Genre Character of the week: Scott Pilgrim

First off, I have to admit my biases - I'm Canadian, I enjoy reading manga, and references to video games and role playing games make me very happy. I actually only got into this comic series earlier this year, but it is fast becoming one of my favourites. The main reason for this is definitely the main character, and my genre character of the week, Scott Pilgrim.

Here's the basic run down of Scott, he's 24 (at the start of the series), lives in Toronto, Canada with (or you might say off of) his room-mate Wallace, is the basist for a band called Sex Bob-omb, and has just met the girl of his dreams. The only problem, Ramona (the girl in question), has seven ex-boyfriends, each of which want to kill Scott and will fight him one-on-one in a series of martial arts battles.

The things that blows me away most about this crazy series, is how real it feels. Scott begins the series by dating a girl he really isn't into when Ramona comes along and his break up scene with his current girlfriend is pretty painful. The idea of dating a girl whose past won't stay in her past is pretty easy to relate to for most people, and Scott's past does not exactly stay where it should either.

What I admire most about Scott is that he's trying. I like a guy who is putting effort into himself and is attempting to be better. Scott is a definite slacker, though, so it is a work in progress, luckily he does have a great number of friends (pictured right) who are there to help him out.

A film version of the comic series is due out in August of 2010, so if you haven't checked out this great series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, give it a look, it is pretty awesome.