MIKE: The Honest Ed’s scene and even the final Pilgrim/Vegan showdown near the end of the volume were a letdown for me. For the second book in a row, Ramona gets the best fight sequence. First it was her library brawl with Knives in vol. 2, and now it’s her face-off with Envy in vol. 3. (Which she technically loses, by the way.) I can’t wait to see Ramona fight in the movie. She’s really getting the best choreography right now.
Lev, I hear you about Scott and Ramona. Scott is a little too cavalier with just how infatuated with Envy he was/is. When he tells Ramona that thoughts of Envy are turning him on it might be the worst pillow talk ever uttered. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Scott’s puppy love will expire and Ramona’s past will come back in a big terrible way.
EVAN: “Maybe if you knew the science…” I repeated this line in my head (and sometimes out loud) for months. There’s a little bit of hip-hop in that line, in that “droppin’ science” kind of way, that made it really resonate for me.
This volume is where stuff gets… mature. The happy-go-lucky vibe of Precious Little Life and Vs. The World still persists, but you get the sense that it’s under threat. Some of the things that were foreshadowed start to come into focus, and characters start to run up against their limitations. I really like that Scott’s blooming self-awareness doesn’t shrink in the face of Envy’s passive-aggressive attacks (or Todd’s aggressive-aggressive ones) and that he holds strong to this new fragile relationship with Ramona even when he’s outmatched, either by his past or by Todd’s powers. Remember, this is the same Scott who whined about having to break up Knives and has generally avoided anything like a job or adult responsibility. But he’s maturing, even if it’s only in fits and starts.
Like Douglas said, the will-to-power stuff in this volume really stands out. Envy and Todd’s re-imagining of themselves stands in sharp contrast to Scott, who seems mostly to have been who he is. We don’t know how he became a good fighter or a decent bassist or any of what makes him who he is. He’s just Scott Pilgrim. But, unlike this book’s villains, when he gets a sense of how effed-up he might be at times, he’s not running away from it. (Like the moment with Knives.) Now Ramona, on the other hand…
Moments I loved:
Knives Chau. 17 years old.
The Devo-esque return of the Boys & Crash. Again, this fits into the whole idea of willing a different/better self into being. They just practiced and thought on it really tough and got better.
It was in this volume that I noticed characters asking for lemonade as a repeating beat. As someone whose favorite drink is lemonade, this pleases me to no end.
The manga tropes in the big fight scene at the end are just so well-done and a reminder of how effective that visual language is. I think it’s even more effective because O’Malley weds it to something so uniquely his own.
(More on Techland: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World International Trailer Is Seriously Rad)
GRAEME: SCOTT 3 (which I will call it, because it makes me think of the Scott Walker albums, clearly a touchstone for everything Bryan does with this series, oh God I hope no one takes me seriously on that) was easily my favorite in the series, right up until I read Vol. 6. Maybe because it’s the most empathetic I’ve felt towards Scott, what with the whole emotional breakdown because of an ex, maybe it’s because of the genius of the Vegan Psychics (And the explanation! I love that it makes a surreal sense, that non-vegans’ brains are too filled with curds and whey to access the powers), maybe it’s because it feels like the summation of a lot of what’s been going on to date and therefore gets some kind of Closure Bonus, but this book just feels more complete than what we’ve seen before, for some reason. It also, in a weird way, just feels bigger than the previous books–like there’s a richer, weirder world surrounding what we’ve seen, what with cyborg arms and psychic police and flashbacks to grand romantic gestures like punching the moon.
But even with that, it’s a more fragile book, as well; there’s a gentleness and smallness to Scott’s heartbreak in the flashback that’s well-observed and not as overdone as it could’ve felt in less subtle hands – and I love that Scott doesn’t really get the closure that he’s looking for from Envy, in the end – and a growing maturity not only in the storytelling (the art here, again, is another leap forward from the previous volume, sharper and bolder) but in Scott himself as he continues to become more self-aware (while still being entirely wrapped in his life and Ramona that he doesn’t realize, as Lev suggests, that their relationship is still filled with hope more than anything else).
I really, really love this volume. It’s the one where everything completely comes together properly for the first time, for me.
CHRISTINE: Ah, you read volume 6. I am so jealous. I pre-ordered it. Nine more days!
DOUGLAS: You just have to move to Portland. You know Oni had a copy delivered to every resident of Portland last week, right? They worked out some kind of sponsorship deal with amazon.ca.
CHRISTINE: OMG. I need to build a hot tub time machine so I can go back in time, reside in Portland and receive my copy early.