So my boss and I are walking to court one morning

and he remarks to me that his eldest son is "independently wealthy" (his actual words), lives in L.A. and writes comic books. This strikes me as interesting, but alarm bells don't begin to sound until he tells me that one of his son's books has been optioned by Hollywood. And as soon as he tells me this it dawns on me that he shares a surname with the creator of this. My boss' son is the author of the graphic novel Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and its sequels.

When my jaw dropped (it really did), my boss was as surprised as I was. Scott Pilgrim is not yet particularly well known, and I don't seldom read graphic novels. I just happened to have read this particular series because it takes place in my old neighbourhood in Toronto (Bathurst and St. Clair) and features many local landmarks (like the Wychwood Library, where homeless people sleep in the carrels and ruin my studying!, or Lee's Palace, pictured above); because it's trendy and clever, informed in equal measure by Japanese anime and North American indie rock; and because Michael Cera is supposedly slated to star as Scott Pilgrim and I wanted to stay ahead of the hipster curve. (This is also why I want to read Watchmen before next year. The line between loser and hipster has never been as narrow as it is at the dawn of the twenty-first century.)

This has little to do with me and still less to do with my job. It did relate to the law in one small respect, however: after confirming that the artist was flesh and blood and in fact related to someone I knew, I felt bad about downloading his work off the internet.

Who knew: it turns out I'm opposed to illegal file-sharing when the victim has a face.

I'll probably go out and buy the Scott Pilgrim books for real. Soon. And Watchmen while I'm at it, in case Alan Moore turns out to be my cousin's babysitter or something.

Don't tell my boss I ripped off his son.