This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast, the Major Spoilers crew takes a look at the sixth and final installment of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series.
It’s finally here! Six years and almost 1000 pages have all led to this epic finale! With six of Ramona’s seven evil exes dispatched, it should be time for Scott Pilgrim to face Gideon Graves, the biggest and baddest of her former beaus. But didn’t Ramona take off at the end of Book 5? Shouldn’t that let Scott off the hook? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn’t, but one thing is for certain all of this has been building to Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour! The sixth and final volume to indie comics most influential series in the last decade!
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8 Comments
I was intoduced to Scott Pilgrim at my LCBS, and I really like the first 3 books. Then I read the fourth, and the fifth, and somehting happend. I lost intrest in the Manga Canadian. I began to think, “here is this guy, who dumped Knives, for a heap of emo trouble that is Ramona”, this guy is a idiot. Then, I realized that I knew people like Scott Pilgirm, and that I didn’t like those people. I began to realize that the only character I did like was Knives.
Though I have volumes one through five I may never pick up the final chapter. I just don’t care, and for the life of me wish I did.
I feel that Scott Pilgirm is one of the those comics that people use to get others that aren’t into comics reading them, like 100 Bullets, which I wanted to like but couldn’t.
As for the movie, I have followed Edgar Wright since SPACED, but this is one venture I will be sitting out. Michael Sera was cool in Arrested Development. But I am no fan of his, and if they are as true to the comic as they say, I will be as apathetic towards it as I am the comics.
I wish Bryan O’Malley all the luck in the world, but I don’t think I will be reading this book, or watching the movie any time soon.
I don’t think Scott dumped Knives for anything that trivial. If anything he got together with Knives for something trivial- because it was easy. I’m not really sure how you can find Scott Pilgrim annoying for being so emotional, but find Knives easily likable for constantly obsessing over a relationship that, frankly, was never going to last (which, by the way, is resolved in this book). As for the drama with Ramona… Well anyone that tells you that maintaining a relationship is easy is just lying.
I read the book over the course of comic-con this week and I loved it. Everybody was given a satisfying conclusion to their story. Knives was finally able to resolve her dissolved relationship with Scott, Stephen Stills was able to get over his neurotic tendencies, Kim built off of the maturity she found in the 5th volume, and young Neil was at last able to become… Neil.
But the heart of the book Ramona and Scott’s love was never neglected. There were struggles, but they were finally able to take down the final boss together once and reaffirm their love for each other once and for all.
Oh, and the art: O’Malley hiring inker for this book has done wonderful things for the tones and spatter throughout this volume easily making it his best looking in addition to the best reading.
I guess I should talk about the movie. I loved it. Can’t say it enough. This was one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. Fun, funny, filled with all the hyper kinetic fun of the series, without forgetting the heart that made the books worth reading. There were several creative liberties taken, but they all existed in the spirit of the books and seemed like more of a natural transition to film than Edgar Wright (who was totally in the audience with us in addition to EVERYONE else who starred in this movie) wanting to leave his legacy on the franchise. Michael Cera? Best performance of his young career thus far, bar none. There is no reason whatsoever for anyone to not see this movie. It’s the most fun you’ll have at the theater this summer.
I didn’t mean to come across as a Knives lover, but I just found the whole, concept to be off putting after book 3, Scott is a person I wouldn’t like to be around. So I don’t want to buy into him.
I guess in the end I could careless about Scott and Ramona’s love.
At first glance I was like, why are his pink dangling ‘nads in this drawing? But that’s actually the heat shaped handle of his sword. Is that purposely subliminal? I know nothing of this character, so forgive me if that’s on purpose.
No it’s not. To quote Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Twitter account on the subject:
“Let’s just get this out of the way: SCOTT PILGRIM’S PRECIOUS LITTLE NUT SACK! SCOTT PILGRIMS FINEST NUT SACK! SCOTT PILGRIM GETS HIS NUTS TOGETHER!”
It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be for a finale. But nothing ever seems to live up to what you imagine. Overall I enjoyed the last book in the series, the art has been getting better each volume, and there were no shortage of injokes taking me back to my 80’s childhood.
I thought that book 6 actually made the first five books better. A lot of weirdness and randomness was tied together with solid plotting to create a pretty powerful metaphor for dealing with past relationships. Scott Pilgrim’s struggles in this volume really cemented the series as a symbolic struggle against one’s own flaws and baggage.
Plus, it did all of that while keeping up the humor and whimsy that the series had had before.
The only real knock against this book is that a lot of the exposition and information surrounding Gideon felt very rush – like readers were only treated to a brief summary of a very interesting full story. Still, with everything else going on, I found it to be a reasonable sacrifice to facilitate the meat of the story.
I became aware of Scott Pilgrim (through Major Spoilers of course) and plowed through the first and second volumes. However, upon hearing about the movie, and the buzz being that the movie is going to awesome, I hade to stop. I have all the volumes; they sit on my shelf waiting for the day after the movie for me to read. I even took the day off from work to go see the movie first showing. It is directed by Edgar Wright. How can it not be brilliant? Therefore I regret that I am waiting to read volumes 3-6. Sweet torture until August 13.