Welcome back to the Scott Pilgrim Book Club. We’re psyching ourselves up for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (due out July 20) and the Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World movie (due out August 13) by discussing each volume of the series over the course of six weeks. This week, Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan, Mike Williams, Evan Narcisse and Christine Lim are talking about volume 2, coincidentally also called Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World; feel free to chime in below in the comments. (And read our comments on volume 1 here!)
DOUGLAS: This, it seems to me, is the volume where O’Malley really hits his stride, and realizes that he can get away with basically anything he feels like doing. The title character is nowhere to be seen on the cover? No problem. Start the volume with a 30-page flashback? Of course. Stop the plot for a few pages to explain a recipe? Sure thing. Shift to Kim Pine’s POV for an extended sequence before Scott walks in and takes over again? Naturally. And so on.
EVAN: The shift to Kim sets her up, to me, as the most enigmatic and fascinating of the main cast members. She seems oddly wistful about her past with Scott. Is she still in love with him a little? There seems to be a lot unspoken there, and I can kinda understand why Scott would be nervous that Ramona and Kim might be getting buddy-buddy.
DOUGLAS: Kim clearly loves Scott (plus how unnerving is it that in the opening scene they start making out while she’s still chained up?)–which is why she gives him so much grief when he’s a jerk. She knows that there’s no way they’d work as a couple unless he grows the hell up. So guess what he’s doing in this series?
CHRISTINE: Who is telling the story of 16-year-old Scott Pilgrim? Is Scott flashbacking himself? If so, I would understand why Scott would be making out with Kim–who is wearing a conveniently wet, white shirt–before unchaining her. If Scott is recalling events, I could see Kim replying to his request to date, “Yes, Scott! Oh, yes!!” Otherwise, I think that response is so not Kim–not even something that a less-hardened teenage Kim could utter.
GRAEME: Isn’t the flashback told by the omniscient narrator? Now I feel like I need to go back again to check.
And it doesn’t really bother me that Scott and Kim make out when she’s still chained up, because it felt very pulpy. They’re so overcome with emotion that they make out as soon as possible and before danger has passed, instead of having any bondage overtones or whatever.
DOUGLAS: This is also the first volume that really feels like it’s set in Toronto–to the point where when I went to Toronto last year I walked into the Reference Library (where Knives and Ramona’s fight scene is set) and it was instantly familiar. (The up-side to this book being drawn very quickly, as I get the sense it was: really spectacular kinetic energy. The down-side: a bunch of the background figures in that scene are two-second doodles, and it shows.) And the Second Cup is a real place, too, even though every other comic book that’s ever needed a coffee-shop location has made one up.
God, Scott is a jerk. Breaking up with a 17-year-old right when she tells you she’s in love with you? Kim’s reaction in the next scene was my second-biggest laugh of the book. Actually, I love the whole Scott-and-Kim dynamic–right in the middle of the recipe scene, Scott brushes away their old relationship with “that’s all ancient history, so don’t worry about it, Rammy.” But dealing with her ancient relationship history is exactly what he’s spending the entire series struggling to do. And then Ramona gets to dismiss the idea that she’s still secretly dating Gideon as “crazy talk” when Scott makes what I suspect is a prescient joke. (Lucas Lee ramps up the past-relationship threat level a little, too, from “guy Ramona kissed once” to “guy Ramona dated briefly who’s made something of himself.”)
GRAEME: Bear in mind that Knives really isn’t ancient history – not only does she fight Ramona later this volume, but she stays in the series after that. Scott’s history refuses to go away even more than Ramona’s does. Envy re-appears at the end of the book, Kim never left, and even Lisa Miller reappears later in the series. Is the series really all about how unresolved history can bite us in the ass?
EVAN: You know, Douglas, I feel you on Scott being a jerk, but the sequence where he talks to his parents give a little insight as to his formative influences. You can tell he was probably coddled and grew up very safe, to the point where he doesn’t always know the repercussions of his actions. This is no excuse, mind you, since part of growing up is, in fact, learning those repercussions and how to deal with them. It just seemed to me that Scott may be grew up in a bit of a bubble and has a bit of inherited naivete to overcome. As always, I could be reading too much into this…
DOUGLAS: Biggest laugh: “What does ‘not girl-friendly’ mean?” “It means it’s a sucky little hole in the ground, Scott.” This is a laugh of painful self-recognition, by the way.
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)
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.”