For a certain subset of comic book fans, Scott Pilgrim was the coming-of-age story. Peppered with flip humor, naturalistic dialogue, manga-influenced art, and old school videogame references, Bryan Lee O'Malley's tale about a slacker hero learning to finally face reality was the perfect confluence of old and new for the children of the '80s, particularly as they found themselves edging closer to 30 than 20.

Now, more than 10 years after the first Scott Pilgrim book came out, O'Malley is back with Seconds, his first new graphic novel since the series ended. But instead of returning to familiar ground, Seconds—which goes on sale tomorrow—takes a step forward and delves into the question that looms unasked at the end of every story about growing up: If adulthood is the endpoint of your adventure, what happens after the adventure is over?

"You come of age and then you're like, wait a minute," says O'Malley. "That's not the end of my story. What do I do now? Seconds is very much about reaching out for the next thing after you've figured out the first thing."

It's a shift mirrored in the earliest moments of Seconds, where we meet our protagonist,a 29-year-old woman named Katie. "Katie was a chef," reads an introductory panel as a smiling, Katie stands in front of a restaurant with a crowd of hip young pals who could double as Scott Pilgrim extras. "Once upon a time, she'd started a restaurant with some friends," One panel later, we jump four years into the future and see that Katie hasn't moved from her spot in front of the restaurant, but everyone around her has disappeared. She stands in the snow, grimacing and suddenly alone.

"In my mind, I'm still that young 23- or 24-year-old starting out." says O'Malley. "I spent the last decade toiling on pretty much one thing, and it suspends you in time to a degree."

It wasn't until he stepped back from Scott Pilgrim that he "reengaged with the world," and realized how it looked from the other side of 30. "I started hanging out with younger people at SVA [the School of Visual Arts] who were like 21. It was kind of a shock to suddenly realize that... I'm an old person to them, I'm established. It made me see myself differently."

The four-year gulf feels wide for Katie, too, as she contemplates the "infinitely younger" staffers that have replaced friends (or as she calls them, the "stylish, sullen babies"). She's not unhappy with her life—she's proud of her work as an executive chef at Seconds—but itching to open a restaurant all her own. And like a lot of almost 30-somethings, she's accumulated her share of regrets: the relationship she screwed up, the questionable location she chose for her new restaurant, and the weird fling with a coworker that causes a terrible accident.

That's when she meets Lis, a house spirit who bears a surprising but welcome resemblance to Helena from Orphan Black. She offers Katie a magic mushroom, a notepad, and the chance to change her life in four easy steps: "1. Write your mistake. 2. Ingest one mushroom. 3. Go to sleep. 4. Wake anew."

Courtesy of Ballantine Books

O'Malley's foodie inclinations have made their way into his work before—one scene in Scott Pilgrim Vs, the World featured a very detailed recipe for Vegan Shepherd's Pie—but Seconds also draws on his experiences actually working in the food industry. Although Scott Pilgrim would later get adapted into a cult-favorite film by Edgar Wright, it was far from an overnight success; shortly after the book came out in 2004, O'Malley took a job at a Toronto restaurant called Kalendar just to make ends meet.

"It was such a weird world," says O'Malley, "this whole microcosm with a hierarchy all its own." Much like in Seconds, where we see executive chef Katie occasionally strolling between tables to receive compliments like a pseudo-celebrity, the owner of the restaurant where he worked would show up intermittently "and be revered like a king or queen."

Although O'Malley initially came up with the concept for Seconds around that time, he didn't start working on the project until six years later, when Scott Pilgrim was finally off his plate. The delay was partly a matter of scheduling, but also of feeling ready to write Katie as the character in his head.

"She's a very take-charge kind of person, but I'm a fade-to-the-background kind of guy... She was [supposed to be] older than I was at the time, and I had to get to a point where I experienced some of that responsibility before I could really tell the story," says O'Malley. "That's how ideas work for me. If I have an idea, I put it in a dark corner of my mind until I'm ready for it. I let it collect dust until it becomes something bigger... kind of like a katamari."

Courtesy of Ballantine Books

Surprisingly, a conversation with O'Malley contains more pop culture references than the actual book. Although fans may notice a few in-jokes, they're far and few between compared to the referential excesses of Scott Pilgrim. "I tried to pull back from that," he says. "I wanted to create something inspired by the things I love, without so many direct homages."

The inspiration for the character Lis, for example, comes in part from the Sierra Adventure game Quest for Glory IV. Set in a faux-Slavic country called Mordavia, the games features a side quest where you meet a character called a Domovoi—or house spirit—who guards an inn and can grant your hero boons. "It all still goes back to video games for me," laughs O'Malley.

The gaming influence shines through most clearly in Katie's desire for infinite do-overs, as though she were a videogame character. At first, most of the mistakes—and changes—she makes are fairly prosaic, like retroactively deciding to go bed early instead of watching Netflix all night, eating salad instead of a burger, and reversing a night of drinking so she can wake up without a hangover.

"On some level, you regret almost everything you do. Or I do! And that's really what got the book going: the low-level regret and second-guessing that goes on every day in the back of your mind," says O'Malley. "Even though everything is going pretty well, you're thinking, what could be better? What could I change?"

Courtesy of Ballantine Books

Of course, like most narrative devices that involve toying with the universe, it comes with a price. When Katie starts to make bigger changes to one part of her life, she finds it means losing control somewhere else. And her constant "revisions" also start to generate a creeping, peripheral sense of rot, like the dirty dishes in the sink you don't want to acknowledge.

"It's like this thing growing in the basement that you don't want to look at. It can be anything in your life—something that you're not dealing with that gets out of control while you're trying to control something else," says O'Malley.

If coming-of-age stories tend to be about stepping up and finally making choices as an adult, then Seconds is about learning to live with those choices. Katie's desire to undo her mistakes is driven not by laziness but by perfectionism, the fear of failure and and desire for control that often haunts—and occasionally destroys—ambitious go-getters.

"The whole thing is a pretty basic moral fable: Don't do this," says O'Malley. "Doubt yourself all you want, but you have to make choices in life and live with them. We all want to have our cake and eat it too. But you have to let go of something."