Music note: the chapter “As Long as the Road Lacks Perspective” is indeed a line from a Gordon Downie song, “Figment.” And the Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos is a joke about the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gilded Palace of Sin album (here’s a video for “Christine’s Tune”).
CHRISTINE: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World wasn’t just about an adventure, it was an adventure to read. I enjoyed the flashbacks, dream sequences, typeface/size changes and the incredible shrinking panels which end with Scott riding away on a bus shouting to Wallace, “I am rubber, you are glue!”
EVAN: I loved those panels, too!
CHRISTINE: Also, “Hope Larson dot com” sharing the cover of Now magazine with Lucas Lee was a delightful footnote.
MIKE: I’m with you, Douglas, on the total freedom that O’Malley exercises in volume 2. This book is 200 pages long, which gives him the freedom to write what were the two stand out scenes of the book for me. One is, of course, the vegetarian shepard’s pie. This is four pages of a cooking show just printed out on the page. I don’t even have anything to compare it to. It kind of reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk and the way he’ll drop some satirical TNT recipes or cleaning tips into his work.
GRAEME: Weirdly enough, the recipe is one of the few bits that doesn’t really work for me in the book. I like the idea of it, and love the asides that Ramona, Kim and Scott are sharing in the middle of it, but there’s something about the breaking of the fourth wall and “Hey, Kids!” of it that feels like it’s a leftover from the self-conscious feeling-its-way of the first book.
MIKE: The second standout was easily the library fight scene between Ramona and Knives. A fight scene that runs 19 pages not including setup pages in the library before the fight even starts. I can’t wait to see how this translates in the movie. I thought the pacing and choreography were great, even if the backgrounds got loose for most of it.
And I can’t even begin to talk about all the video game references in this volume. The “item” was mint. A mithril skateboard by itself is pretty clever, but when Scott misses out because he didn’t take skateboard proficiency I had to feel his pain. Now that every game released has RPG elements, most of us know the anxiety associated with going down the wrong skill tree. Hilarious.
CHRISTINE: The central story of the Scott Pilgrim series is about Scott defeating Ramona’s evil exes. Or is it? Though I’ve read the series a few times, I’m just now thinking that the story has far more to do with Scott’s ghosts of girlfriends past.
In Vol. 1, Scott didn’t have many skeletons in his closet–just a mention of an ex and a withering relationship with a high schooler. By the end of Vol. 2, Scott almost needs to move out of his sucky hole in the ground to make room for more skeletons. What makes Scott the main character (despite Ramona’s mug on the cover) and what makes his problems most problematic is that unlike Ramona’s exes, Scott’s exes don’t just disappear and leave coins behind, nor should they. Part of what shapes Scott—or any person, for that matter—is the people of his past and present. Without Lisa and Kim, Scott might have never been in a band. Without Envy, Scott would not freak out about the length of his hair. Without Kim (again), there would be one fewer person in the world putting Scott in his place. Et cetera.
The stats:
Men who complicate Ramona’s life (so far):
Scott (current boyfriend)
Gideon (ex-boyfriend, introduced, Vol. 1-2)
Matt Patel (ex-boyfriend, eliminated, Vol. 1)
Lucas Lee (ex-boyfriend, eliminated, Vol. 2)
Todd Ingram (ex-boyfriend introduced, Vol. 2)
Women who complicate Scott’s life (so far):
Ramona (current girlfriend)
Knives Chau (ex-girlfriend, always around)