A Review of "Seconds" (an Original Graphic Novel)

written and illustrated by Bryan Lee O' Malley

Whatever media they are presented in, original works of fiction, especially those done well, are a real treat.

Canadian comic book creator Bryan Lee O'Malley, best known for the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels, has come up with a story that, in today's superhero-obsessed culture, feels like a breath of fresh air, even if, like the story's main character it is a somewhat flawed work.

Katie is a twenty-nine-year-old chef for the popular restaurant Seconds, but for all of her success as an upwardly mobile young professional, she has a lot of unfulfilled dreams and frustrations. She can't seem to get her own restaurant off the ground, and her love life, apart from the occasional tryst with her sous chef Andrew, is dead on arrival, which she particularly regrets considering her failed relationship with the hunky Max.

Things change, however, when she discovers something strange in the room in which she lives in the uppermost floor of the restaurant: a mushroom, and a journal with instructions. Katie learns that this is a magic mushroom, that will, together with the journal enable her to rewrite a portion of her life that she chooses by literally writing it down in the journal, as well as her desired outcome.

Katie thinks nothing of this strange little ritual until she has what seems like the worst day of her life as Hazel one of the new waitresses at Seconds gets scalded with hot oil and a chain of events follows that takes things from bad to worse in short order. At this point, Katie wishes nothing more than for the day to be completely erased, and so she tries the mushroom and journal, with surprising effects.

Things get particularly scary when Katie finds a whole stash of mushrooms. She has a lot of mistakes she'd like to erase, but no idea of how her actions could affect the world around her.

As original concepts go, Seconds is pretty good, and Lee O' Malley is no slouch in the execution either. Watching Kate's life take all kinds of twists and turns as she rewrites mistake after mistake is incredibly engaging, and to my mind, Lee O'Malley tapped into something quite primal here. After all, absolutely everyone makes mistakes, and of those who make mistakes, many, if not most people would like nothing better than to erase those mistakes. In that Katie is the avatar for probably most people who would ever pick up this book, and Lee O'Malley plays this up to the hilt. It is utterly spellbinding to see Katie pile "rewrite" upon "rewrite," in part because I was curious as to how it would all pay off in the end.


The problem is that, as the story progresses, Lee O'Malley seems to lose a handle on where he wants the story to go, and wraps it up rather hurriedly, giving the entire affair an ending that feels somewhat perfunctory and, dare I say it,cliche. The problem is that there is an incongruousness between what Lee O'Malley attempts by opening this Pandora's box and the manner in which he resolves the entire story. It feels like a wasted opportunity when it's all done. Also, as far as the art is concerned, I am really not fond of manga knockoffs, and Lee O'Malley, whose designs for Scott Pilgrim and his world were actually pretty original and memorable, disappoints here with characters that look that they were picked out of random manga, though I will give him points for making his lead short and dumpy.

What irks me about this book is how much promise it starts out with, only to cop out in the last act. Lee O'Malley should have taken a little more time to think of where the story could have gone, because it could have been such a wonderful fable about actions and their consequences, and how as people, sometimes the best thing we can do is live with our mistakes, but Lee O'Malley takes a pretty abrupt narrative shortcut and gives us something a lot more conventional. Katie is a thoroughly selfish character, like most people are, and yet it struck me that she got through this entire book without really learning anything.

Who knows? Maybe he's being subversive with his unwieldy combination of heady premise and hackneyed ending.

This book could have been a lot better than it was.






6.6/10