A Conversation With Bryan Lee O Malley SPX 2008

by Joe McCullochSunday, June 27, 2010

From "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour" (vol. 6); color by Dylan McCrae
On October 4, 2008, I had the pleasure of conducting a live q&a session with Bry
an Lee O Malley as part of the programming slate for the 2008 Small Press Expo. O Ma
lley is the creator of the popular Scott Pilgrim series of bookshelf-format comi
cs, soon to see its sixth and final volume released on July 20, 2010, along with
a motion picture adaptation directed by Edgar Wright, set to premiere in North
America on August 13, 2010.
Moreover, O Malley is perhaps the most visible face of a young comics-making gener
ation liable to draw considerable influence from international comics art, and p
ursue means of distribution outside of the classical comic book format his backg
round is in webcomics, and his print-format career, est. 2001, traces the meteor
ic growth of manga as a presence in English-language North American comics readi
ng. Even if we set visual qualities aside, it is striking that so many of O Malley s
cited influences are comics and animation material targeted at women and girls;
just one reading generation prior, this would have been almost unthinkable, as
American comics had by and large abandoned that demographic as insignificant.
Yet O Malley also keenly distinguishes between manga traditions boys comics, girls c
omics, 70s Golden Age traits, anime-adapted tropes and applies them to a grander,
evolutionary metaphor in Scott Pilgrim, a romance comic (and so much more!) abo
ut leveling yourself up by understanding your lover s (possibly storied) romantic
history, and confronting the negative traits evil ex-boyfriends might represent. G
aming action hangs over everything as a looser, atmospheric metaphor for persona
l myth-making; video games don t function as literature, not like books, but they ar
e eminently applicable in their social role-playing capacity.
What follows is a record of our live q&a, transcribed by me, and edited to remov
e ums and ahs and hanging sentences. Keep in mind, this was 2008, so the current
ly most-recent book of the series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, had not yet b
een released. Many thanks to Chris Mautner, aka Audience #8, for recording the pan
el (his own thoughts on Scott Pilgrim are hereby commended to your attention), a
nd Bill Kartalopoulos, for shepherding the event into reality.

***
[JOE MCCULLOCH] Hello, how are you?
[BRYAN LEE O'MALLEY] I m not bad. It s been a busy morning.
Yeah, I d imagine. So let s start out by if you could just tell us about your first
experiences with comics? Just earliest
Just sort of in general?
Yeah.
I feel like I always kind of read comics, in some way, y know, words and pictures.
But the first real time I thought of comics as comics was when I started readin
g Transformers comics, when I was six or seven years old. Because it was the hei
ght of the popularity of the cartoon, and I didn t have access to the cartoon show
? Because I lived in the far north, and we didn t have that on our tv, I guess? It s
like when we went down to Toronto we could watch it on a tv there because they
could catch it from Buffalo or something like over across the lake. But no, up n
orth, no Transformers, they didn t broadcast it in Canada. So I found the comics a
t the drugstore or something, in Timmins, Ontario, where I was young. And that w
as my first comic book.

His first issue; art by Herb Trimpe

Now, you and I, we re of essentially the same generation, I think?
Yeah. You were born in 79, 80?
I was born in 81. So we re pretty close to each other, and I think we might have si
milar experience, that I know you got heavily into manga and such when you were
a teenager. Did you get there from watching anime, or ?
Ok, let me think. From Transformers I went to X-Men, and I was into Marvel, and
all of those sort of mind-reader youth we bought as a teenager. And then in my t
een years, I guess I was about 16 or so, YTV in Canada, which is kind of like th
eir equivalent of Nickelodeon, started playing the Sailor Moon cartoon? Which, I
mean, I guess later I found out was the place that played it the most. And so t
he Sailor Moon thing just kind of blew it wide open for me, like I d seen a little
bit of Robotech here and there, but like I said, when I was a kid I didn t really
have access to it, the cool cartoons. So that was the first time I really saw J
apanese animation, so I was just really obsessed for the last few years of high
school.
Yeah.
And from that I got into the manga, obviously, which was kind of in its nascence
at that time, anime in America, like I started reading the Viz Ranma ½ translatio
ns, which used to still come in floppy issues. And then from there, the manga st
uff kind of somehow led me to more independent American comics again. Maybe beca
use it was black & white? Like it opened the door to black and white stuff?
You didn t get into any of the Image Comics revolution?
Oh no, I did. I was the exact right age to be suckered by [laughter]
So was I, man.
I was, y know, eleven or twelve, and Youngblood #1 came out, and everyone was just
like, oh my gaawd!
Shadowhawk s cracking people s backs, man. [laughter]
Yeah, so my favorite one was Marc Silvestri s what was it called?
[VARIOUS AUDIENCE] Cyberforce!
And, yeah, it had like, dudes with four arms, and hot girls. And so I was really
into that, that was like what I drew when I was 14, 15, just starting high scho
ol. I drew this really teeth-gritting, hard-boiled, like and I drew girls, but I h
ad no knowledge of real anatomy and stuff. [laughter] So it was just, y know, boob
s on a dude. [laughter]
Now, around this time, when you were a teenager, I believe you started doing web
comics, or at least posting comics online?
Yeah, well I think how it started was, I I was thinking about this actually whil
e we were driving up yesterday. Like a lot of people will do caricatures of thei
r ugly teacher or whatever in class, but I was never really interested in that.
What I would do was draw comics just about my friends, I d turn them kind of into
cute, sort of deformed versions of themselves, in manga style, and I did this co
mic strip every day for a couple months. And that, I think I completely blanked,
what was the question again?
Like, for example, when posting comics online -
Oh yeah, getting it online.
How did you go about it at that time?

From "Glorious You."; webcomic, 2000

Right. Ok, so I first got the internet in 1996, I think? And it was still a weir
d, wild thing back then, so I started a website, one of those super-lame I didn t
have any sparkly text or any of that stuff. [laughter] And I started drawing thi
s one comic before I got on the internet, and then, I had this thing at that tim
e where I could never get past, like, thirteen pages of a comic, before getting
bored of it? So I did thirteen pages of one version and thirteen pages of anothe
r version, and I posted a third version, and I ve completely lost a lot of stuff.
Anyway, it was pretty bad, but once you get on the internet, especially back the
n, I just started talking to some people, and some of them, we re still friends, b
ut I figure they could be in this room and stuff. I got involved in this sort of
drawing group commune thing in my area, in Ontario. And I would start taking tr
ips to Toronto to hang out with them every couple months or whatever, when I was
about 19 or 20.
Now when you were making these comics, was your interest in manga and anime stro
ngly informing you at that point?
Yeah, more the anime then, but I d not really cracked the idea that manga was cons
tructed a certain way. I was just interested in the looks, which I think most pe
ople are, especially at that age. So I drew characters with really spiky hair an
d big eyes, and doing goofy stuff. And stupid situations that you would never th
ink of unless you d watched a lot of anime. Like, always comics about boarding sch
ool. A girl running late for school with toast in her mouth. [laughter]
Now I think in the early 00s, basically, how did you come by Oni Press? I think y
ou were initially drawing the second Hopeless Savages miniseries? [Hopeless Sava
ges: Ground Zero]
Yeah, I can kind of work my way up to that. In the late 90s, there was a thing on
the internet called the Warren Ellis Forum?
Oh yeah!
It was created by Warren Ellis. And it was a forum. [laughter] A lot of people o
f my generation of comics creators, writers and artists both, kind of gestated t
here.
That was a really huge community at that time.

His first print-format page, from "Last Shot" #1; lettering by O'Malley, pencils
/inks by Long Vo, colors by Charles Park & Saka
Yeah, like so, Brian Wood, Matt Fraction those are two big names to come out of
that. Um, and me, but I was not really very active in that community, I would ju
st sort of lurk and occasionally post. After that I had some friends through the
 kind of anime fan rec.-type stuff who were doing a comic with what was it calle
d? Pat Lee s company? Dreamwave. Which dissolved, like, a year later. [NOTE: Speci
fically, Dreamwave broke away from Image in 2002 and functioned as an independen
t publishing company until 2005.] But at that time they were pumping out a lot o
f stuff, making a lot of money. So they were doing a book with them [Last Shot,
created by Studio XD], so I went down to California in 2001 and helped them work
on this book, which ended up just being with Image central, because Dreamwave h
ad already kind of domineered. And then, while I was there, we went to the Chica
go Wizard World, I guess? And that s where I was introduced to James Lucas Jones,
who is now the editor in chief. And I have him under my thumb. [laughter] I m kidd
ing. But yeah, I was introduced to him and then I went back home to London, Onta
rio, at the end of 2001, and I inked an issue of Queen & Country [#5, Nov. 2001]
for them, which was not good inking. And then they offered me to do Hopeless Sa
vages, which was it took most of 2002, I guess, to do four issues.
Now was this the first time you d worked from someone else s script?
Yeah.
How did that experience mesh with you?
It totally drove me crazy. But, it was good, y know, because I didn t it s not like I
was a really good writer when I was 22. It made me see things that writer [Jen V
an Meter] could do right and do wrong. It s always a good learning experience. If
you look at that book, from each issue I was trying really different things. And
I learned. Something. I think.

From "Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero"; script by Jen Van Meter

After that you went into Lost at Sea [published Nov. 2003], and I m not totally cl
ear on the chronology there. I think there was some material from that that appe
ared on the internet, or was that an online project?
Oh, what it was I think in 2001, the same time I was doing Queen & Country, befo
re Hopeless Savages, Oni had been doing these Sunday comics on their website?
Yeah.
Which was it never kept up with it. Basically they would just forget, or stuff l
ike that, and it would always drop off, and then they d start up again. But I did
six strips, and that was the first stuff I did for them. I think they paid me mo
ney for those. Like $75 a strip, which was cool. So that was just kind of a roug
h draft version of the story. And I didn t start it in earnest until after Hopeles
s Savages.
Did you pitch to them from those comics?
No, actually I pitched a few things to Oni in 2001, and Lost at Sea was the one
that they liked the most. Because it had cats in it. Yeah, that was back when Ja
mie S. Rich used to be the editor in chief, and he was more sort of into my girl
y inclinations, I guess? So they liked that, but they made me do Hopeless Savage
s they didn t make me, but I did it, and it took me way longer than it should have
. So I didn t start Lost at Sea until January of 2003.

From "Lost at Sea"

Going from one book to another, from Lost at Sea to the first Scott Pilgrim [Sco
tt Pilgrim s Precious Little Life, 2004], did any reactions to that book play in a
s to what to do with the next project?
Only from, kind of my friends who I gave a copy of Lost at Sea, and they were ju
st like, what s this? Or, y know, they thought it was just too whatever. Too not too a
nything, really. They didn t see in it what they saw in me when they re hanging out
with me and drinking and whatever we re doing. So, what I wanted to do was do some
thing that was kind of more something that would entertain them, I guess?
One thing I ve always enjoyed about the first Scott Pilgrim is that is seems very
deliberately paced, so to speak, in that it begins as a comedic relationship sto
ry, and then you gradually introduce the subspace from Super Mario [Brothers] 2,
and there s people skating through each other s minds, until finally it s just comple
te fight scenes, and the fantasy kind of explodes. Did you how did you plan out
that, where ?
I think a lot of it came in little bits here and there. I had been thinking of S
cott Pilgrim since early 2002, but I didn t start writing it properly until early
2004. So, little things came here and there, so it s really hard for me to have a
timeline of when ideas showed up, because originally it was supposed to be one b
ook, and it just grew and grew. The seven evil ex-boyfriends thing came a little
later, like but what was the story going to be before that? I have no idea. As
to the whole it grows into something else, I feel like there was an element of me
just kind of wanting to trick people. I always have had that. And I would deny i
t. I probably still would deny it if somebody asked me in an interview but I don t
want to say that, it s not true.
Approaching this book, did you write it out beforehand? Did you do a full script
?
I do, yeah. Ever since Lost at Sea I write a full script. I kind of feel like it
goes back to the Hopeless Savages thing, where I didn t write the script.
Your early exposure to that.
Yeah, so I just thought that was kind of the way it was done, and so I started d
oing it that way myself.

From "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" (vol. 1)

All through this time you re continuing to read a lot of comics yourself, a lot of
manga.
Right.
What kind of and I know you re a very broad reader of certain manga. What sort of
things do you think had an effect on your drawing style? Because your style, I w
ould say, makes a pretty significant leap between Lost at Sea and Scott Pilgrim.
I don t know. I used to know. There was a lot of weird stuff that went into it. I
feel like I didn t start to see stuff that looked more like Scott Pilgrim until af
ter I d already drawn it. Which is weird. The eyes came from this friend of mine o
n the internet drew a series of pictures of the female reindeer from Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer, the stop-motion cartoon?
Yeah.
They have eyes like that!
Yeah!
So the eyes are from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. [laughter]
The eyes came from Disney first.
Yeah, was it Disney? I don t know.
Yeah, Disney and Fleischer [Studios]. Actually, on that, you read a lot of Osamu
Tezuka work, and actually we were talking before and you d expressed this affinit
y for, like, bad Tezuka -
Oh yeah, I forgot to bring that one. Yeah, because we were talking about this an
ime called Kaiba, I dunno if any of you ve seen it, it hasn t been officially releas
ed in America, I think, but it looks like a cartoon from the 1930s in this reall
y weird way. And the early Tezuka stuff that I ve found has been it s like he was 20
-whatever. He was a kid. Maybe not even 20.
He was, like, 17 when he started out.
Yeah, so I have one of his books, called something about the people underground
[The Mysterious Underground Men, 1948], and it s just it s not that good, there s only
about three panels per page and they re full of all these people, and his drawing
s are kind of limp and noodly. They re not really very technically proficient.
And he s a tricky one to pin down, because he had a habit of revising things a lot
as he went along. So it s kind of strange to find that kind of work in his early
stuff -
Yeah.
What attracts you to it?
I don t know! It s just kind of the badness and naïveté of it, that it s just appealing.
mean, my work has its own share of badness and naïveté I didn t intentionally put in
there. I didn t really get solidly into Tezuka until midway through Scott Pilgrim.
Just the last few years I ve really been into it. And you know, we ve seen a flood
of translated works, which is great.
I m interested that you read a lot of works, shonen works and shojo works, intende
d for boys and girls, and I think over time those have developed their own speci
fic idiom, their own iconography that each of them use, and I d be interested in w
hat you take from both of those. Like what are the elements that attract you, th
at you combine?

From "Nana"; art & script by Ai Yazawa (reads right-to-left)

Well, when I first started Scott Pilgrim one of my main influences was Nana, whi
ch Viz has started putting out. Ai Yazawa, yeah. I d read Paradise Kiss, which Tok
yopop put out in the late 90s no, more like 2002. And Nana was just in French at
the time [published by Delcourt], Viz didn t start putting it out until 2005. So I
read the whole thing in French, which my French is really bad, so it was hard t
o read. It felt, almost, that reading it in French was a completely different ex
perience. And it felt more foreign than a manga generally does? Cause they were a
ll speaking French and using French slang and stuff. So it felt like a French-Ja
panese comic, which is really weird, but it colored my impression of the book. B
ut the thing about Nana that I liked was that it s for slightly older girls. And i
t s sort of about twenty-somethings, and it kind of just reflected what I was goin
g through in my life at the time. Not really, because it s all crazy, but it share
s some plot elements I guess with Scott Pilgrim. Like, there s old friends who ve go
ne on to become famous, and stuff like that. And in my life, as I ve gone through
Scott Pilgrim, I ve encountered more famous people, and I ve become famous to some d
egree, so that has also kind of stayed there.
You ve also mentioned you enjoy a lot of 70s older manga. I know you like Knights o
f the Zodiac [aka: Saint Seiya, created by Masami Kurumada, serialized 1986-91].
Oh yeah, I brought those. I m sure you ve seen it, but I just brought a bunch of cra
p. In my robot bag. [laughter]
Actually, because I don t know if you ve seen this I was looking around on the inter
net, and on ComiPress they had this translation of this book by a guy named Take
o Udagawa. It was called Manga Zombie, and I don t know if you ve seen that, but he
had this thesis in it, and this was written in the mid- 90s [1997], and it was tha
t as manga went on into the 80s and the financial bubble kind of took over, it be
came less about stories and more about characters in situations, and the art bec
ame slicker, less idiosyncratic. I know you have great admiration for 70s manga d
o you ever get that impression?
Definitely into the 90s. I still feel like 80s stuff, a lot of it is really weird
and, y know, idiosyncratic. I have this one, I think it s from the 80s. It s called MAP
S [created by Yuichi Hasegawa, serialized 1985-94]. I used to go to this used ma
nga store in Toronto, and MAPS is just this insane space opera from the late 80s.
I remember it s the late 80s because it s around the same time the Nintendo games we
re coming out, and so it has the same sensibility, but in manga form. So it s abou
t these hot space chicks, and there s like the spaceships look like girls, they re g
iant girls going like this. [laughter] It s so weird. And there s these ugly aliens
and this hot hero guy whose hair is just like whoosh. It s really fun.
Do you read a lot of manga in Japanese?
Well, yeah, read is not the right word. I definitely have way too many of them.
How does that wash over you, without reading the language?
It s great, actually. My favorite one for that is this book called Living Game. It s
from the early 90s [serialized 1990-93], by Mochiru Hoshisato. It s what you d call
seinen manga [aimed at teenage males or older]. It s about a guy in his mid-20s, a
nd it s kind of like an office comedy but with a romance. He s in love with a 17-yea
r-old girl. It s creepy, but it s kind of like a more grown-up Rumiko Takahashi [Ran
ma ½, InuYasha] in terms of art style. And I really love his paneling. Looking at
untranslated manga, you can t get sucked into the words and start reading it, beca
use if you re reading a comic in English you look at it and just sit there. This w
ay I can flip through it and look at his construction the shapes of the panels,
the size of the figures, the placement of the balloons and stuff. It s looking at
comics without being distracted, I guess.

From "Living Game" (scanlated version); art & script by Mochiru Hoshisato (reads
right-to-left)
That s a good way of putting it. There s another side of manga going on through the
Scott Pilgrim books, you do a continuous chapter numbering, as a manga collectio
n would if it was being serialized. That strikes me as interesting because I thi
nk what we have as manga now in the United States, North America, is kind of an il
lusion, really -
In terms of the delivery system, yeah.
Because we get these collections and they appear on the bookstore comics shelves
, and we don t have any of the economic basis for serialization, and for paying pe
ople, giving them -
A living wage.
Yeah. Or even for fronting them the money to put together the studios that are u
sed to do a lot of weekly stuff. And a lot of these, especially in the last 20 y
ears, a lot of manga has been editorially driven work, I think. A lot of respons
e card-driven work. And I think inevitably there s some improvisation that works i
ts way in.
Right.
What was your thinking in using this almost serialization style in Scott Pilgrim,
although it s not a serial? Is that a means of pacing, or ?
It is, it s because I don t really break down the chapters the same way. You would i
f it was serialized. I like to tell the story as the story, rough and tumble. An
d I think I started reading it as more of an aesthetic choice, even with the siz
e of the books and things like that I just wanted it to resemble manga as a pres
entation. Not even because I wanted it to be manga, just sort of that effect.
When you re doing different chapters of Scott Pilgrim, as the volumes have gone on
, have you gotten a lot of feedback from editorial or from readers?
Not from editorial. No, Oni doesn t really edit me so much. I used to be really re
sistant to the idea of editing, so I think they kind of decided just not to talk
to me about it anymore. [O Malley laughs] But somehow I ended up liking it. I gue
ss chapter by chapter, not really so much. I think they just want to see the boo
k as a whole, which is how I want it to be, I guess.
Do you continue now to use full scripts? Do you work it out by chapter?
I do. I tried to, in the new book I m working on [Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe,
2009], to use the chapters more to my advantage. And to the reader s advantage too
, just to tell a soft of complete story in each chapter, like to have the beats
and have it be satisfying by itself. Because I feel like sometimes I really drop
the ball on that. The other thing I m trying to do is, just for myself, to do eac
h chapter and then move on to the next one. Which I ve never done before, it s marve
lous and new. Because working on a 200-page book is insane, it boggles the mind
everyday. The chapters are about 30 pages, so if you can conceivably do that in
a month or so it s really cool, instead of having it to be, like, oh my god, I am e
ight months from finishing what I m working on right now, and then just wanting to
go lie down. Because that s how I feel everyday. [laughter]
So do you feel, concentrating on chapters, there s more improvisation in the story
telling, or are you as deliberate as you were before?
No, I m if anything more deliberate now. I did write out this book, it took me a r
eally long time. It took me, like, eight months to script the whole thing. I rew
rote it three times, I think. And I just want it to be really solid and complete
as a work and to call back to the right things in the previous books and to set
up the plots in the last book [Scott Pilgrim s Finest Hour, 2010]. It s a balancing
act.
From "Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness" (vol. 3)
I ve noticed particularly in vol. 4 [Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, 2007] there s a
pretty big artistic leap from the previous ones. It was airier, essentially. Th
ere s more space in it. When you re finished with one volume, do you consider the ne
xt volume as this is what I want to try and break myself into next ?
I think so, to some degree. But I think a lot of it is just sort of a natural ti
me thing. Just the fact that it takes me a certain amount of time to write the b
ook? And during that time I m not really drawing as much, I m not drawing steadily,
so by the time I pick up the pen again some things grow in unexpected ways. So i
t always changes a bit. I feel the new book has just as much of an artistic leap
as the last one. The airiness you were talking about in vol. 4 I stopped puttin
g shading on characters, because I noticed they don t do that in manga. And then I
realized that it made a lot of sense. So I m trying to keep the characters more o
pen. Tezuka does that; the characters are just fat, round shapes, and they don t g
et it s really hard to describe. But I thought that would be better, so they ve got
more white space, black space, and that s it.
Scott Pilgrim has always come off to me as kind of an index of things you enjoy.
It seems a very comprehensive mix of your interests. Like, in vol. 4, there s rom
antic stuff, and then right after that would be pulling the blade of love out of
him, and then there s a Ninja Gaiden kind of showdown. I m wondering, a lot of the
do you do much video gaming these days, by the way?
Not nearly as much as I used to, because it s time. If you want to get graphic nov
els finished you can t play Grand Theft Auto. They re mutually exclusive.
A lot of the video game stuff in Scott Pilgrim seems based in the 8-bit Nintendo
period.
Yeah, it s a lot of looking back, and it s not even just the Nintendo. A lot of it s l
ooking back to when I was 12, which is the whole feeling of living your life tha
t way. The one thing I do play is my I have a [Nintendo] DS now. Actually my pub
lisher bought it for me for my birthday. Which is a bad idea. [laughter] It s real
ly good because you don t have to play it for hours and hours, days, nights. They
have a lot of older games being revived for that system, and it feels more like
I like video games to be.
The presentation in Scott Pilgrim of these elements, would you say some of it is
an expression of your past?
Yeah, definitely. A lot of it is about memory and nostalgia. It s not really to be
taken completely literally.
I admired how, starting with the second volume, there starts being flashbacks, a
nd it becomes this decade-spanning story. Were you especially looking back on yo
ur life at that point?
I think so. There s a lot of I definitely am. Like I said, it s about memory, and it s
about this guy s one year of his life.

From "Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together" (vol. 4)

Do you keep up on any American comics these days, or any manga-influenced comics
these days? Because I think some of the really heavy manga-influenced comics ar
e from maybe a later generation than you or I, who got into this kind of by anim
e?
Yeah.
Do you get anything from looking at those works?
Do you have any specifics? I haven t read a lot of them. I was doing, like, webcom
ics.
I was going to think of, like, Brandon Graham, who does King City -
He s older than me.
Yeah.
A lot older. Way older than me. [laughter] Yeah, I met him I think in 2001. He u
sed to do these porn comics. He really likes porn. [laughter] I think his influe
nces are completely different from mine. He recently listed off his top 12 comic
s, and I think I ve read maybe one of them.
He s pretty heavy into European influences.
Yeah, he s into Moebius and that school, and I ve never read any of that stuff.
Are there any younger artists these days that you follow around, or is the const
raints on your time too much?
Well, I also moved to a town where we don t have a comics store, so I m not really w
ith it. I really like Kaz Strzepek, or however he pronounces his stupid name. [l
aughter] He has a comic called The Mourning Star, that s here somewhere. He s at the
Bodega booth. His book is square. You should buy it, it s really, really good I d
on t know how to describe it. It s almost like an Akira Toriyama [Dr. Slump, Dragon
Ball] kind of comic -
Yeah, there s a little of that in there.
And it s also kind of like Dungeon, the French comics [created by Joann Sfar & Lew
is Trondheim], and it s about these little dudes in this fantasy kingdom and there s
this rebellion, but it s really weird and really individual.
As comics expands, and I think the industry is continuing to expand these days,
there s a lot of different venues for creators to get stuff out. Do you have any p
articular advice on getting works seen, like to a young artist?
I strongly believe in webcomics. I think I ll probably wind up doing more webcomic
s in the future. It s a no-brainer to me, you should do that. That s how I started;
when I met James at Oni, he had already seen my webcomics, I d already sent him st
uff before I met him in real life, which kind of sealed the deal. Just having yo
urself on the internet is really cheap and manageable, and it doesn t take a lot o
f effort, and it s really easy to show to people. And then if the right person see
s it, or if it catches on, it ll be seen by way more people than you can even conc
eive of. We did this comic called Bear Creek Apartments a couple months ago, and
it caught on like nothing else like I d ever done quite like that. It got seen by
millions of people a day.
On that particular comic you were working with [spouse] Hope Larson. Did she do
a full script for you, or was that a different collaboration?
She did. There was an opportunity to write it for something else, and then that
fell though; she had already written it, and I think she was planning to draw it
 for herself originally. But the timing was weird, she was already starting her
next book, so I offered to draw it. It took me eight months to draw 16 pages, wh
ich is really bad, and she was really mad at me for the entire eight months. [la
ughter] But, y know, it finally got done; it s all erased.

From "Bear Creek Apartments"; script by Hope Larson

You used some interesting color effects there. Were you experimenting with color
in that?
Yeah. I ve always wanted to do a watercolor comic, that was one of the reasons I w
anted to do this comic in the first place, I thought it d be really cool as an exp
erimental sort of thing. And I want to do more I started doing watercolors a few
years ago just to make money when I was poor. And to learn. So, I really like w
atercolors, it was a lot of fun, I don t think I used them in the right way, if ther
e is one? But I think what I produced looks ok. That comic was watercolor, a lit
tle bit of crayon because I have a box of crayons. And a little bit of computer
graphics.
Let s see I think we ll turn it over to the audience, actually.
What time is it?
It s almost a quarter of four.
Oh, ok.
Yeah, I think we ll turn this over to the audience for some questions. You can pic
k. Just anyone.
Right. I m trying to remember everyone s name. I can t, I m sorry. You there!
[AUDIENCE #1] Hi, I noticed as the series goes on there s some kind of increasing
prevalence of themes of same-sex attraction and love. And I noticed this in the
way that Knives and Kim Pine share a moment, and Ramona s past with Roxanne Richte
r, and I m especially curious about the true nature of the relationship between Sc
ott and Wallace, like why is it that Wallace puts up with so much of Scott s crap?
[laughter] Like, what are his motivations? Is it just kind of protective or is
there something more he feels for him?
Uh [laughter] I feel that you should write an essay on that or something. Becaus
e you could probably get way more insight into it than I really have. Because a
lot of stuff like that is, it just kind of trickled out, you know, I just keep s
tuff for fun. I support the gay rights movement. Or whatever? I don t really have
that much insight into it. I drew the girls kissing because I thought it would b
low certain people s minds. [laughter] I didn t really have a deeper motivation for
that. As for Wallace and Scott, it s just I used to have a gay roommate, and I I d
on t want to, like, delve too deep into it, I suppose. Like right now. But I think
you re correct. I don t know if you actually made a statement? [laughter] Sorry, th
at s all I ve got.
[AUDIENCE #2] Could you give us anything about the movie buzz? Like, a lot of bu
zz about the movie, like Mike Cera, and Simon Pegg as director?
Yeah. Simon Pegg is not the director, ah, Edgar Wright is the director [audience
member laughs] Sorry. It s true, it s not a rumor, the option was signed in 2005, s
o it s been around for a while. Edgar Wright is the director, Michael Cera is in i
t, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is in it. Um, and that s all I can tell you.
How do you feel about feel about it moving to the next medium, from or, do you f
eel it s constraining your story, or do you feel, like -
No, I feel like it has no relation to my story, and I m not interested in moving t
o film. I don t think they have as much in common as people think they have. I m onl
y interested in comics.
[AUDIENCE #3] Do you think that it would be better if they used the animation me
dium instead of film?
No. [laughter] I m not really into animation anymore. Nothing against it, but in t
his particular case I don t see any way how it could have gotten made if I wanted
it to be animated. Which I never really did. I don t think especially when this de
al had started I had only finished the first book, and I don t think my art was th
at strong. And I didn t particularly want to see it animated, and no one asked any
way. I feel like, it s about it s not supposed to be about cartoon people, it s suppos
ed to be real people. And, y know, the comic figures just sort stand in for real p
eople. So I d like to see it with real people.
[AUDIENCE #4] What are you doing after Scott Pilgrim?
Uh, I can t tell you. [laughter] It s very deeply in the works. If I told you it d tot
ally change by the time it came out. So, sorry.
[AUDIENCE #5] In the first Scott Pilgrim, you set up that Scott has to fight the
evil exes, and he does and he beats him in the end, but in the second, third an
d fourth ones he kind of eludes that final fight, and what was the thinking behi
nd that?
I really like being anti-climactic, almost all the time. It s not really a good te
ndency, but [laughter] I don t know, I feel like as it goes on I m less and less int
erested in the concept of evil ex-boyfriends. But, y know, I m sticking with it. It s
going ok. The next one has more of a final confrontation.

From "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe" (vol. 5)

[JOE MCCULLOCH] I like that a lot of the evil ex-boyfriends are kind of defeated
by their hubris, mostly.
Yeah. Because a lot of this is a big fat metaphorical construct for certain thin
gs. So it s I like fighting but I don t really like I mean I don t like fighting, I li
ke the idea that comics have fighting in them. [laughter] It seems like they sho
uld. So that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do it. It s not really a logic
al reason, it s a feeling thing. I like drawing fights, but I don t like taking up a
lot of the book with fights, so they end up being three pages long, which is no
t enough. But my priorities lie elsewhere I think. So it s just one element among
many.
Do you ever feel the urge to do, like, a Slam Dunk, where the final basketball s
cene is seven volumes long or something?
I do, [laughter], I mean intellectually, but I don t really want to draw that much
. [laughter] It s so much work!
[AUDIENCE #6] Ok, so when he beats the guys, the evil ex-boyfriends, and they di
sappear and turn into coins or 1ups or whatever -
This is going to be a big question.
Are they dead?
Um -
Did he kill them? [laughter]
I ve actually been asked that before. I don t remember if I think I just ran away. [
laughter] No, I don t I don t want to answer, I guess, because the series isn t done,
and maybe I can conceivably answer the question in the series. But I m not. But I
might! [laughter] It s, ah, [whispers] it s a metaphor! [laughter] I don t know. Sorry
. Sorry I m not good at answering questions.
[AUDIENCE #7] While we re on the subject of Scott Pilgrim, mass murderer [laughter
] I m kidding. Bear Creek Apartments was brilliant, and -
Thank you.
And tightly I mean it was a 16-page story that was a complete thing, it had the
twist thing going for it, but you also had a lot of insight into the character,
and there was the potential for it to be, y know, so much more than what it was. W
ill you all be working together, or was it too traumatic?
It was traumatic for her, mostly, because I was just inching forward, and she wa
s, like, [high-pitched voice] do you want to do it or not? [laughter] But I did wa
nt to do it, I did do it, and I would like to do more stuff with her eventually.

From "Bear Creek Apartments"; script by Hope Larson

The storytelling and the art were perfect, and the story was written great, it w
as just you read a lot of anthologies and things and you see people take their p
ages and they go nowhere with it, and then you see something that s just 16 pages
and it was complete, it was funny -
I mean, she s a really good writer. She s a good writer, and she wants to kind of tr
ansition more into writing for other people, which is that s her first step in tha
t direction, I guess. And it was fun for me to kind of apply what I wanted in Sc
ott Pilgrim to something that s not Scott Pilgrim for the first time in a while.
[JOE MCCULLOCH] Actually, on that point, I know you ve been in some anthologies wh
at are your feelings on anthologies versus putting something on the web for peop
le to access?
I just turned one down. I don t I feel like there s a lot of them lately, is that tr
ue?
I would say there are more.
Image alone has like -
Oh yeah.
Five to ten -
Yeah, yeah.
I think they re a good place for people to kind of start. Because there s not really
 anywhere else other than the web for short stories. Especially for stuff that s n
ot going to get into, y know, the [Best] American Comics this year. I don t really f
eel the need to participate in them anymore, I guess? If I had a short story I w
ould probably just put it on my website. I feel like I there s this weird give and
take between what they want of me and what I want of them, and sometimes it jus
t doesn t work out. I also feel like if someone asks me to be in an anthology I ha
ve to come up with something specifically for that, and that just gives me so mu
ch mental trauma, trying to come up with something, it just it s not worth it, I m g
onna be staying up for months.
[AUDIENCE #8] Can you talk a little bit more about your choices as far as using
video game tropes? Because I think at the surface there s initially that kind of n
ostalgic appeal, but I also think obviously you re aiming for more than that, to u
se them kind of as metaphors, so I was kind of curious as to what you pick and w
hy, because of course video games are kind of a different narrative entirely, an
d you kind of interact with them a lot differently than you do with anime, manga
or comics.
Right. Well, video games are like a self-insertion kind of storytelling, where y
ou re the protagonist. And I guess in Scott Pilgrim that approach is just another
way of telling the story of your own life, even just to yourself. So everything
is sort of presented from Scott Pilgrim s own worldview-thing for the most part. A
nd so these crazy things that happen are not necessarily the things that literal
ly happen, but are the way that you interpret them. I mean, I always talk about
like how I used to just kind of blur my memories of what really happened and, li
ke, what happened in Resident Evil, because it was really trickling. [laughter]
So I wanted to extend that to pixel games, which wouldn t necessarily trick you in
to believing that you lived them, but they re just as valid as an experience. Like
if you experienced playing Mega Man 3 when you were 12 years old, it s like you d
id live through it in some weird way, like, you played that game, you were Mega
Man for a while. I just wanted to explore that. I don t really know what I would s
ay about that, were I to give a lecture on the topic, so I think my lecture on t
he topic is being explored in Scott Pilgrim. I m not quite done exploring it.
[AUDIENCE #9] We ve heard where the romance stuff comes from, and where the video
game stuff comes from. Where does the playing in a band stuff come from?
I played in a band at the time. The life stuff, the Toronto stuff, like, the fri
ends, was all kind of a twisted, consolidated dream version of what I was just d
oing while I was drawing the book. So a lot of the friends are sort of based on
my friends, and the band was not really anything like mine. My band was more lik
e the band in the third book [Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, 2006], Kid C
hameleon. So my band had seven people in it for a while, and it was just kind of
ridiculous. It didn t last very long. But that s where that stuff came from, I just
like playing music with my friends. And like I said earlier, the reason I start
ed writing Scott Pilgrim was just to entertain my friends.

From "Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness" (vol. 3)

[JOE MCCULLOCH] Since I think we re kind of running low on time here, I d just like
to ask you, being at the Small Press Expo and all, what do you think about the c
ontinuing effect of manga on people getting into small press comics? What would
be your advice on synthesizing what they read in manga into what they re doing wit
h their own comics?
You still see a lot of people drawing manga that looks exactly like something ou
t of a shojo magazine or whatever they re into. I think the first step is to try a
nd tell stories about your own experiences rather than the girls with toast in t
heir mouth. Unless you are a girl with toast in your mouth, I guess. I ve drawn pi
ctures of myself with toast in my mouth, so [laughter] But yeah, try and relate
it to your own experience, and I think if you can start doing that successfully
then the drawings will kind of follow. I feel like that s sort of been my growth p
attern. Y know, I used to try to draw exactly like Sailor Moon, and then I started
trying to tell stories about my experiences, and those characters kind of just
evolved.
Just for the traditional final question: what message would you like to give to
your readers?
I thought it was going to be, like, who would you have dinner with? [laughter] Wha
t message? Don t play video games? [laughter] Work hard instead. No, you should pl
ay video games.
***

8 Responses to A Conversation With Bryan Lee O Malley SPX 2008 RADIOMARU.com | A Con
versation With Bryan Lee O Malley SPX 2008 says:
June 27, 2010 at 9:28 pm
[...] Read it at Comics Comics. [...]
Reply
biLL says:
June 28, 2010 at 3:43 am
what great advice at the end! video games have way too serious a hold on my free
time, but now that O Malley has green lit video games, to blazes with school, its
trophy unlocking time!
Reply
mang says:
June 28, 2010 at 11:07 am
Everytime I look at his style I can t help but think of Powerpuff girls. Everyone
is talking about how this is a mix of american and manga style, how this is some
kind of revolution, it s new . (and the same with that king city guy) It just seems
like it s ripping on mainstream american cartoon takes on big eyed manga. For the re
cord Cartoon network was doing this in 1998.
Reply
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resource
s Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment says:
June 28, 2010 at 11:28 am
[...] Creators | Joe McCulloch transcribes a Q&A session with cartoonist Bryan L
ee O'Malley from the 2008 Small Press Expo. [Comics Comics] [...]
Reply
Frank Santoro says:
June 28, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for clueing us in Mang.
Reply
vollsticks says:
June 28, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I was really put off by the covers of those books but a friend more-or-less FORC
ED me into reading a couple of volumes .the cartooning wasn t what I expected at all
. His line s a lot less slick and livelier in the interiors. I think O Malley has i
ntegrated his influences with his own thing really smoothly those covers are still f
uckin atrocious, though!
Reply
joe mcculloch says:
June 28, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Actually, to clarify the record, Craig McCracken was working in the powerpuff st
yle since his student days at CalArts in 1992, where the characters were called
the Whoopass Girls. But there were NA comics pursuing an anime-manga style befor
e that; the big-eyed look would date back at least as far as Ben Dunn s early stuff
in the mid- 80s (just off the top of my head; there s probably some earlier preciden
t), while Frank Miller was working through Goseki Kojima s gekiga influence in RON
IN starting in 83.
Anyway, big eyed begets a lot of variations, even just sticking to superficialitie
s like, I don t think SCOTT PILGRIM and KING CITY look much alike at all. I don t eve
n think I d use that designation for Brandon Graham s stuff what s particular about the
works in any case is their themes, mechanics and format, not their usage of sur
face-level anime/manga signifiers. There s a long history of that in NA comics.
Reply
joe mcculloch says:
June 28, 2010 at 2:40 pm
(Of course, I m setting aside the stated RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER connection
for the sake of digression )
Reply