. The only guy missing was the Punisher, and he ended up having a small cameo at the very end.

A runaway Skrull fugitive crash lands on Earth, and is searching for a specific weapon that will protect her from her Skrull pursuers. So she infiltrates the FF and incapacitates everyone, including Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, She-Thing, Alicia Masters, and a human Ben Grimm. She then poses as Susan Richards, and after drugging the FF to appear dead, she summons four of their allies to help her. She gets the Hulk (in his gray ‘Mr. Fixit’ persona), Ghost Rider (the Danny Ketch version), Wolverine, and Spider-Man.

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Favorite Stories vol 2- X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga

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My first exposure to X-Men comics was the Dark Phoenix saga, which many consider to be the greatest X-Men story ever told, even to this day. It was like saying, “Oh, you have a passing interest in trying some really light, social drug? Here, try this crack.” Before this story I would read comics occasionally. Really just whenever I would happen to get some. I never actively sought them out. After this story I wanted everything X-Men I could get my grubby little hands on.

I’m not going to get into too much detail on what came before, since a lot of that has been changed retroactively. But essentially Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl, one of the original X-Men, is imbued with the powers of the Phoenix, a cosmic entity capable of great and terrible things. For a while, Jean seemed ok. Her powers of telepathy and telekinesis were raised to an unprecedented degree, but other than that she was still just Jean.

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Favorite Stories- Avengers: Under Siege

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Long before they were New, Dark, or Disassembled, the Avengers were far from Marvel’s biggest characters. While people liked Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, etc., they weren’t as popular as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, or the Hulk. For whatever reason, the Avengers just weren’t striking any chords with the comic book audience as a whole. There were fans, sure, otherwise the title would have been cancelled, but it was never a top seller, and just didn’t garner all that much attention. So it was a bit of a surprise when Roger Stern and John Buscema started a story that has become known as “Avengers: Under Siege”, and all of a sudden everyone was talking about the Avengers.

The line-ups for the Avengers have always been in a constant state of change. Each era has its stand-by’s, though. In the 60’s it was mostly Captain America. In the 70’s it was the Vision and/or Hank Pym. By the 80’s it was more B-list characters that usually grabbed the spotlight, like Hercules, the Black Knight, Crystal, or Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau). The roster when this story opens is Wasp (team leader), Captain America, Black Knight, Hercules, Namor, and Captain Marvel. Also worth noting is the presence of the Avengers mansion’s butler, Edwin Jarvis. Before the Siege, Namor is forced to return to Atlantis to deal with some personal issues, and Hercules, pissed that the Wasp is in charge of him, goes off to get drunk.

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