Seconds

Story: Bryan Lee O'Malley
Art: Bryan Lee O'Malley & Jason Fischer 
Publisher: Ballantine Books

What’s it about?
Seconds is the highly anticipated first new comic from Scott Pilgrim creator, Bryan Lee O'Malley. Following a pretty impressive success (for such a small indie title), which even resulted in a much bigger motion picture feature, O'Malley went back to his roots. By releasing a new self-contained graphic novel!

Seconds tales the story of this woman, Katie Clay, who is a young talented chef and the proud owner of a local restaurant, called Seconds. Lately, Katie has been struggling with both her personal and professional life. Things have been quite stressful for our heroine, she is in the transition of opening her own new restaurant, leave the old place behind and try to finally move out of that restaurant's second floor and get a proper apartment to live in. And she's been guessing her step of the way. Is that new place a good or bad decision, should she settle for that building or a better locations, and has she been making good decisions all her life and how did she lose the good thing she had going on with her ex-boyfriend?

But one day she finally get the chance to redo it all!

She finds this mysterious white-haired magical girl she calls Lis. She's the resident house spirit at Seconds.

A young waitress named Hazel was severely burnt by Katie's fault. Lis offers Katie the one-time only use of a magic notebook which grants her the ability fix past mistakes. The rules? She has to write down the mistake she wishes to "correct". Ingest a magic mushroom. Go to sleep. And the next day when she will wake up, things will have changed anew.

But soon Katie finds a loophole. She decides to grab a few more of those mushrooms and starts abusing this newfound power. Trying to fix everything, her past relationship, the future new restaurant. Everything! Until it's perfect!

And it only makes things worse and worse the more she tries changing things...

Seconds is a fun entertaining little fable featuring some gorgeous pages with help of Bryan Lee O'Malley's new team of assistants.

Lost at Sea

Art & Story: Bryan Lee O'Malley
Publisher: Oni Press

What’s it about?
Lost at Sea is a black & white graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley. It was first published in 2003 through Oni Press.

It's a "coming of age" story about this girl named Raleigh. She is on a road trip with some fellow classmates from school she doesn't know much. She tagged along as they were driving across America, from California back home to Vancouver, Canada.

Raleigh has always by a loner, distanced from other kids at school. She doesn't talk much and keeps to herself since her childhood friend moved away.

She was visiting her father and tried to go back to this long-distance boyfriend she had a relationship with. Since she missed her train back home, she kinda took this occasion to join a road trip when these guys Stephanie, Dave and Ian were also on their way back.

She spends the story thinking back and forth about her relationship (this guy she met on the internet!), who she was, who she is now and who she wants to be.

Oh. And also, she believes cats are after her. She thinks her mom sold her sold her soul as a kid, for success and her career. Yep.

The story does get kinda surreal at times. She sees cats everywhere. She believes a cat stole her soul. She forces everyone to wake up in the middle of the night to attempt to catch the cat back, as she slowly opens up to the others.

It's a comic about a girl just as much looking for a point of anchor in her life had she been actually "lost at sea".

A fun quirky tale about four college age-kids driving back home around holidays.

Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life

written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley
publisher: Fourth Estate

“My name is Matthew Patel… and I’m Ramona’s first evil ex-boyfriend!”

What’s It About?
Scott Pilgrim is twenty-three years old, between jobs, in a band, sharing a single-room (and single bed) apartment with his friend Wallace and trying to find his way in the world after university. The Scott Pilgrim series tells the story not only of his trials and tribulations in his music but also the story of his relationship with “American ninja delivery girl” Ramona Flowers.

Every relationship has baggage, though, and Scott has to fight and defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to keep dating her.