Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe

I confess I am new to the Scott Pilgrim phenomenon. It was only a few months ago I absent-mindedly picked up Free Scott Pilgrim, the short story which takes place between volumes 2 and 3. I'm not sure I would have been interested enough to continue if I hadn't flipped to the page near the beginning where Scott is depicted browsing energy drinks at a convenience store. On the bottles where I expected to see nutritional facts and ingredients, instead I see lists of stat bonuses and penalties like something out of D&D. I read on, obviously.

You see, I'm a sucker for setting. I will sometimes forgive quite a few plot and character mistakes if I like the world enough. That's why I read specialized fantastic literature genres with names overburdened by hyphens. It's why I like to take the occasional shot at traditional orcs-and-elves stuff because I think it misses the whole point of fantastic storytelling.

Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's world is a clever mix of gaming culture satire, anime, and science fiction, but it shares the same space with a contemporary urban scenester environment. Oh yes, Scott Pilgrim is aware of its audience. Scott plays bass in a local band, but he is also on a quest to defeat his true love's evil ex-boyfriends. He has to work bad jobs to pay his rent, but he collects power-ups when he wins a fight. Could you accuse Scott Pilgrim of juvenile wish-fulfillment? You certainly could. Do you ever fantasize about fighting robots in a public place? I sure as hell do.

Considering I wrap myself in my delusions of uniqueness like a blanket against the cold winds of the great big, gray, homogeneous world out there, I usually have to resist the urge to hate something when I find myself dead center in its target demographic. However, Scott Pilgrim has a disarming allure it earns by being utterly clever and yet totally without pretension. It stands astride the gap between the indie avant-garde graphic tales about the real world and comics. You know, comics? Capes and laser eyes and shit.

This is the comic's biggest strength. The characters experience real consequences for their actions and feel real emotions in one panel and then throw each other through walls in the next. It's guilt-free fun.

The new 5th volume, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, is a little shorter than the others. It feels rushed. The series as a whole typically does a good job of balancing the mundane and the fantastic, it's what makes it so cool. It may be that this is the price both we and Scott Pilgrim must pay, we all have to grow up at some point, and leave the fantasies behind.

Unfortunately, it's the balance between the two elements that really makes the whole thing work for me. Have you ever watched the pilot for a television show which utilized some interesting narrative device and then somewhere between the first episode and the second season it was discarded because it wasn't worth the effort? They knew the audience was already hooked by the plot and would continue to watch just to see who boinks whom. This is what I fear for Scott Pilgrim. I understand that the series is reaching a climax and needs to focus a bit more on letting the story play out. I also know that the reader can't just crawl inside a book's setting and explore it for a while, the nice men in white coats were very adamant about that.

The point is that as a series begins to focus, it runs the risk of losing those elements that made us sign on in the first place. Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness had plenty of plot reveals, but it also managed to maintain that sense of adventure. It gave itself time to explore and see some of the interesting things that happen on the fringes of O'Malley's world.

I will reserve my typical rash and crudely-worded judgment in this case. Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe is definitely not the best example of the series, but the fact remains that if it were published like any other comic, we'd already have a stack of useless fluff books already. One volume is hardly enough to damn the series. Everybody gets one Temple of Doom.