SECONDS

1) Write Your Mistake

2) Ingest One Mushroom

3) Go To Sleep

4) Wake Anew

Thus begins "Seconds," Bryan Lee O'Malley's first graphic novel work since  "Scott Pilgrim". It's more confident and mature, yet still as in engaging. Still contains all of O’Malley favorite topics - existential angst, hope, fantasy and growing up. Seconds is all about learning how to be okay with your own decisions.

This time round our hero is more mature and with it  than Scott. Katie is the former head chef at Seconds, a restaurant that she has turned into the best in her town. Everything about the restaurant is perfect. Except that it isn't hers, leaving her feeling unfulfilled. While biding her time as her new restaurant opens up across town she secretly canoodles with the current head chef, lords over her current restaurant like she’s still the boss. Even though she currently isn't any longer. Katie’s  wandering causes an accident in the kitchen and injures a server. After a dream,  she uncovers a secret panel in her bedroom dresser that offers her a chance to correct that mistake. Of course Katies wonder if she is crazy, once she realizes that it work’s, she quickly starts to take advantage of this cosmic power. If you’ve learnt anything from books or movies that use this causality and effects device, you’ll know it doesn't stay good for long. Eventually Katies life begins to  fall apart in front of her.

O'Malley's script is much more balanced that Scott Pilgrim.Still has that signature O’Malley style would expect from him. Except there is much less videogames references and fantasy elements. Less you count Katie’s hair which looks like Knuckles from sonic the hedgehog. Seconds is more like a modern folk tales for late 20’s adults. Like how Katie  constantly engages with the omniscient narrative. This helped to balance out the comedy and the drama of the story. Definitely feels like a natural next step for the author, allowing him to explore the themes of growing up more than in Scott Pilgrim. Having that revision sequence helps to reinforce the themes of the book. As well as allowing the fantastical elements to come life.

Only downside is that there is much more limited background characters. The one’s there  all feel honest - each one has good and bad qualities that help and hinder them at every turn and reveal themselves in new ways each time Katie warps the world around them. But there’s no Wallace Wells to give you a backhanded comment of inspiration.  

Seconds is a wonder to behold. O'Malley work is some much more confident. His character have more life I page then some people I’ve meet. There  designs are simple and detailed at the same time, and the fashion and clothing choices for each character are totally on point.

When the action kicks, it's clear and well choreographed. The use of negative space and blank or disappearing panels on pages add to the flow of the tale. Also much more detailed than Scott Pilgrim. The backgrounds reveal a much larger world, they’re several pages within the story that I immediately wanted to hang on my wall.  O’Malley continues to find new and clever ways to muck with the existing ideas of how a story is told within the comics medium. Also in magnificent COLOUR !!!

Seconds is a much more mature in every way. From its imagery and storytelling. Seconds blew me away. I couldn't stop reading it -- once the hooks were in, it just absorbed me into it. The brilliance of it, at least to me, is just how it handles what it’s like to finally accept adulthood. 

4 out of 5  existential waffles of hope.