An idea emphatically presented at the conclusion and throughout Bryan Lee O’Malley’s best known work Scott Pilgrim is the notion of having the courage to try again. His work as of late has also been clear in shifting the focus of the coming of age Bildungsroman style narrative to confused twenty-somethings rather than teenagers or highschoolers. This seems largely indicative of a time where it seems thirty is the new twenty, and O’Malley’s characters grapple with self actualization and a redefined idea of “adulthood” as a thing that, palpably, never arrives as prophesied. Seconds continues this ideology and stresses the necessity of a certain kind of courage, a courage manifested as a kind of heroism of mundanity where just living one’s life and attempting to do the thing you’ve always wanted to do, or be with the person you want to be with, seems like an insurmountable task. The execution of this type of heavily archetypal story depends on just that: the execution. Despite the humorous narration and dialogue, the beautifully paneled and realized art, and the stellar coloring of Nathan Fairbairn, O’Malley’s tale of restaurant realization can’t help but feel ever so slightly stale in its predictability. However, as he did with Scott Pilgrim, the author manages to articulate small, personal, intimate moments with larger than life fantastical concepts, and in a more sombre fashion this time. In Seconds O’Malley’s art, paneling, stylistic and storytelling choices convey adulthood as an act of heroism or courage in and of itself, where the protagonist plays the hero, the villain, and the princess to be saved all at once.
To be more specific, the story follows Katie: a twenty nine year old chef who started a restaurant years ago called “Seconds.” When the reader is introduced to her, Seconds is described as having become her “purgatory” and though the new and young employees call her “boss” she’s lost most of her stake in the business. She seeks to open a new restaurant in the location she’s always dreamed about and be a joint owner, but the process is moving exasperatingly slow and she’s becoming discouraged and downtrodden. One night, Katie has what she thinks is a dream and is presented with a magical mushroom by a strange little girl that appears atop her dresser. Turns out this mushroom and others like it allow one to undo a mistake, provided it happened on the premises of Seconds. Revisions occur as Katie tries to perfect her life, but a darkness inevitably forms and the attempt to fix things only makes them fall apart that much faster, and Katie needs to learn to accept her mistakes.
As might be gleaned from this synopsis, events get messy in Seconds. It is significant that all this action, all these mistakes made in the effort to fix other mistakes, are contained within some beautifully organized, minimalist paneling. In Seconds the reader has the pleasure of experiencing the bold art of O’Malley laid out in a satisfyingly symmetrical fashion, and yet despite this seemingly standardized format there are several clever uses of the medium. There are many instances where the third person narration is not only off-set from the main grouping of panels, but is also not contained within a thick black frame and instead floats out in the white space, emphasizing the mental aspect of the narration as opposed to the physical action within the panels (O’Malley 9,11). Often an entire page is dominated by one panel, such as when Katie checks in on the patrons of Seconds, moving from table to table (O’Malley 23). Despite the lack of division, the structuring of the image itself leads the reader naturally from left to right to each table, culminating in Katie’s arrival at the booth with her ex-boyfriend, Max. This kind of organization implies just that: that Katie’s experience of her life is organized and straightforward. However, the reader is presented with several obvious indications that this isn’t the case: when Katie and Andrew’s “workplace canoodling” (O’Malley 47) ends in an employee getting hurt, they sit dejectedly by a wall of picture frames (O’Malley 40). Within some of the frames there is narration, but the one’s closest to the heads of Katie and Andrew serve as thought bubbles, showing the people they most desire. Moments like this and the positioning of (and response to) other narration throughout the text, along with the neatly paneled but chaotic story creates a disjunction between expectation and reality, between Katie’s thoughts and her actual life. Katie has a desire for things to be contained and straightforward, and it’s true that in some ways the basic plot adheres to this, but Katie’s experience does not. All in all, this organization of Seconds creates a tale that is compact and a joy to look at, creating the sense of an intimate story, while also displaying a contrast between the desire for a straightforward adulthood and the reality of the experience.
An example of some of the creative paneling in the novel.
This is complimented by the vibrant colors, realized here by Nathan Fairbairn. The novel is hugely dominated by reds and blues, warms and cools, creating a relationship of emotional extremes through which Katie wanders in her journey to find stability. This contrast is sometimes laid out on pairs of pages, such as pages eight and nine, where one page is dominated by an intense red which helps to emphasize the serious and shocking nature of the transpiring events while the page that follows is awash with a deep blue to imply not only a change in lighting but a delicate confusion as well. There are moments like this throughout the work, and often it is as simple as a panel overcome with red for anger, and another coated in blue for sadness. There are some interesting switch-ups, one being related to the color pink, which holds a unique position within the novel. Page 227 depicts an end of the world-like scenario and the art is both beautiful and haunting, the dominant color being a rosy pink. In this and other moments the primary color of the novel, red, fades to this more sombre shade implying a fading of emotion, uncertainty, and death. Pink appears again in a snowstorm where it is said that the wor
ld is “being erased” (pg275). We not only have the continued emphasis of this color, but also the flurries of snow work well to imply the white nothingness at the edges of the panels encroaching into the action of the story. The coloring therefore provides an almost child-like compass of emotional extremes to guide the reader, and the fading of this kind of coloration implies the effort recquired of Katie to maintain a certain amount of feeling as she matures.
Two key things the novel suggests are important in maintaining this sense of self are friendship and creativity. Hazel has this to say about her and Katie’s “accidental friendship”: “it’s cool… it’s like I created something. Before you started talking to me, I felt like [the house spirit] was my only friend. And she wasn’t even real. Now she’s real, and you’re real, and…” (O’Malley 139). In the end, despite all the reality manipulation and mushrooms eaten, this relationship that Katie and Hazel created remains even though it happened in a completely other time and other place (O’Malley 312). This is by far one of the most sentimental moments of the novel, and also one of the best. Despite knowing how this was all going to end, despite the similarities between Second’s narrative and other “mess it up then undo it” time travel-like stories, the friendship and character growth of Katie and Hazel still manages to be both accidental and unexpected. It is the freshest element of the story, and its organic nature in many ways carries the book. Earlier in the text Hazel talks about how she understands that her conception of the house spirit is metaphorical, but stresses that “stories are about something” (pg67). It is fitting then that this kind of friendship, as well as the emphasis on creative acts, such as drawing and cooking, add definition not only to the character’s experience but to the reader’s as well. It is these things that inevitably define Katie’s reality more than any of her other superficial changes she makes through the use of her magic mushrooms, and her passion for cooking and her friendship with Hazel are shown to be some of the main things that help her to fight off an ever growing darkness in her life.
Seconds draws heavily on certain vaguely Jungian concepts to tell its archetypal story of heroism, mainly the idea of the confrontation of a repressed shadow self. Just as Scott Pilgrim had to do in his own series, Katie must inevitably confront and face her shadow self, a confrontation once again made literal by O’Malley. Earlier it is made clear that “the saddest thing was that she couldn’t have a moment away from herself” (O’Malley 77). In O’Malley’s work it is always one’s self that is the greatest enemy to be conquered, or, rather, accepted and made peace with. It’s not an uncommon idea, but it feels more obvious in O’Malley’s work, his writing and art seeming to burst at the edges with the concept. This isn’t the only allusion that the text makes. There are references to more classical ideas (“purgatory”), and there’s even a sneaky articulation that the reality hopping that Katie does has a Buddhist quality to it (O’Malley 99). These projections serve to illustrate O’Malley’s continued emphasis on large scale and archetypal conceptions of every day mundane things and struggles. The use of buildings is also effective, as the outsides and insides of these dwellings are compared to the outer and internal elements of people, as the reader is presented with the outer and internal elements of Katie’s personality through the story and its narration. Oftentimes she will directly defy her own thoughts (O’Malley 236) bringing up this schism of expectation once again. In Katie’s own words: “Adult life is terrible, Hazel. Never grow up. Everything’s complicated, and there are too many rules, and you can only change things that-“(O’Malley 144) at this point she cuts herself off. This is one of the moments where the type of narrative O’Malley has been trying to tell becomes abundantly clear: a narrative of heroic adulthood that culminates in a literal acceptance of the shadowy presence throughout the novel. Katie, in an act of no small significance, dons the black fur coat that the house spirit has been wearing this whole time and becomes friends with her until now repressed self in a rather adorable moment (O’Malley 301). Following this, Katie becomes a more confident person who is accepting of her own mistakes, completing an arc that, despite its over-predictability and convenience, is punctuated well. However, O’Malley is far more successful at capturing an idea of mundane everyday heroics than he is at creating an engaging sci-fi or fantasy premise here. Seconds brings home the conception that just being yourself is its own quest to be conquered.
In any case, Seconds is certainly a fun and colorful read similar to O’Malley’s past work Scott Pilgrim. However, there’s clearly a bit more effort to make the final product “literary” here: the tone is more sombre, and the videogame and comic book references have been traded out for references to postmodernist works, Buddhism, and Dante. The end result is mostly successful, but it is a predictable journey that can drag in plot heavy moments and sometimes one is left wishing that O’Malley would dial back his wit a little bit in order to show more effectively how a character is feeling rather than simply saying “I need to become a better person and etc” (O’Malley 312). Luckily, there’s a great amount of enjoyment to be found in other aspects of the tale. It’s charming to see how form and content come together to create a heroic tale that is really just about a girl trying to get her shit together. The paneling creates a separation between expectation and reality, while the coloring also enhances this separation with a potent emotional element, and the small and personal story of unexpected friendship and doing what one loves drives home the sappy but mostly heartwarming message that O’Malley tries to communicate: that saving oneself is just as heroic and in many ways important as any act in this confusing world.
Works Cited:
O’Malley, Bryan Lee, Jason Fischer, Dustin Harbin, and Nathan Fairbairn.Seconds. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2014. Print.
Image Citations:
Errant Critic 
