Welcome back to the Scott Pilgrim Book Club. We’re psyching ourselves up for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (out now!) 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, Lev Grossman and Christine Lim are talking about volume 5, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe. (And read our comments on volume 1 here! And Volume 2 here! And volume 3 here! And volume 4 here! The hits keep coming!)
DOUGLAS: This is the one where everything falls apart for the characters, while the storytelling itself is tighter than ever–how amazing is that scene where Ramona disappears into her glow? Accepting his Eisner award for “Best Humor Publication” the other night, Bryan Lee O’Malley half-joked that he didn’t think this volume was particularly funny. It’s true that it doesn’t go for the laughs like volume 4 (at least after that big party scene at the beginning: I want to go to a “Canadian politics circa 1972 but you’re secretly Batman party,” too!), but it’s still very funny, just a bleaker kind of funny, sometimes so bleak it hurts. Abhay Khosla’s piece on this volume is particularly on the money, especially on the subject of Young Neil’s descent. O’Malley shuts down pretty much any bit of glory Scott could have; I love that just as most of the fights in this volume start, the focus shifts away to what the rest of the cast is doing. Which is funny on the face of it, but also appropriate. Everybody’s lost in the funhouse.
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MIKE: For me, the fights were the low point of the five books so far. What do we get? Scott vs. one crappy robot and then, later on, a slightly less crappy robot. (Although the line “Scott Pilgrim Wins the Party!” was pretty funny.) A half-assed bathroom throwdown between Knives and Ramona. And finally Scott vs. the Twins, which was only OK. I suppose we as readers have known Scott for so long at this point that we are not supposed to be excited when he gets in a fight anymore. Just like the other characters who don’t bat an eyelid when a robot shows up and starts throwing punches at Scott. It’s to be expected.
MIKE: I was just thinking that this is The Empire Strikes Back of Scott Pilgrim. In episode V, Luke loses his hand and Han gets frozen in carbonite. Here we have Scott breaking and then losing his bass, Kim moving to the boonies and then Ramona leaving. It all ends on such a down note. I had real fears that Vol. 6 was going to have Ewoks.
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LEV: Empire is a good analogy — it’s a real transitional, and to me slightly disposable, book. Nothing that starts in it gets finished. It peaks early — NOM NOM NOM and “Canadian politics circa 1972” were the two big laugh lines for me. I blew through it on my way to #6.
CHRISTINE: I agree that the fight scenes didn’t do it for me in this volume. I will sing this sad song again for Vol. 6. Nothing matched the intensity and humor of Knives vs. Ramona in the Reference Library (vol. 2).
EVAN: The thing about this volume is that even though we can guess that Scott’s going to have some kind of epiphany, we can’t see how it’s coming. The only sign is when he says to Kim “Sorry about me!” You know that he’s getting a sense of who he is and who the people around him are, but you still don’t know if he’ll be able to do anything with that.
DOUGLAS: There are a lot of recognizable moments here, although they’re mostly painful recognizable moments–I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lived through the horrible, rusty band practice, or forgetting the name of someone whose name took me forever to learn (Jason Kim!). And some of the character business is almost too dark to bear: Scott repeating a variation on his “I love you and I don’t care about your secrets” speech that won over Ramona in the previous volume in the fruitless hope of keeping her from leaving him, his parents bailing him out and getting him a new apartment, Knives Chau (17 years old) being ready to hear anything as an insult and following up her “we have to talk” by realizing she doesn’t know what to say, Kim Pine cheering Scott on by lying to him, Ramona trying to act all lighthearted about the fact that she’s kicking Scott out for the night.
MIKE: I’d love to say that getting unbelievably close to a proper threesome was a recognizable moment for me. It is not.
(More on Techland: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Book Club: Volume 3)
CHRISTINE: Were you fellas fortunate enough to recognize the lyrics from The Backstreet Boys song “As Long As You Love Me”? (I don’t care who you are, or where you’re from, or…what you did. As long as you love me.) Scott says this to Ramona before she fades away. Too bad Sex Bob-omb did not sing and dance this one. Golden opportunity… missed.
DOUGLAS: OH GOD YOU’RE RIGHT
CHRISTINE: Girl power. Another missed opportunity: Any of the girls in Scott’s life could have said, “Quit playing games… with my heart.”
LEV: Was anybody else blindsided by Nice Kim in this book? Her shift toward supporting Scott came on a little suddenly for me. I like Angry Kim better.
DOUGLAS: Kim’s always been there for Scott when he actually needs help (as, clearly, he’s there for her–he runs out on his impending breakup to go save her), she’s just willing to call him on it when he’s being a jerk. Tough love. Very tough love. Which we’ll see more of in volume 6. Wallace, on the other hand, is the guy who’ll always take Scott in; he’s helpful for Scott to have around in some ways, less helpful in others (as we’ll also see next time).
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Incidentally, the cover of this book’s first printing has one of the few comic book cover enhancements I’ve ever seen that actually mean something in the context of the story inside: a metallic fifth color as a glow radiating from Ramona’s head. (This might be a good point to mention what a terrific piece of character design Ramona is, especially for a character where the whole point is that we don’t really know anything much about her. Eminently cosplay-able, as was evident at Comic-Con.)
There are a few specific jokes about old comics inside, too–Scott’s “4 1/2” T-shirt (which Franklin Richards used to wear in John Byrne-era Fantastic Four comics) and Scott’s attempts to explain the plots of Chris Claremont’s X-Men and New Mutants to a totally uninterested Ramona. And a music note: “The Glow Pt. 2” is a reference to a song (and album) by the Microphones.
MIKE: I’ve got a question for the group. Why does everyone drink with such force in this volume? SWIG!
DOUGLAS: Not just drinking, but pointedly drinking: a good way to not continue a conversation.
LEV: I must register a pro forma objection to the stereotypical twin stuff in this volume. I am a twin. Being a twin is Not Like That. For one thing, the dual-dragon special moves are way better.
CHRISTINE: Teeny tiny question: do the thin black bars below some panes (page 32, 60 etc) mean anything? I didn’t notice them in other volumes.
DOUGLAS: They’re at the end of each chapter; I just read them as a beat–a little blackout, rather than a big pause. (Ramona eats with Scott, silently–and what an amazing little doodle of Gideon the cat in that panel!–; Ramona effectively has the space to herself, since Scott isn’t really interacting with her; Ramona looks at her reflection; beat. Next chapter.)
CHRISTINE: Is it just me, or is Ramona wearing a wedding dress to the second party in this volume?
MIKE: O’Malley spends a lot of pages playing dress-up with Ramona. It’s always felt to me like he loves drawing Ramona and Kim the most, and just kind of cranks out the boys on some pages. Well, unless it’s Wallace in a kimono.
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DOUGLAS: Wallace wins every scene he’s in. And we finally get to meet Mobile! It’s true that most of the boys don’t get the same kind of full-body design, but I love their facial expressions–I just opened the book to a random page and saw that great image of Joseph and Stephen Stills working on the recording, deep in irritation…
LEV: Connecting Joseph and Stephen S was a real masterstroke. Joseph basically wins the whole series with his entrance line about Todd’s hotness — “he’s hot as the flames of hell you bitches are going to.”
GRAEME: Very late to the party here (Damn you, Comic-Con Mental Hangover!), and little to add beyond saying that everyone is right, and Mike is especially right in likening this to Empire Strikes Back. This is the book that is really, really well done – Bryan’s art looks amazing throughout, and his writing is very tight – and yet is weirdly distressing to read, because everyone is falling apart and things get much darker than you might’ve been expecting considering the tone of the earlier books. It reminds me, for some reason, of Pulp’s album This Is Hardcore in some ways…
It’s the “I have my dream come true but it’s not what I thought and it’s driving me insane” book, both for Scott and – and this is probably me projecting here – maybe for O’Malley? There’s definitely some tension here in the work, as well as in the story; like others have said, the focus feels like it shifts significantly from other books (Fights! Funnies!) to underscore the characters being fucked up for various reasons, and it’s as if O’Malley’s rejecting the earlier books in some way, if that makes sense? Of course, having read the final book now, it also makes sense in a dramatic “Oh noes, it’s all gone wrong” way, as well, before the big finale.
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