Kim Pine (ex-girlfriend, current drummer)
Envy Adams (ex-girlfriend, back in town)
Lisa (had a crush on Scott in high school, maybe we’ll see her again)
After Scott defeats all of Ramona’s evil exes–c’mon, this is bound to happen–what will become of Ramona? Without baggage, she’ll only be a woman, and there’s no such thing as a woman without baggage. Part of me fears Ramona will grow thinner as a character until she is only an empty shell. She’ll have Scott, his friends and amazon.ca. Is that enough? Of course, my fears are exaggerated—O’Malley wouldn’t let his American ninja delivery girl devolve into a lifeless sack. And I guess Ramona will still have baggage—it’ll just be less violent.
GRAEME: But isn’t the importance of other people in Scott’s past as much about him being an unaware slacker as it is about him being trapped by his past–although the scene here, where Envy calls and the art literally starts to close in on Scott, with bigger page borders and smaller panels, is wonderful and a very literal trapping of Scott. The Scott of (and I hate that I’m going to use this term, sorry, everyone) the first act is… well, kind of a loser. Douglas is right; he IS a jerk, and has the jerkish ability to be entirely self-important and unaware at the same time. He has no idea what effect his actions have on other people (Positively or negatively; it’s not just that he doesn’t realize he’s breaking Knives’ heart when he breaks up with her, it’s also that he doesn’t really realize that Lisa was in love with him back in high school). Scott in Vol. 1 feels much more of a cypher; what I love about this book is that you start to get to know who Scott is, and in doing so, realize how much of a dick he is, just as he’s doing the same thing.
Also in the Douglas Is Right column: This is, craftwise, the book where O’Malley seems to get everything right and figure out what he’s doing. Visually, it seems like a massive leap ahead from the first book, more confident even when rushed, and the tone seems more consistent in terms of writing, as well. It’s full of seeming digressions that are really laying clues for what’s to come, whether it’s Kim’s dream (and here is where I have to state that Kim is easily my favorite character in Scott Pilgrim, and I’m semi-convinced the most important one that isn’t Scott himself), Ramona’s lying about her relationship with Lucas Lee, Lisa Miller appearing, the two-holed moon, and all the Envy Adams stuff. It’s as if O’Malley’s success with the first book helped him power up for everything that’s to come.
Also also: Why does Bryan have something against people with the surname “Lee”? The nemesis in the flashback is called Gordon Lee and the evil ex is Lucas Lee. Hmm.
Also also also: Is it just me, or does Gordon Lee look a bit like what little we’ve seen of Gideon?
EVAN: Gordon Lee TOTALLY looks like Gideon.
To me, one of the great triumphs of Scott Pilgrim as a concept is how it maps the tropes of adventure fiction, genre entertainment and/or video games onto life’s big coming-of-age moments. It’s not entirely new, but O’Malley does it in a skillful way that resonates. Going back into Vol. 2 and that 30-page flashback, you get a “adolescence as adventure” vibe. There’s all these factions, and a new player’s not sure where to align himself until he finds something to be part of. It keeps up as the book moves along, too. Breaking up with Knives spawns an arch-enemy. “I’ll tell you who I am!! My name is Knives Chau and I’m a Scottaholic!!” A phone call from an ex is Kryptonite: “She called? What, just to destroy your soul??”
The little infographic callouts also work thematically, too. They’re a callback to the statistical obsessions from nerdy pursuits like D&D, Marvel Universe handbooks and Street Fighter-style fighting video games. But that one instance with Ramona–“American Ninja Delivery Girl, Age: Unknown, Everything Unknown, Fun Fact: Unknown”–highlights the crazy conundrum of a new relationship. It’s like “wait, what do I really know about this person, except that they’re hot and occasionally appear in my dreams?” OK, maybe that last part doesn’t happen in real life.
DOUGLAS: Yeah: at this point we still don’t really know anything in particular about Ramona, other than that she’s acting as Scott’s dream-girl–although of course Scott is still too focused on his own experience to ask her anything that might fill out that “unknown”–and that she’s not being forthcoming about some pretty important information. Kim, on the other hand, has actual interiority. “Maybe I was a happy kid,” she snarks, and we know from the flashbacks that she wasn’t exactly, but she sure seemed a little bit happier, right?
EVAN: My favorite bits from this volume are the two fights. I kinda liked Lucas Lee and was sad to see him discorporate into a bunch of coins. He was approachable for an evil ex-boyfriend. And the fight between Knives and Ramona was great because, again, the bitchy current-girlfiend-vs.-ex-girlfriend banter really works in a fighting-game taunt kind of way.
DOUGLAS: The Knives/Ramona fight has my favorite video game joke so far, which I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t had it pointed out to me. Apparently there’s an exchange in “The Secret of Monkey Island”: “You fight like a dairy farmer!” “How appropriate. You fight like a cow.” Here, that becomes Ramona’s comeback to Knives gloating that she’s grazed her. (And a continuation of their you-are-so-fat insult game. Fantastic.)
One other thing I love in this volume: how quickly O’Malley can establish characters. Joseph is in, what, three or four panels? And he’s already right there in our heads. Maybe even better: “I don’t know this girl.”