Have you heard of this little known comic series called Scott Pilgrim? Not many people have, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t. I hear they might make a movie about it at some point. Again, these are just rumors.

Well, anyway, with the comic series having finally wrapped up. I thought I would re-read them all. Being forced to wait a year in between books makes it difficult for me to remember certain characters and plot events and whatnot.

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life
The Scott Pilgrim series is apparently about this 23 year old guy who starts dating a 17 year old high school student. Wait, check that. Scott Pilgrim is apparently about this 23 year old who starts dating a 17 year old high school student but then starts cheating on her by totally sleeping with this girl he meets at a party. I know that the above statement is not what Scott Pilgrim is about, but if someone just randomly picked up this book and started reading without having a friend tell them what it was about or without reading the back cover, then this is what I would think the plot is about. It’s not until near the end up the book that seven evil ex-boyfriends is mention. I find it odd that the book opens with Scott’s relationship with Knives (the high school student). To me that suggests that she plays an important role in the story. That, or the entire first half of this book is just filler. Couldn’t we have just started with Scott met Ramona (the party girl)? That would have made more sense.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Wold
Now that we’ve got the introduction to the series under our belt, Vol 2 can just jump right in to the meat and potato of the series, so to speak. In my mind this book is still trying to find the proper balance between drama/action/comedy. While the drama and comedy are there, the action is a bit of a let down. Vol 2 does contain my favorite fight scene in the whole series when Knives attacks Ramona in the library. I think the outfit Knives is wearing and Ramona’s ability to kick-ass come as a nice surprise to the reader. The Scott vs. Evil Ex battle in this book is an incredible let down. Halfway through the ex gets killed in a pretty pathetic skateboarding accident making him the most forgettable of the ex’s. The rest of the book is about Scott’s band and his need for a haircut.

Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness
Vol 3 is my favorite book in the series. I think it is the most well balanced. Todd, evil ex number #3, who was shown in the final pages of Vol 2, is a vegan and just happens to be dating Scott’s ex, Envy. I liked that, unlike the previous books, Scott and Todd have multiple confrontations instead of just one fight that was over way too quickly. I actually felt that defeating the evil ex’s was the main plot instead of just a convenient hook used to draw the reader in to Scott and his friend’s relationship drama. The relationship drama is extra heavy in this volume due to the inclusion of Envy, the girl who broke Scott’s heart prior to the start of the series. Her and Ramona have a pretty cool fight involving a rather large hammer. There’s now a duality in the series with Scott fighting Ramona’s exes and Ramona fighting two of Scott’s exes thus far. We could look deep into this a suggest that what Bryan Lee O’Malley is trying to say that in every relationship a person can not help but at some point have to confront the exes of the other person in either a symbolic, physical, or hypothetical fashion. Or, we could just see it as an excuse for Ramona to kick-ass and establish her as a strong female character.

Anyway, I’ll post tomorrow about the remaining three volumes.