If you can believe it, the first Scott Pilgrim book came out 18 years ago. Since then, the cult favorite comic by Bryan Lee O’Malley has been adapted into an even more cult classic movie. Over the years there have been many pieces of Scott Pilgrim merch. One of the most famed (and relevant to this news) is the long sold out Mondo Ramona figure. But today Nerdist is revealing something new. Bryan Lee O’Malley has teamed up with Justin Ishmael’s ISH in what he called “a really cool collaborative process” to release a new series of Scott Pilgrim figures.
The official release reveals more about the exciting new figures:
Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers jump out of the pages of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel and onto your shelf with new 6″ collectible figures from ISH!Designed by creator/artist Bryan Lee O’Malley himself, these figures feature points of articulation at the head, wrists, shoulders, elbows and waist and include iconic accessories like Scott’s Bass Guitar and Ramona’s Subspace Suitcase! Each figure comes in collectible packaging with ALL NEW ART by Bryan Lee O’Malley.
Bottleneck Gallery will also have site exclusive limited edition variants including 2 exclusive Ramona Flowers hair colors and Scott in his classic PLUMTREE t-shirt showing love for one of his favorite bands!
As well as exclusively announcing the release, Nerdist chatted with O’Malley about the figures, the fan favorite comics, and touched on the new Scott Pilgrim anime series at Netflix.
O’Malley met Justin Ishmael around 2013 or 2014 during Ishmael’s time as Creative Director and CEO at Mondo. Later, they collaborated on that aforementioned Ramona Flowers figure. Their relationship continued as Ishmael went out on his own and founded ISH. There the pair made some fun Snotgirl merch, inspired by O’Malley and Leslie Hung’s Image comic of the same name. “He’s just he’s got a really good head for merch,” O’Malley said.
In 2019, they began working on the figures we’re sharing today. “It’s just taken ages with, you know, the pandemic and the shipping crisis,” he explained. “They’re made in Hong Kong. It’s all very complicated. So it’s taken a few years to get to this point, but here we are!”
One of the biggest selling points of the new figures—aside from just how darn cute they are—is that O’Malley was heavily involved in the designs. The cartoonist sees it as a bit of a course correct from the Scott Pilgrim merchandise of the past. “When the movie came out, there were some figures and things that were released without really my involvement,” he shared. “So I feel like I just kind of have been on this path to kind of correct some of these things that I didn’t know better back then. I didn’t have an agent and things went on without my participation. And I wish I had been able to participate in everything, because it’s all just so interesting and fun to create stuff and put it out in the world.”
The figures themselves look uncannily like O’Malley’s art. But he sees them and his personal style as more evolved than when he first debuted Scott Pilgrim. “It’s been 18 years since the first book came out. So I do draw them a little differently than I used to. The figures kind of reflect an idealized snapshot of the characters somewhere in their artistic development. I think there’s something really friendly and inviting about them.”
O’Malley’s original Scott Pilgrim series was black and white, but in recent years his good friend Nathan Fairbairn colored the comics for the very first time. Those re-releases and Fairbairn’s brilliant choices brought a whole new texture to the beloved series. So it makes sense that O’Malley recruited Fairbairn to pick the colors for the figures. And his choices are perfect!
His next big Scott Pilgrim project is the recently announced Netflix anime series. O’Malley told us that it felt like he’d never truly left the world. While he couldn’t get into details, he did have this to say: “It’s been really fun to revisit. It has been 18 years, so nothing will ever be exactly the same as it was 18 years ago, I’ll just put it like that.”
The figures go on sale on Wednesday, June 22 at 12:00p.m. ET at www.bottleneckgallery.com. The regular figures will cost $35 and the variants will be $45.
You can check out more awesome images of the figures in our gallery below.
