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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Scottrospective Part 7 :LONG OVERDUE FINALE: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World Film!

Hello all you happy scottaholics! I’m Jake I review stuff and today marks the end of a yearlong journey thorugh the precious little life of one Scott Pilgrim... and my 30th birthday. Go me. For those just joining us since December 16th of last year, my birthday, i’ve been reviewing all 6 volumes of Brian Lee O’Malley’s classic epic about an aimless 24 year old slacker who finds the girl of his dreams and has to both grow up as a person and punch her 7 evil exes into coins if he wants to stay with her. Packed with great art that only gets better with each volume, one of the best casts in comics with all time faviorite characters of mine like Kim and Wallace, and some of the best jokes and action in the buisness, this series is still loved a decade after it bowed out for a reason. If you want to se the ride so far

LINKS TO EVERY PIECE OF THE RETROSPECTIVE ARE RIGHT HERE IN ONE NEAT PACKAGE.

So while I COULD have just ended with Scott and Ramona x slashing gideon and riding off into the snowy banks of toronto to live their best lives, I felt it just wasn’t complete without one last major piece. One last ride to see another take on the story that’s just as loved and in fact likely got even more people to read this masterpiece than they would of had it not existed. This film was something I only watched once but on rewatch I certainly will again and again, a film that somehow compresses four volumes of comic (and the outline of the last two volumes) into two hours, lovingly and painstaklingly remaking parts of the volumes while still doing it’s own creative things with it. It felt like the proper ending to this retrospective.

And that’s part of the reason that, despite orignally planning for it to be part of this.. I cut the review of the game from the retrospective. I still think it’s an excellent game, even if Ubisoft can eat a bag of acid coated barbed wired dicks for a variety of sexually harassy reasons, but while it has plenty to talk about some other time, it just didn’t feel like enough in comparison to the main series and film. I’ll likely throw it up on my patreon with the other suplimental reviews, such as the free comic book day stories, backup comics, and short film made to tie into this one, and if you want to check those out it’s only a buck a month to see exclusive reviews

LINK IS RIGHT HERE I HAVE NO SHAME

TLDR: A great game, just not a work that fit easily into a far more analitcal retrospective. The movie however fits like a glove, though ill still be covering it differently. I usually do my reviews as full recaps with snark and analsys sprinkled in like garlic on some very delciously fattenting bread, but for this flim, having covered a lot of it’s scenes already in a diffrent medium, I felt it was best to break things down more, divy it up into sections that sort of thing. Your still getting what will hopefully be a pretty meaty review it’s just a diffrent format is all.

Finally before I got started.. I just wanted to thank all of you. These review shave been easily one of the most read things i’ve EVER done. I get new likes on at least one of the reviews a month and i’m not sure that’ll ever stop. You guys have been great with your feedback, you’ve been great readers and it really does my heart good knowing you love this franchise as mcuh as I do and really enjoy my take on it. So with that out of the way join me one last time under the cut as we go to a slightly diffrent snowy tornot ofor one last slugfest under the cut.

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The Backstory You Don’t Need to Read the Book For:

The story for Vs The World fittingly starts where this retrospective began a year ago: with the first volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life. Precious Little Life was a hit. The company wasn’t satisfied with JUST having a hit comic though. Comics are awesome and all and what their company was known for but you can’t swim around in gold coins like a porpose and burrow in them like a gofer on indie graphic novel money. And since comic movies were in their second boom period at the time (For the record the other ones to me are the late 80′s early 90′s boom caused by batman and the current decade long one caused by the MCU), making a movie was naturally an easy proposal, and given the graphic novels were set as a 6 part story from the get go, that easily lead to at LEAST a trilogy if not more, meaning if the film took off they could get franchise money on top of their scrooge mcduck box office.

Brian Lee O’Malley was naturally less enthuastic. While the period DID have some really good comic book movies (Mystery Men, the first two x-men (if directed by a grooming highly unstable monster), the first two spider-men, the first two blades) we also had things like Catwoman, Elektra, the THIRD spider-man, x-men and blade films, so Brian being a bit trepdatious is understandable. He didn’t put up a fight though for the most primal reason of all:

As Brian himself put it he was a starving artist at the time, as the series had JUST started and wouldn’t be the reliable residual check he could live off of for the rest of his life it’d become quite yet. So even if the film wound up an awful, lifeless action comedy by a director he hated.. it was money he badly needed. It also REALLY makes DC and Marvel, and their respective corprate overlords, look WAY worse when theys till won’t give out those sweet residuals to creators, work for hire or no.. while Oni, a much smaller less compitent company.. had NO issue doing the same for someone way less established than some of the people Marvel’s fucked over. I didn’t know it was POSSIBLE to make Disney look worse, lord knows i’ve never held back and I rely on them for a portion of my own paycheck and fanbase, but here we are.

Thankfully Universal, who optioned the rights, picked the exact right man for the job: Edgar Wright, himself at the time incredibly fresh faced and having just had his own first major success with Sean of the Dead, a film I still haven’t seen and you may freely boo me for. I’m LONG overdue on that one despite utterly loving Wright’s other works i’ve seen (For the record those would be Hot Fuzz, This Film, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho, all certified classics and genre touchstones in my eyes). Funny enough Wright was already a fan, having gotten a pre-release copy while working on Sean, and glommed onto doing it, citing, of ALL films Danger: Diabolik! as an inspriation yes folks the same one from the final episode of the original run of MST3K Danger!: Diabolik!, mostly in making sure the film wasn’t even really reality. I’ll get more into how he pulled this off in a moment.

Wright and O’Malley got along greatly over the long preproduction work for the film, with the two admitting on their commentary track to sending each other mixtapes first. On the same track Wright also admitted to stalling the film slightly so he’d have more to work with, but I can’t blame him there. The first volume is neat and is even adapted prettty much virbeatem.. but there’s just not enough material there for an entire film, and it’d also mean if the film failed we’d never get adaptations of the rest of the work, something Wright smartly sidestepped by simply making it once complete story.

He also poured a LOT of love for the works into it: he outright admitted to making sure all the costumes were book accurate, something I didn’t realize but now can’t stop noticing, the framing was similar to the comics, and that the film actually shot at a lot of locations featured in the book like the park Scott and Ramona go to for their first date and Casa Loma, even using the same neighborhood O’Malley’s rathole apartment Scott’s was based on was in for location shoots. It’s very clear Wright wanted everything pitch perfect and succeeded. Gotta love this man.

For the music they orignially planned to have Sex Bomb Omb be cut off before singing every time.. but once they got Beck of all people on board to do the music that was a non-starter. They also got a song from Radiohead, had broken social scene write the crash and the boys song (wanting a diffrent band for each in universe band, a nice touch) and most intrestingly of all from Metric, who as I went into in the volume 3 review was the basis for Clash at Demonhead with lead singer emily haines in paticualr being the model for envy, contributing one of their b-sides they felt lapsed into accidental self parody which worked perfectly for a patische of them. Their only caveat was to put their version on the soundtrack instead of the one with Brie Larson, which we only got a decade later with this year’s anniversary version of the soundtrack. But I can’t really fault a band for wanting their version on the soundtrack.

We’ll save the cast for in a second, but as you can tell tons of love, effort and hard work went into this film. And that naturally resulted in box office right?

Yeah as you likely know.. the film tanked. And as much as I absolutely love it and the series it’s based on it’s pretty easy to see why: For starters the film stared Michael Cera. I feel Cera is perfectly cast and a damn talented actor.. but at the time the public saw him more like this:

See like many stars who break out over one movie, in this case superbad, Cera got typecast bad in doey eyed slacker type rolls. As such to many it came off as yet ANOTHER one of those, instead of one that honestly , intetionally or not, deconstructs that kind of character and gives cera more to work with. The other problem was audience: It’s an indie film that also involves video game styled punch ups. While easy to sell in comic form since indie comics are built on fiinding a niche audience and letting it grow from there, for a wide audience it was likely a harder sell to watch an actor they were already growing tired of punch people in what was essnetially a musical just with fights instead of songs. As such the marketing was decent but really dind’t know WHO to sell it too: gen x kids who got the deep cut game refrences? current teens who loved cera’s work? This photo of dave collier?

Thankfully the film is easily one of the biggest cases of vindicated by history i’ve ever seen: like many a film home video was VERY kind to Scott Pilgrim, making it easier to share with people who’d be reluctant to see it theatrically and letting the film’s quality speak for itself. Add in the fact the super talented cast all went on to bigger things, meaning fans seeking out their past works would inevitbly stumble on this one and the film has only grown and grown in popularity every year since and rightfully so. The only film I can think of that had a bigger second life like this was the Thing, which went from critically panned for.. some reason to rightfully seen as one of the best horror films period. Also I now want to see scott fight the thing.. not the john carpenter one the fantastic four one. watching ben punch our boy througha wall is just inherently funny to me for some reason.

So overall a well crafted journey here that while it had a bumpy landing has ultimately ended up happy. So with how we got here settled and squared away le’ts look at what we got here:

The Wright Stuff: You’ve already heard me sing Wright’s prasies quite a bit in this article..

As the film would not be the same without him. One of Edgar Wright’s biggest strength is his visuals: quick cuts, gorgeous intresting shots, and expermenting with the format to tell whatever story he’s telling the way it NEEDS to be. As such SPVTW might be one of the most comic book looking comic book movies that ever comic booked.

What the hell i’m on about is that Wright often frames the shots like comic panels, trying to keep focus on one thing, still uses text on screen. He said in his commentary he wanted it to feel like reading a comic and succeeded, getting the feel of O’Malley’s own unique style down pat. Two of Scott pilgrim’s most notable style bits, the big bits of text that show up for transitions or gags such as this

Or my beloved little caption boxes that give a characters name, age and some funny bit of text both make the jump to the film, using Bill Hader’s narration for the former when needed. Often it’s hard to translate visual elements like that to screen for comic book adaptations like that, but Wright makes it look effortless.

The fights keep this too with the wavey lines, said outloud sound effects and what not seen in the comics coming to the screen, giving the fights a nice dynamic feel that no other film sense has captured. Their fast paced, frentic and fun, matching the energy of the comics while still letting the actors and their stunt doubles work speak for itself. The actors trained every day for these scenes and it shows, taking the skinny tree of a person that is Micheal Cera and making him look like the excellent combatant Scott is.

As said before Wright went the extra mile to insure the film was accurate to the books and used a mixture of sets and real locations that look like they were peeled right off the page. This also nicely grounds the film the same way the slice of life elements did in the book: it’s still not clearly our world, but the emotional attachment to the cast and the real world settings help anchor it.

And since we’re talking about the cast....

Stacked Actors:

One of VS The World’s most notable attributes is just how PACKED the cast is. At the time most of them were unknowns with only MIcheal Cera really being a bonified star. But as proof of how much of an eye Wright has for talent, the bulk of them would go on to bigger and better things, with some being bonafied supestars now. Not only that a lot of the character changes, for better and for worse feel dependant on their performances. While Wright certainly wrote everyone well, without the cast really selling it it woudln’t have sizzled the way it does. So i’m combining my examination of what changes the characteres went through in the adaptation process with a little bit of “where are they now” for funzies.

Starting us off we have our hero ladies and Gentleman Scott Pilgrim. Scott is played by Michael Cera and as outlined Cera was the big name of the cast.. and also quickly had his career burn up due to people getting tired of him. As such it’s not a huge shock his career since has mostly been smaller rolls, with the more notable ones being a return to his star making arrested development roll for some mediocre followup seasons and vocing robin in the lego batman movie, which slaps. He seems content just doing work here and there and as long as he dosen’t go away entirely i’m fine with that. I feel the backlash was overblown and Cera is a talented person but I can’t blame him for not wanting to put up with that shit again.

Scott here is even more socially awkward than the comics. Which if you’ve been following this retrospective.... is a tall order.

It feels less like this Scott is actively repressing the bad shit he’s done or his shitty behavior and more he just dosen’t get he’s fucked up until his actions smack him in the face in the last act. Scott in the comics wasn’t malcious or intetnionally dickish either, but could get pissily defensive in situations he had no right to be...

While this scott seems less manic and more just confused a lot and half there. This works fine though: without the Nega Scott plot twist, as it might or might not have been in the notes Edgar Wright got from o’malley, having Scott be a little shit just woudln’t have worked. Here he can still grow, realizing his actions hurt people and how much he truly cares about Ramona, which works better for the film’s overly compressed timeline. After all this Scott’s only had a week to really change as a person. In contrast Comic!Scott had a full year of perosnal growth, mistakes and a whole life with Ramona. It makes more sense his Journey is a bit deeper. So overally Movie!Scott isn’t bad, just a bit simplified from the comics to make him work better.

And since we brought her up Rammy is next. Ramona is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Winstead was a small name before SPVTW, having worked in Final Destination and Death Proof, but Vs the World would be the real start of her rise, going on to do tons of work since. The most notable for my nerdy ass are 10 Cloverfield Lane, the only one of those films i’ve seen and probably will ever seen and a truly suspensful masterpiece, and Birds of Prey as Huntress, a role she badly needs to reprise at some point even if they don’t give the film a sequel. She also did a great turn in Season 3 of Fargo, even if I ended up bailing on said season due to it being pretty bad. She was not though.

As with everyone, Winstead does a great job as Ramona.. but I feel the character gets short changed by the film. Film ramona is more emotinally guarded which, while a big part of Ramona’s character, wasn’t really ALL she was. She had moments of snark, flirtness and other stuff. In contrast Film!Ramona just seems to be stoic almost the entire film and dosen’t really get to grow as a person, much like scott but even less satisfying. She feels like less of a character here, just the aloof cool girl scott thought she was and got a crush on, instead of learning she was a real person with feelings and emotions like the comic. And while again Wright only had three volumes to work with, volumes 2 and 3 have Ramona open up just enough to show off her personality and he could’ve easily given her her own. Instead she feels more like an afterthought in a film that has her as one of the main characters.

The reason for that is wrapped in our next character so onto Knives. Knvies is played by Ellen Wong, who sadly hasn’t soared to the heights of some of her costars which is a shame given she is wonderful here and was utterly awesome on GLOW, her other major role to date. God I hope we get a finale movie for that at some point. Wong is fantastic in the role and Knives innocence and later slide into ax crazy both play well. Knives isn’t changed MUCH from the comics.. but there is one rather big change that does effect the story quite a bit: her relationship with Scott is taken a bit more seroiusly.

This is a massive mistep. In the comics the relationship was INTENTIONALLY shallow, as Scott doing this was rightfully seen as a creepy way to avoid his feelings. Here the film plays it as it’s OTP: he and knives fight gideon together and were SUPPOSED to end up together before test audiences rejected it. It just MASSIVELY misses the point in a way i’m baffled someone as skilled as wright can do, but here we are. They even tried to ease things by having the age gap lowered by a year.. but it dosen’t really fix it. 5 years, 6 years, he’s still dating someone way more naive as a way to sooth his own emotoinal wounds. It’s still fucking wrong. It’s one thing to ship characters who are both teens and have maybe a one or two year age gap or two adults who could have as much as a decade or so between them. But with Scott and Knives.. i’ts someone more experinced dating someone as an ego boost. That SHOULDN’T end well or be painted at all well. I shouldn’t even have to say that it sounds obvious but here we are. This is far and away the weakest point of the film. It dosen’t RUIN it for me, but it’s one of the few things that steps down from the comic and isn’t just a consequence of not having all the volumes at the ready or the compressed storytelling. This is squarely Edgar Wright’s fault.

So just to make it an even trilogy of mishandeling characters, let’s talk my girl Kim Pine, played here by Allison Pill. While I haven’t seen much of Pill’s work since Scott Pilgrim she’s had a steady career, mostly in tv on shows such as American Horror Story, The Newsroom and currently Star Trek Picard. She’s a fantastic actress and not only matches Kim’s look perfectly down to the freckles, but gets her sardonic attitude and complex relationship with Scott through well in dialouge. The problem is that Pill really dosen’t get to do much. Granted I know i’m not the most objective person when it comes to wanting to give Kim more screentime.

But you have to keep in mind Kim is the tritagonist of the books: She’s just as important as Scott and Ramona to the story and whiel this truly dosen’t blossom till the final two books, she still averages one major scene a book and has a major say in some of the side plots in paticular having a LOT of tension with Stephen over his ignoring live performances and actually being a band in favor of working on the album. In contrast the film has her as easily the least prominent member of Sex-Bomb Omb, with Stephen and even Neil getting more screentime and jokes. Granted both are fantastic in the film, we’ll get to that, but it’s really sad that the third lead of the books is relegated to being the sidekick’s sidekick. This is part of WHY I feel we need a longer form adaptation: this movie is awesome.. but there’s a LOT you could do with Kim, Wallace, and others that the film simply didn’t have time for and the books didn’t get around to doing.

Speaking of the handsome devil, Wallace is played god’s gift to this movie Kirean Culkin. This film made me a fan of the guy, who also as a fun fact played Ralphie Parker in the christmas story sequel My Summer Story that I still need to watch and specfically saught out in part because he was involved. Naturally right now his biggest success is being on Succession, a show I probably will never watch as it’s not my forte, but do appricate for sharing his gift with the world.

Kirean is pitch perfect as Wallace, getting his nice mix of sarcasm, flamboyance and deadpan all wrapped into one. He’s far and away the stand out of the film, having tons of it’s best moments, including brand shiny new dialouge to the hilaroius sequence with Crash and the Boys, even giving us a just as good retort to “We Hate You Please Die” with “Great I love this one!”. Wallace as you can tell isn’t changed much he just has two slight tweaks: there’es now a running gag where he calls stacey even when dead asleep or having JUST talked to scott a minute ago, and he’s now dating Other Scott instead of Mobile, as well as having an escalating number of partners in his bed at the same time as Scott plantonically sleeps next to him, a nice way to condense the runner from the comic of Wallace throwing Scott out to have sex in their place on a regular basis.

Stephen Stills is played by Mark Webber, whose done.. stuff since. Yeah not EVERYONE on the cast went on to do stuff and while Webber’s still acting, he hasn’t done anything huge I can spot apart from being on SMILF and dropping out of doing the series Stumptown post pilot due to creative differences. And that is a shame as Webber elevates Stephen from the dillhole he was in the comics to a stressed out wreck serious about getting a record deal, and just generally fun to watch as he breaks down. Him scooping up the coins at the end was also a nice touch. The character was nicely retooled into comic relief and whlie not much like his comics counterpart anymore, that’s for the better.

Johnny Simmons plays Young Neil and has just kinda shown up here and there since the film much like Webber, which is a shame as Simmons is easily my second faviorite actor in the film next to Culkin. Neil here is completely diffrent, being more peppy and deeply into the band instead of the stoic mophead he was in the comics. Simmons got the role due to using the “you punched the higlights out of her hair!” bhit for his audition and his extra bit of ham to neil makes the character really stand out, esepcailly since the sex bomb omb crew are really shoved to the side for this adaptation outisde of the fifth ex fight. It also makes his relationship with Knives more palatable as he comes off a b it more naive, and thus way more manipulatable. I also headcannon that like this neil , comics neil can play the bass and joined shatterband eventually.. that part’s not really relevant I just wanted to mention that.

Scott’s kid sister and concisence is played here by Anna Kendrick, whose one of the breakout successes of this movie having gone on to do dozens of films since this, most notably starring in the Pitch Perfect and Trolls franchises but having done PLENTY outside that. Naturally with someone this talented she plays Stacey well even if Stacey’s roll is even more reduced, never getting to meet ramona, though she does get a nice emotinal moment with Scott towards the end.

Rounding out our supporting cast we have Aubrey Plaza as the bane of my existence Julie Powers. Plaza is an actress I deeply admire having been part of parks and rec around the same time as this, and having gone on to do work on and off since, including the criminally underrated film The To-Do List. So i’ts not a huge shock she takes Julie from a character so odious I prayed for god to strike her down for 6 volumes straight, to someone tolerable. She’s still an ass, but Plauza has a talent for making asses entertaining, phrasing, so julie’s at least ENTERTAINING HER. She’s also kept to two scenes, so she dosen’t wear out her welcome and it helps one of those scenes, the whole censor bar bit that’s fully wright’s baby, is easily one of the film’s best and most well remembered gags.

Finally before we can get to the exes, but not quite in supporting hence putting her here, we have mrs. Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson. While it took larson a bit, she became a massive star thanks to the film Room, a truly stunning and heartwrenching little film, and of course playing Carol Fucking Danvers in the MCU. Fun Fact: I honestly didn’t realize this was the same actress till it was pointed out. She does a good job as Envy, with the phone scene and the truly showstopping Black Sheep Scene both being iconic, though Envy, like most of the female cast, is given the short end of the scott pilgrim stick that dosen’t have his face on it. Due to her volume being barely featured, she’s mostly there to serve as todd’s cheerleader and gets a great closing bit. She’s still memorable as all hell as Larson gives her a nice, icy vibe that fits the character perfectly with a well constructed stilted way of speaking that feels like Envy is trying to act out every word and can’t even run into an ex without making it into a performance. Well acted, just not as deep a character. Pretty much this film in a nutshell.

Okay starting us of with #1, we have Matthew pattel played by Satya Bhabha. Bhabha hasn’t done much since, matty is pretty much the same though this time he gets a fucking bollywood number that slaps, Slick. It’s not long sadly, but damn is it funky.

Now onto #2 with Chris Evans as Lucas Lee baby! No need to look up this one as I usually make mine marvel, meaning I know both his major marvel roles: years before this he played Johnny Storm in the Tim Story Fantastic Four films and honestly did a good job in my opinon, one of the only three characters with proper casting the others being Ben, with Micheal Chiklis having set a high bar for whoever calls for clobberin time in the mcu, and having Stan Lee play Willie Lumpkin, the ff’s mail man. Yes they have an old man mail man as a supporting character.. he also dated Aunt May for a while, when you ‘ve given mail to people who can stretch, set thigns on fire, create whatever they imagine nad clobber, and bang peter parkers aunt then you can judge. He then went on to play the star spangled man with the plan something that actually got spoofed at comic con as he was too busy with the first avenger to attend, so Micheal Cera dressed up as cap in a goofy muscle suit outfit. He’s still a certified star even after leaving the mcu, going onto knives out where he told us to eat shit and we ate not one iota of shit.

So Lucas is almost completely diffrent here. In the comics he was a calm chill dude, gladly talking to scott, only kicking his ass because he had to and offering to take a bribe. He only really got ready to killl the guy when Scott called him a sell out and then died the same way he did here. In contrast Lucas here is throughly a sell out: a smarmy mugging dick who has his stunt doubles fight first, though is still perfeclty nice to ramona. Evans plays this version perfectly and honestly.. I feel it’s an improvemnt. Whie I have nothing against book lucas, the movie one is just so enjoyably hammy, from his growly tone to his mugging for the camera and his death is even more hilaroius as a result as it fits this lucas more to want to show off.. and end up dying from the velocity of trying to show off.

#3 is our good old Akira Himbo great disaster stopping cleaning lady on monday pal Todd played by Brandon Routh who at this point played superman in “Superman returns”. Poor guy. Thankfully Routh’s had a much steadier superheroing career in tv, playing the Atom in the Arrrowverse. He also played Tsar Nicholas the Second in a movie last year.. the fuck?

Anyways, Todd is, like most of the cast, a bit diffrent. In the comics he’s a bit more abrasive, gladly saying he can do what he wants because he’s a rock star, serving as an evil scott basically doing a lot of what Scott did, cheating being a dick to people, but because he CAN rather than because he needs to grow as a person and dosen’t realize he’s hurting people. Here he’s just a bit of a quite broey dick, as his screen time is cut down massively like Envy’s, though once again they do give Scott more agency in his fight, having him cleverly trick todd into eating dairy instead of Todd doing it “becauase i’m a rock star!”. So while I feel he’s less of a character, and it’s mildly disapoitning, it still works.

#4 is good old Roxie Richter, the reason their called “Evil exes” and not “evil ex boyfriends”. Roxie is played by Mae Whitman who while not a mega star had already made a name for herself at this point, having voiced Katara on Avatar: the Last Airbender and played Anne (her?) on Arrested Development.. who ironically was Michael Cera’s love intrest. And given Wright was an AD fan, this bit of meta casting likely wasn’t a concidence. Whitman hasn’t slowed down remotely since this film, having done long stints on the excellent show Parenthood, what I heard was an excellent show Good Girls, and currently playing ANOTHER iconic animated character with Amity on the Owl House, and yet another angry lesbian. Whitman herself came out as bisexual this pride, and I couldn’t he happier for her what a talent.

Roxie isn’t much diffrent here, still combative, and at most a bit angrier, though with good reason as Ramona dismisses her as just a phase.. and while in the comic Roxie brushed that off (and given they later made out a bit, she had reason to) here she’s GENINELY and deeply hurt as she could be. I mean killing her boyfriend over it is a bit much but being pissed at ramona isn’t. She’s one of the few exes in either medium that gets a decent amount of depth and i’m glad it was kept. Her fight is changed slightly, now being more with ramona, modeled on Ramona’s awesome fight with Envy in volume 3. This is for a reason as Wright consdiered making Envy replace Roxie but thankfully backed off. And while Roxie’s arc is cut down slightly the major bits, scott accidnetly punching her in the boob and preparing to die obviously, i’m a little bi-furious, and scott’s slow realization what’s happening all still made it. All in all out of the exes she’s easily my faviorite of the film versions.

5 and 6 with Shota and Keita Satao two japanese actors who haven’t done antyhing in america that i’m aware of since and their wiki pages are in japanese so moving on. They do okay, they just don’t get to say anything really or emote so I can’t reaally judge their performance.

And that is an issue with the twins here. THeir just.. not characters. It’s clear Wright didn’t really have time to sink into volume 5, going with an earlier idea of the fight. The fight itself is utterly gorgeous and awesome, using cg that still shockingly holds up for a fucking sound duel between both sides, amps face to face. It also gives Sex Bomb Omb a truly rocking moment in the fights, as most of the time in the books they were more color commentators than anything. Only kim ever got a sigfigant roll in any of the fight scenes, though she made the best out of it. So the fights good.. but the twins as characters are just there to do that, get wrecked and lead into the last act, having Scott loose everything before getting pep talks from his sister and wallace to go fight for what he wants. The actors aren’t bad but instead of having them talk in japanese with subtitltes since they didn’t speak english they just had them not speak or really have a ny personality at all and it’s disapointing. These guys deserved better.

Finally we have the grand white douche himself Gideon Graves. What a dick. Played to smarmy perfection by Jason Schwartzman. Schwartzman has lived an amazing life and I just found out this minute he was drummer for phantom planet. Those guys could really wail. He’s done fine for himself since the film, most notably appearing in every wes anderson movie the guy can stick him in. And given i’m a huge wes anderson fan and jason is fantastic, that’s dandy to me.

Gideon’s roll here is about the same, a mysteroius shadow on the procedings though not built up as much, though he does sponsor a music contest our heroes take place in throughout the film which is a nice touch. Otherwise he’s still a possesive dick he’s just played diffrently by the script. In the book he is an absolute monster, a smarmy possesive nightmare who keeps women in jars, kills ramona for defying him, and gladly brags about hiding a sword in a dress because “that’s just the kind of guy I am!” Here he’s still a dick, but more in the classic final boss style more bradacio and hammy than slimy. His entire final act plays diffrent sooooo that leads us to our final portion of the review. Another Story Entirely:

At last we’ve come to our final section the plot of the film... as I said i’m not doing a full synopsis but I will break down the non-character related bits of it, what was changed and what works and what dosen’t.

The first 45 minutes is a straight up adaptation, almost page for page, of Precious Little Life, simply with a few lines cut here and there or changed up, as well as an added scene of Scott playing Ninja Ninja Revolution with knives to better establish their fighting prowess which as you probably guessed is a stuido mandate. The whole thing with Matt bursting in and Scott, up to this point a complete and total fuckwit if a charming one, easily throwing hands is funnier if it comes out of nowhere and once it has you fully just accept this is how this world works.

The rest though.. is a bit of a hurricane as what ends up being over a year in the comic.. is compresssed into a week. And while I don’t mind compressing the time scale a bit, this is way too much. By shortening things that much it makes the relationship with Ramona less meaningful and makes his decleration of love at the end come a bit too soon for me. The Power of love was something he EARNED in the comic, same with the later power of self resepect, born thorugh character growth. Here like everything i’ts just kinda sped up.

The speed doesn’t HURT the movie as a movie on it’s own: the pacing is nice and brisk, with a decent amount of time betweeen most exes, even if the last few come fast and furious, and plenty of character stuff. The characters don’t really change in situation or anything, which while making sense for the shortened timespan, lessens the impact of the journey. It’s a NECESSARY sacrifice as Ed couldn’t pack that much character stuff into 2 hours even if he had all the volumes to work with, but it IS why I prefer the comics. They just have more of an arc to them. Part of why I did this retrospective is it feels like they take you on a complete satisfying journey and all the leads end up somewhere diffrent, minorly or majorly by the end.

I will stress since it could be taken the wrong way, as is the internet’s international past time: I LIKE Scott Pilgrim VS the World. While it does strip back things I like, it gets the tone perfect, the casting is flawlesss, teh fightings are phenominal and the effects are damn fun. Ed had a tall order compacting 6 books, one of which he didn’t have access to, into one movie and did so well, and it’s well loved for a reason. But after revisiting these books for almost a full year and coming to finish this retrospective a year after the original review, I can’t help but notice all the holes in the film. It’s why I want a longer adaptation: this is great, but there’es more to be done, and so much that could be updated for the 2020′s, that I feel it deserves another shot. But this shot was a damn good one and if it’s the only adaptation we get.. i’m happy with that. It’s colorful, wonderful and it’s Scott Pilgrim. I couldn’t ask it to be anything else.

I could end the review here but hey, wouldn’t be doing my job so yeah: a LOT of the slice of life stuff is cut, and the band performacnes are stremlined into a battle of the bands contest held by gideon. And that’s what ends up casuing the film to pivot massively in the last act, as again Ed didn’t have access to more than an early draft of the script for Book 6. So instead he went his own way.

His own way still leaves scott in the same position as book 5: the band abandons him, Ramona leaves him and Gideons at his heels. The diffrence is HOW we get there> The diffrence is execution: INstead of slowly breaking up due to Stephen’s actoin, Sex Bomb Omb ditches scott when he refuses to accept the contract from gideon, having Neil replace him. Ramona also leaves Scott for Gideon leaving him in a bad place. It takes a sweet talk with Stacey, which I really DO enjoy as the graphic novels just forgot she existed because Brian got embarassed about basically writing his sister, not getting that she was still set up as important so ditiching her felt wrong. Wallace also gives him one.. while also telling Scott he’ll probably be throwing him out.

I will say the climax is easily one of the best parts of the film. The chaos Theater here has Gideon in a giant pyramid throne, still getting the vibe of “rich kid asshole treat him as a villian” across. Scott charges him and we get a fun fight with Gideons goons as Scott gets the power of love. But Scott isn’t great at it and then we get a bit change as Knives, who honestly disappears after THEY PUNCHED THE HIGHLIGHTS OUT OF HER HAIR, challenges ramona and we get the films version of the fight from volume 2.. and both find otu Scott was cheating.

The first part is decent.. but what truly makes it is the truly BRILLIANT touch Brian Lee O’Malley thought of. Like the book Ramona talks to scott though here Gideon has a control chip on her.. she literally can’t disobey him. That’s unsettling. But she reminds him of the one up.

In the comic this just brought Scott back a second after he died. Here.. it’s WAY more intresting and really spices things up: Scott essentially starts the level over thus when he revivies he’s back at the gates of the Chaos Theater, with events not yet having happened. And much like any player who has to repeate a level he does it better, remembering to tie his shoes, quiping the guard better and making geninely heartfelt statments to his friends: He apologizes to kim for being a dick (which we get a cute smile for. Aw), stephen for walking out on them and dubs young neil neil and decides he’s fighting Gideon not for ramona.. but for himself. He fights gideon better this time then apologizes to knives and ramona when they show up. While MOST of the characters don’t get as much of an arc scott still get sa decent one, taking responsiblity for his actions and thus winning as a result. It’s also REALLY fun when for the min on fight, which scott plows through this time, Kim shouts “We are sex bomb-omb and we’re here to watch Scott Pilgrim Kick this guys teeth in!” Wish that’d made it into a scene in the books truly great stuff. I just wholehearteldy love this concept and it nicely fits int the worlds video game logic.

The only part I really don’t like about the climax, tha tisn’t tied to character stuff I mentioned earlier, is how Gideon’s beaten: ramona does nothing... while Scott and KNIVES beat him, which sets up the other ending instead and really just robs ramona of any agency: she just stands there while scott and his teenage ex beat up gideon. It’s not really satisfying or fits the plot that well even with the original ending.

What does satsify me greatly...

Is after Gideon’s defeat we get Nega Scott.. and in EASILY the best gag of the film (the window one which I glossed over is also dope), the two square off while Knives and Ramona go outside.. and we hard cut to Scott and Scott laughing like old college buddies, leading to the best line of the film

“Oh we just shot the shit. We have a lot in common actually. He’s actually a really nice guy, we’re getting brunch next week. “

Flawless no notes. The ending also works with Knives getting scott to persue ramona who tries to leave for his own good and we’re left on an ambigious but hopeful note for them.

Final Thoughts:

I feel i’ve said all I need to say about the film: it’s higlhy compressed and while I love the books more.. this is still really fucking good and a godo adaptatoin, and I enjoyed it even more than I ddi 10 years ago when my loving brother took me to an early screening for it. And ironically just as I am now.. I wrote a review for it. Not good, timing and all and lost to the sands of time, but ... it’s kinda nice to come back all these years and do this for real.. and i’ts very ncie all you wonderful people have supported me doing this to the point i’ve GOTTEN to my second birthday on the blog. Thank you all. This retrospectie.. it’s been wonderful> The comic is truly amazing, the film spectacular and both have a place in my heart. I may of complained.. but i’ts because I care. Because everything ELSE is so strong the weaker points stick out like sore thumbs. But trust me if you somehow haven’t seen the movie do: treat yourself.. and thanks for reading.

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beetletricks · 4 years

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Scott Pilgrim vs the World Movie: Simple yet Amazing Choreography and Balancing Character Moments

Note: I haven’t read much of the comics so I’m just basing this off the movie itself

So after looking back on some movie adaptations I’ve watched, Jumangi, Detective Pikachu, I decided to watch the 2010 film, Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

Is it my favorite movie? Not sure. It is definitely in my Top 5 I’m sure.

Why It Hits Differently For Me Now

I knew the general premise but wasnt really interested back in 2010. This might have been because I was into movies that involved saving the day instead of getting the girl. The trailers also didn’t focus the best aspects of this movie either so theres that.

Anyway lets get started, first off...

1. Seamless Transitioning Advantages

There are so many great transitions but starting of with the top one. Using simple objects like people, buildings or poles to help progress the interactions of numerous different but fittingly simple/casual topics(in this case its Scoot talking with Knives Chau)

2. Juxtaposition to Exemplify Other Characters

Scott rapidly pulling out a scribbled drawing with one hand and Comeau continuing to be casual

Wallace being concerned about someone he barely remembers

3. Presentation Variety for Repetitive Fight Scenes

Scott has to fight 7 main villains this movie each coming to him one by one. Despite the seeming repetitive, each one is enjoyable even when ignoring the video game, comic sounds despite Scott having the same powers against everyone, except the last.

Mathew Patel

The transitions from slow-mo to fast-paced punches and close up lunges really kick off from the original tone of the movie for this first fight.

Chris Evans(I just keep calling him by the actors name)

Then we get a far shot of Scott being throw at a castle, a villain walking to get coffee with Scott vs stunt doubles offscreen but having fighting sounds. Also another nice juxtaposition with Scott giving a non-estactic wow cuts while Evan skatboards on a dangerous grind.

Todd Ingram

Todd was basically overpowered so it makes sense his defeat would be less combat based.

Roxy Richter

Probably my favorite fight with it not only being the most fast-paced fight overall but also getting to see things such as Ramona wield her hammer so smoothly, Roxie throwing it with her whip but then getting counterattacked, etc.

Katayanagi Twins

Dont have much to say about the twins fight but this shot right here is awesome.

Gideon

Gideon is able to stand out by being built up far more than the others before the actual fight against Scott. Also interesting to see him in different outfits. Also make each of the three fights with him entertaining.

1st one Scott loses against first clash Gideon fight and it ends up being fists

2nd one Scott wins the first clash by gaining the power of self-respect,(symbolized by a badass sword)

owning up to things he knows is wrong for a change

3rd one is Scott teaming up with Knives and Gideon who uses his true power

4. Overall Funny Scenes

#scott pilgrim #vs the world #movie #transitioning #come aumentare il proprio metabolismo #wallace wells #gideon graves #roxie richter #chris evans #todd ingram #mathew patel #edgar wright #michael cera

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slutinacan · 4 years

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Black Sheep

envy adams x fem!reader

Warnings: kinda suggestive, not too heavy. (Sorry) ((kinda out of character for my kind of blog (((uwu horny sideblog))) but i just felt like writing this idk)). Swearing. A droplet of angst in the beginning but iT DOESN'T LAST TOO LONG I PROMISE.

Prompt: You've seemed to make it away from the heaviness of the group's troubles with Ramona's evil exes, and in an angered fit after getting in a brief argument with Scott due to his sheer recklessness, allowing not only himself to be put in danger, but everyone around him, you clasp Wallace's hand and race downtown to a local venue in high annoyance, only wanting to get away and enjoy the night away from all of this havoc in a flood of rock bands. Of course, everything starts out fine, as it always does, but as soon as an unexpected guest performer arrives onstage, you begin to receive more attention than expected.

Note: I'm aware that there is a shit ton of magical realism in this entire franchise, especially in the movie seeing as it was derived from a very vibrant comic series, so I'll try to incorporate as much of that in it as I can, promise. I'm not very good with magical realism/fantasy yet but I'll give it my all! Enjoy!

---

"You know what, Pilgrim? Fuck you." You let out an angry breath after his previous remark, tears flooding into your eyes.

You stood with nothing but sad anger running through your system, watching his face slowly cloud down into regret at his words, the room physically deflated at the broken atmosphere.

"I get that you want to be happy, and I am in full support of that, I just want you to be happy, Scott. But, when it comes at the cost of the people who want nothing but the best for you? Your friends? The people who have had it up to here with your shit but have always loved you too much to ever mind it because that's what pals are fucking for? You're too reckless. You always have been. Keep your head screwed on right for once and fucking look at what is in front of you, Pilgrim. Wake up." You ranted with a huff, fist clenched tight.

Scott made a move to step forward and take your hand, his own eyes teary, but you pulled back. Making a move for the door you grabbed your keys, and coat, without even taking the time to listen to his pleas. Your insides were boiling hot with rage but the exterior of your body stung cold with bitten ice that practically chilled the room below average temperature.

"Wallace. You want a ride or not, nerd." You asked, stepping outside and already finding yourself halfway to your car already as the wind kicking beneath your feet only accentuated your angry swiftness through the bitten evening.

With that, Wallace sprung up from his seat, grabbing his jacket, house key, and scarf. Ramona let out a quiet scoff of disbelief towards the brown haired boy, seeing as he was actually following you. Though, he gave nothing but a shrug to the group with a small, apologetic, look in return; then, he was out the door after sending one knowing look to Scott that said it all: When we get back, you're fixing this. All you, guy.

---

"Tickets please." The front attendee asked, his voice bellowing in your ears, breaking through the burning ice and sadness clouding your senses, chipping away at the practically frozen armor you guarded yourself with. Falling back into reality, you maintained your focus.

"Oh yeah, sorry, here you go." You refocused on his outstretched hand, placing both your ticket, and Wallace's into the presented palm. He tore off the stubs, grabbing two identification wristbands, and handed you both which you took with a small thank you.

Wallace took notice of your form, chilled and quiet. Soft and small and entirely too timid to be considered normal. You looked present but as if your brain was drifting far, far, away from the current scene. He nudged you with his elbow, sending a reassuring smile as you were cleared to enter the venue, being the lucky few to get there first at that. That alone chipped away at the frosted armor encasing your haunted form once again.

"Look, hun," he leaned against you reassuringly as you two snagged a spot near the front, his hands deep in his own pockets seeing how unusually cold the night was. His muscles tightened up to constrict any warmth in his body and keep it there, now feeling the bitter, unwavering, depressive, frost radiating from you.

"I think you were totally right back there. He's been really reckless as of lately, more so than usual, and yes, it has put a damper on things and, yeah, it has put his loved ones in danger. Also, yeah, its not really an ideal situation at all, completely unruly in fact. It is completely messy and depressing and unfair and it has put everyone he knows, we know, in harms way-" "Wallace is this supposed to be helping me? Because, I love and appreciate you and all, but you are absolutely shit at pep-talks-"

The two of you paused seeing the room already crowded with punk teens, adults, and misfits of the kind all murmuring and diving into their own conversations as the lights dimmed, one spotlight on the host of the venue who stood in the middle of the stage. He was all that could be seen, the light focused on his warm yellow jacket and his matching scarf. He was usually very peppy but seemed just as cold as everyone else on this frosted evening, legs visibly trembling as the ice chilled his scrawny form.

"Welcome everyone! Thanks for coming out tonight, we're real excited to show you what treats we have in store tonight because boy do we have a surprise." He grinned through his chattering teeth, tossing a thumbs up.

You watched intently, not as phased as all the screaming teens beside you had been. You toned him out. In fact, you toned everyone out. The host, Wallace, the screaming crowd of one hundred around you, all became muted. Your eyes honed in on the silhouettes that could not be identified in the shadows behind the current announcer. It seemed as though your concern for everything began to wear thinner and thinner as the cold night caressed your face to numbness, the fortress of ice around your body stilling the need to express, slowing you down and leaving you haunted.

You felt as though you could only bring your eyes to move, watching as the once obnoxious host started backing up off stage into the sidelines. You followed his mouth, watching every shaky trace of a pronunciation through chattering teeth mouthed something that visibly brightened the room and completely tore through your brain as the crowd began an uproar of excitement.

"Please welcome, The Clash at Demonhead!" His lips touched together slowly to form the words and you watched every second of it until he ran offstage, your eyes darting to the main portion of the venue to see the lights flicker on into a warm orange and red hue. Wallace, the crowd beside you, was long forgotten and you stood still among the chaos, relapsing the events that occured throughout the day. You shut your eyes to block it out, and reopened them to meet burning hazel. Your bitter, iced, armor suffered a severe blow at that, those hot eyes tearing right into your chest.

(Oh yeah)

Hello again

Friend of a friend

I knew you when

Your eyes were focused on one thing, the blonde who stood tall and confident in the middle of the stage, bright, pouty, red lips clouding your vision as she sung the opening words strictly, her own eyes on you.

Time moved faster and faster yet it felt like she was all you could see. A flame huddled in the cold dark, chipping further and further at you. You stood still, enjoying the music at that, but only standing to watch her while the excited chaos ensued around you as the music picked up.

She only broke your gaze to dance around the stage, completely strong in her movements and unwavering under the still present ice within the evening. She remained untouched.

During a small instrumental breakdown she strutted closer to the edge of the stage, right where you stood. You watched her, all of her. Her mouth and the way it moved as she sung intimately into the microphone, the way her warmth enveloped you and brushed across your paled face, completely melting any icy exterior you had left, any fight you had left.

Send you my love on a wire

Lift you up, every time,

everyone, ooh,

pulls away, ooh

From you

She was face to face with you now, on her knees in front of you like a panther while her aura burned into you unforgivingly. You gave in, sending a small smile and nodding your head along with the music which contrasted your haunted, frozen, stilled persona from before. You let go, and gave into the warmth. You were sure that there were tons of fans seething in jealousy and in simultaneous excitement seeing her so close to you, and of course they were probably screaming and jumping into chaos, but she was all you could see. With the next few lyrics, you mouthed the words along with her.

Send you my love on a wire

Lift you up, every time, everyone, ooh, pulls away, ooh

It's a mechanical bull, the number one

You'll take a ride from anyone

Everyone wants a ride, pulls away, ooh, from you

She smirked widely once the song slowed, then leaned forward and just managed to catch your mouth in a heated kiss as the lights faded into darkness. You melted completely, kissing back with fever at how overwhelmingly, comfortably, numbing the warmth was. She grabbed your collar, pulling you close so her mouth was at your ear.

"Meet me behind the venue in 20"

#envy adams #scott pilgrim #scott pilgram vs the world #lets go lesbians #gay #brie larson #brie larson imagine #brie #larson #love #lesbian #romance #ramona flowers

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim Vs the Universe or So Sad So Very Very Sad

Hello all you happy Scottaholics! And welcome back to Scottrospective, my 8 part look at Scott Pilgrim: all 6 volumes of the comic as well as the game and movie just in time for their respective 10th Anniversaries. If your just joining us or needa quick refresher, here are links to the other four parts, in order: Precious Little Life, Vs The World (Comic), Infinite Sadness, and last month’s look at my favorite volume Gets It Together. And if that’s not enough to fill your belly with Scotty Goodness, hop over to my patreon, patreon.com/popculturebuffet. There you’ll find reviews of all the content I didn’t have time for in the retrospective proper: Free Scott Pilgrim, The Wonderful World of Kim Pine, Monica Beetle, Style, and the bonus comic strips. It’s only a dollar to get access to the bonus reviews, and every bit you can give not only helps me make these reviews int he first place, but gets me closer to my stretch goals, the 25 and 30 dollar ones including looks at O’Malley’s Other Works: Lost At Sea and Seconds for the former and Snotgirl for the latter.

But more than plugging my past and paid works, there’s something else far more important I need to get to before I get into this one: Thank You. No Seriously thank all of you who have been reading these, liking them. My Precious Little Life Review is easily one of the most liked things i’ve ever had on this blog, getting more viewers every day, and last month’s look at Gets it Together is STILL racking up likes. Given most of my non-duck reviews, paid for and on my own time, tend to be ignored half the time, this just warms my heart. It shows me two great things: that even after a decade Scott Pilgrim still has a huge following and given how young this platform tends to skew that it’s gaining more fans every day, and that people care about what I have to say about htis wonderful comic. It really touches me to both know my voice matters and that something I truly loved as a teen and still do now is STILL picking up more and more fans. What i’m saying is you guys are the best and I wouldn��t be doing these reviews without your support of my very hard work. These are some of the hardest reviews i’ve done at times, but seeing you all enjoy them makes it all worth it.

As for the Volume itself there’s something I just gotta get off my chest right away: I HATED this volume when it came out. To understand why you have to consider my mental state: I was a teenager at the time, in my junior year of high school. Scott Pilgrim was my goddamn world: while I was picking up comics monthly at the time this was honestly the first north american comic I loved and obessed over and Scott and friends were like family to me. To an awkward teen who couldn’t talk to girls, struggled to keep the video game club a friend founded together in a way that in hindsight was wholly unecessary, and getting messed with due to my anger issues by friend, foe and frenemy alike, Scott was my port in the storm. A sunny version of Tornoto where I could retreat to to feel at peace.

So yeah this shattered the fuck out of that peace and was essentially one long slow motion kick to the balls to a younger me: Hollie gets derailed and horribly betrays Kim, runing my faviorite characters life and leading to her LEAVING, Scott and Ramona’s relationship crumbles, the band breaks up , and the volume ends with Gideon still gunning for our hero because life hadn’t punched him in the face enough for one month. I was livid, not stopping the series, obviously, but upset that everything i’d grown to care about was basically gone in a flash and couldn’t understand WHY O’Malley would fucking do this to me. This volume was also what kept me from re-reading the books for as long as I did as while the rest had fond memories all the ones I had of this one were pure misery.

But by the time i re-read it in december of last year I had two important things in my hands that helped me truly enjoy this one: The first was Volume 6 itself: knowing things would work out, that most of the bad stuff would be undone and in a truly awesome and satisfying way helped.

The other thing was the perspective that came with growing older: For one as an adult while I still like Scott as a character and find him intresting I no longer look up to him, nor put stock in his hapiness for his own. Sure I still care about characters and relate to some, but Bojack Horseman taught me the hard way you CAN’T put all your hopes in a character’s fate or them getting better for you to get better.

The other is that while this volume again is pretty bleak after a while.. it’s also NECESSARY. Part of the series charm is i’ts realisim and a sad part of real life is people can drift apart from you, and things can change seemingly all at once. And things moving the way they do is necessary for the ending: every step and move here puts things where they need to be for the final chapter. The pain our heroes go through is necessary so they can all grow.. except Stephen and Wallace. Stephen sucks and Wallace dosen’t need to change. He does need his own spinoff. But for Scott, Ramona and Kim the trials to come are necessary to make them into their best selves by series end.

So join me under the cut as we get sad so very very sad, this is Scott Pilgrim vs the Universe.

Precious Little Life: We open with Scott’s Birthday! Hit it MC Chris!

youtube

But yes it’s septmeber and Scott is now 24 years old. Also Julie is there because presumibly Stephen dredged her out of her swamp for the evening despite Julie likely not wanting to be there and Scott sure a shell not wanting her there. He vows that he will be the best 24 year old ever...... yeah let’s take a brief look into the future to see how that pans out

But we have a full volume and more metaphorical rakes to whack Scott in the face before that paticular one.

A MONTH AND A FEW DAYS LATER

It’s the day of the dead, whoa ho way down in Tornoto. It’s hosted by Satan Herself, who dosen’t realize the holiday for hags was yesterday. This is for remembering the dead and rising out of the grave to go resuce your young wards by ramming a bunch of guys in butterfly costumes with your car or stealing your children’s kidneys. This is Rat Girl’s new place, a fancy loft she and 3 other girls went on to throw the best parties beaause of course. She’s also a bitch to our hero and heroine because of course.

But Scott soon has more important things to worry about: Ramona spots his next two opponents.. the twins hinted at last time, Kyle and Ken Kataynagi, Perfect Jerk and Handsome Asshat respectively.

Kyle and Ken are easily the least intresting of the 7 exes. With the other 4 so far having been a loveable ham, a stoic movie star whose suprisingly nice and dies via skateboard, a gloriously douchey and dumb psychic evil version of our much more loverable dumb douche with personal connections to both him and Ramona, and Roxy who was genuinely sympathetic, held back by her own selfishness and anger.. we get.. two smug assholes who use robots. Their not UNINTRESTING, the robots have cool designs and the fight with them is genuinely exciting.. but they just don’t have the charisma or personal factor. Their jsut two assholes ramona dated at the same time who happen to know more about her well guarded past than the other exes and are more liable to bring it up.. and even then it’s not anything new as Envy pulled similar tactics far more intrestingly in volume 3. THey don’t ruin the volume or anything, thier fine, but I just wish O’Malley had done more. Especially since he clealry had more intresting ideas with them: the sound battle we saw in the movie was an early draft of this and one early draft had Scott’s previously unseen brother Laurence working with them. I don’t knowWHY he scrapped that as it raises the stakes and makes this far more personal for Scott. Which at this point is what the exes SHOULD be: Todd and Roxy BOTH were more personal threats, Todd being his ex’s boyfriend and first love and Roxy being a genuine competior for Ramona. These guys again are just two douchers who show up because we need 7 douchers to complete the doucher circle.

So the twins declare their not going to fight scott.. and instead send a tiny robot to fight him. Awww. But for this fight O”Malley does something really intresting and creative.. he dosen’t focus on it. No really Ken and Kyle are dicks to Ramona so Kim wisely gets her out of there, and the two have a casual talk on the balcony while Ramona smokes. It’s some fun banter between the two that both shows why their shipped to all hell. The two just play off each other really damn well. Though we also get Craphole asking people if they want to come watch Scott get beat up because the worst.

Something important character stuff comes up though: As was shown last time at her rightful rage that Stephen HAD an opportunity to book a gig and kept refusing it for his fecking album, Kim is still fairly salty about the whole recording an album bullshit. The biggest part of it..

It’s something you really DON’T expect to here coming out of kim: that she really LIKED the band. But beneath the pillar of salt she puts out daily... these were her friends, this was getting to do something creative and passionate, and it was a break from the daily grind. Even if her job isn’t TERRIBLE, getting to watch movies and hang out with her best friend Clerks style.. it’s still a retail job and those still weigh on you.. though frankly i’d take one of those over food service but sadly tha’ts what i get most of the time. This was fun.. and Stephen ripped that away from her for his own selfish reasons. No one else in the band really cared about making an album.. if Stephen REALLY wanted to find a more professional band.. then he should’ve just told them so Scott and Kim could find someone else to do guitars for them. Instead he forced them into doing something they don’t want to do and refuses to actually play shows, which COULD help both perfect songs for the album version and get them new fans for said upcoming album and provide them recurring venues to SELL said album, because he really just wants to be with Joseph and fuck anyone else. Stephen is really just an inhernetly selfish git and i’ll get more into that in a bit. But first Wallace has a text for Scott.

Now I COULD have just skipped over this.. but I didn’t want to. Plus we dont’ se Wallace for a while in this story so i’m taking what I can get.

So back to Stephen being a repugnant ass. I’ve been waiting for this scene for the entire retrospective. I”ve hinted at it, and largely blamed it for why I hate him so damn much. The time is nigh to explain WHY.

Stephen is with Knives, as the two are close friends and such. Stephen expalins Sex Bomb-Omb isn’t playing because he and the personfication of bitchiness broke up. Which knives points out is for...

But it’s clear from context this was the LAST time. Why he still got invited I dunno, plot convience. So far so normal.. until Stephen picks up that Knives is STILL hung up on Scott. Which is understandable crushes can last a while but i’ts equally understandable that Stephen is utterly baffled by it. Which I get, I didn’t make an entire tom lucitor retropsecitve because I liked that his relationship with Star ended with him stepping aside due to what the show thought was “true wuv” but what comes off instead as his self loathing casuing him to blame himself for a realtionship that’s crumbling for reasons that aren’t his fault.

And his actions here are incredibly well meant: He bluntly gives Knives the wake up call she DOES need: Scott cheated on her, he dated her because she was easy to date, strung her along for a bit while seeing someone else, then dumped her with not one care for her well being. That is stuff she NEEDS to get into her head so she can move on. She needs to see him for what he IS and not for what she’s built him up as in her head. And while yeah his rant DOSNE’T take into account the fact Scott geninely tried to make up for his actions in volume 3, Stephen wasn’t there for that and Knives probbably didn’t tell him about it. So from his point of view scott broke her heart and did nothing.. and evne IF he knew that, Scott still hasn’t tried to do anything since despite Knives still being obessed with him nor come clean to her or Ramona at any point. Scott deserves this call out and the consequences that come with it.

So your probably wondering WHY I hate Stephen because of this scene when he’s you know, RIGHT. Well it’s simple: being right dosen’t save you from being a MASSIVE hypcorite. He’s railing on Scott for cheating and hurting someone.. when he cheated on Julie and would’ve hurt her if she had the capacity for human emotion, empathy, or self awarness. The ending of the last volume and how bad, even for them, their relationship was implied the hell out of it, with him nervous when she brings up being paranoid over knives.. as if he WAS cheating. on One Face just not with a teenage girl but a grown ass man who hates everyone as much as BLARARARGAGAG does.

Not only that.. but he was with Julie for the SAME DAMN reasons Scott was with Knives: it was easy. Now I WILL grant Stephen some sympathy: he’s a queer man and as one myself, bi for the record, I GET how fucking hard it is to come to terms with that, that what you thought you were isn’t ENITRELY true or, if Stephen is gay and not bi or pan, ENIRELY FALSE. So I do have some care that it was hard for him to sort all this out. I do and that Jospeh could’ve seduced him or what not. We don’t have all the context here. But he STILL cheated at the end of the day instead of telling her he was queer until MONTHS later. And why yes the fact I have to feel bad for JULIE does make it that much worse. And yes their relationsihp COULD simply be that toxic or she could’ve gaslit him, but it seemed more like their relationship was messy breakups and getting back together over and over. While Julie IS vile, she’s not a domestic abuser mental or physical as far as I can tell. She’s a bitch and their relatioship is unehlathy but there was no indication their relationship involved gaslighting or evne phsyical violence: it was just fucked from minute one. So yeah he stayed in an awful relationship beacuse it was easier than coming out, when he should’ve broken it off as soon as it was clear he and Joseph were actually going somewhere. Waiting while he figured out who he was is one thing, tha’ts fiar, but cheating on someone just because you don’t have the nerve to break it off with them when their genuinely awful to you and your only hurting them as much as they can be hurt by dragging this out... yeah that just makes you an ass.

Another point of contention is that he NEVER called Scott out on this. Never. Not even after this scene. Never encouraged him to tell Ramona or apologize to Knives, again he didn’t know Scott already had tried that. Never gets on him.. he just ignores Scott’s shitty behavior like eveyrone else and unlike Kim, whose still got unresolved feelings and is at the very least clearly bothered by his shitty behavior, and Neil, whose young and thus like me likely looked up to Scott at the time, he dosen’t have an excuse other than “Well I don’t want to ruin our friendship by actually calling him out when he does something objectivionally awful.” Especially since Wallace DID actually take action: he didn’t break up the relationship or say anythign to Ramona, which is wrong... but he did tell scott flat out after his first date with Ramona to break up with Knives. And when Scott chickned out of that, Wallace gave him the ultimatium, may it live in empathy, to do so or he WOULD tell Ramona. And at least Wallace has a motive for not telling Ramona other than “I don’t want to risk my friendship with a guy I really don’t care about and think is shitty”. He wanted to see Scott recover from Envy, something Stephen never gave ONE. SHIT. ABOUT. He saw Ramona was good for him and knew telling her, while the RIGHT thing to do, would severely harm Scott, and by volume 4 leave him homeless. Plus Wallace frankly enabled him for some time anyway, letting him live at their place rent free and paying for all his food and frequently letting Scott steal his credit card. WIth Wallace at least while it’s not the RIGHT move, it’s understandable and complicated vs Stephen who really dosen’t seem to like or get along with Scott after volume 1, suddenly cares what happens to his relationship.

And what proves this... is this little exchange that ends the conversation.

Knives despite her issues, despite blinding herself to how Scott treated her, despite everything... thinks Ramona should know. And she’s right. And Stephen KNOWS THIS. He knows it was the right thing to do and just.. takes a swig instead of admitting he’s a fucking hypocrite or explaining himself in any way. He NEVER cared about Ramona’s feelings or how this would effect her or saw her as important in any way shape or form. Kim at least clearly feels guilty. Wallace clearly is only doing so because it’s better for both her and Scott that their together and is a flawed human being. Stephen.. just dosen’t do so out of some masculine bullshit code of not ratting out your friend and his own cowardace. He clearly COULD go walk up to Ramona right now and tell her, but he won’t. And again I don’t buy he honeslty cares enough about Scott for their friendship to TRULY be enough of a factor to stop that. Fuck. Stephen. Stills.

So Scott wins naturally, but is bummed there’s no reward.. but Stephen points out there’s tons of free food over yonder so he noms before he and Ramona leave.

We get some cute domestic bits with Scott and ramona: Scott playing games on her phone all day, the two cooking dinner, and Scott admititng he hasn’t thought of envy at all. “I have you now”. Though through it there are some signs of unease: Scott finds a letter to Gideon, and Ramona asks about her hair and stares out into the window. Nice little hints that even before the big bomb abotu to drop she’s not at ease.. she loves Scott.. but it’s hard for her to let herself BE happy. It’s easy to wager she wasn’t for most of her life.

Can’t Face Up

So next we find Sex Bomb-Omb working on the album. Or rather Stephen and Joseph are. Scott and Kim are praying for death but death won’t come and Kim wonders why the fuck this isn’t finished. Joseph wants her out of his house... forgetting that Kim lives in said house.

Still his expressoin implies he’s going to do a murder on her if she stays in the room and since Drummers are hard to come by Stephen spirits them to kim’s room for a band meeting. Turns out they do have a gig but naturally Rosemary’s Baby booked it... and they haven’t practiced in months because Stephen’s a moron. He theorizes it’s Freddy’s Revenge, which is admitely probably valid though Kim can TELL something worse happened Stephen won’t cop to because he’s a piece of shit. I spent several paragraph’s establishing that. They try blaying and two sucktacular minutes i’ts clear their fucked sunday.

So after a scene of Knives trying HARD to justify Scott’s actions and blame htem on Ramona, to no success, we get one of my faviorite parts of this book: Scott rambling on for god knows how long about the x-men while Ramona gets dressed and is presumibly barely listneing.

I relate so hard to this it hurts. While not this era I wll GLADLY go on and on about X-Men and anything X-Adjacent at any goddamn opportunity and anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis and you know this. I need to tlak more x-men outside of my slowly failing New X-Men retrospective (Which is on the back burner because no one seeems to genuinely care after chapter one). If I did have a signifgant other, they would probably end up in a situation like this quite a lot and i’d have no shame about it.

I also love this scene even more as while I DID love x-men at the time, I wasn’t quite the mega fan I was, nor as familiar with Claremont’s long, epic and often fucking weird in the special wonderful way only comics can run. Given I OWN over half his run at this point, that has changed. Though oddly not this part. So not only do I get Scott’s talking about x-men I Know what SPECIFICALLY.

And for the unitatied, a quick explination of what the fuck Scott’s going on and on about: In the late 80′s, the x-men fought a reality warping malevolent trickster god named the Adversary. IN order to beat him their friend forget had to perform a cermony to lock his ass away that required willingly given life forces. The X-Men did REALLY fucking die.. but the Goddess Roma, daughter of Merlin and enemy of the advesary brought them back to life. With their deaths having been broadcast on live tv, and with tons of dangerous enemies at their heels, the X-Men choose to let the world continue to think they were dead so they could hit said enemies where it hurt.

SO this is where Scott’s story comes in:The X-Men’s first mission was clearing out the reavers, a bunch of racist cyborgs, from a ghost town which they took over as their base. As Scotty said they traveled all over the world, fought aliens, more racists, and then went to New York as it literally went ot hell. it’s a LOT and I haven’t read most of that era. I just know about it. I have read that last part though: the x-men were ambushed while wolveirne was away by said racist cyborgs so Psylocke shoved them through the siege perilous, a gate thingy romana gave them that would give them a new life and amnesia and such, leaving wolveirne to get crucified till Jubilee, who’d been hiding in their base gary busey style, freed him. The two would travel the world, find psylocke body swapped which is why she was asian for several decades, and get into general stuff for a few years real time till the X-Men slowly reunited. And you probbaly dind’t need to hear all of that but your life is better for knowing it.

As you can tell Ramona’s discontent is mounting. And probably not because of Scott rambling about x-men. Last night he told her about the time Magneto beat them all because they stupidly rushed him one at a time then forced them into high tech chairs while a robotic nanny babbied them and then esecaped because shut up before fighting magneto, getting surrounded by lava and having beast ASSUME they were dead because fuck actually coming back and searching just in case like a rational human being because magma or no the x-men have surivived worse, including the depths of space, and restoring all of reality from scratch. I may of just read those issues tonight.

She procedes to make things worse for our hero as when he asks fo rher advice.. she reveals she dosen’t like his band.. and while she means nothing BY that, she’s nice about it, telling him his band sucks days before a sudden show where you guys eat a lot isn’t something you do. Wallace is naturally even less helpful and maybe his not liking the band is why we barely see him interact. Maybe he just figured Stepheen was on the fence sexuality wise but wasn’t willing to put up with Julie to test that. I dunno.

So at the restraunt Stephen’s a dick, refusing to help Scott with his problems. WHich for once are legitamte as he worries abotu Ramona keeping secrets. He just wants to talk about hte band.. but 48 or something hours after this he has no real plan.

Scott mopes to Kim about Ramona and she has some sage advice for him...

Also thing one and thing two are at the bar with a remote. This cannot end well... granted givne our heroes are not at all prepared and are playing two diffrent songs, this was never going to end well.

And things only get worse for Scott in the bathroom.. he’s not there.. but his girlfriend and his ex are. Knives tries to work it out.. but Ramona being a bit short with her, which is fair given Knives tried to stab her a bunch a few months back and never apologized, leading to a quick fight.. but with Knives heart not in it this time and Ramona pissed and this time NOT confsued as to what the hell ihs going on, it ends with Ramona slamming knives into a wall... and Knives sadly revealing the truth to Ramona...

The scene hits like a truck with both devistated.. Ramona not having realized Scott with this shitty.. and Knives FINALLY accepting that he is. Finally letting her obession with him drop and realize what he was and what he did and let the full impact hit. The last part also hits hard “No One Else Would’ve Told You’. It’s a sad hard truth and it’s CLEARLY something that hits both women hard. For Knives it’s realizing Kim and Stephen, who she’s increidbly close to at this point, both don’t have the stomach to do the right thing, and thus hid this from her and Ramona. Stephen DID tell her.. but he still didn’t have the guts to tell RAMONA nor the actual care. It’s the realization the people she looked up to truly let her down and that she had to do what they couldn’t, even if it tore her apart to do it. For Ramona it’s realizing her closest friends outside of Scott could’ve told her and never did. No matter how close she’s gotten to Kim and Wallace, neither gave a fuck about her rights or her need to know.

So Ramona is rattled and barely speaks while Scott has been fighting anothe rrobot and ends the gig accidnetly smashing his bass. Stephen is pissy with him and blames hi mfor runing the gig, which turned out to be a trap anyway complete with fliers.

Ramona decides to gently throw him out as he forgot his keys while his other friends won’t house him leaving him with the one friend he has who dosen’t hate him right now. WALLACE!

The Glow:

So at Casa De Welles, Wallace has some buddy time, not making any bones about the fact Ramona clearly threw Scott out for the night and wearing a neat robe. Scott mopes about the fact he hasn’t met mobile whose apparenlty on the astral plane. I wonder if he has any buisness with Emma.. I mean the x-men did live in san fran sicsio but given decimation didn’t have many psychics. Might’ve been tryign to get another one. THey didn’t have a whole island that walks like a man yet. And while Wallace wasn’t in much of a coaching mood last time he is willing to help. He couldn’t get bupkiss on the twins since Scott can’t even remember their names, but he did pull off a miracle. Despite their being a million Gideons in New York.. Wallace found THE Gideon. Granted all he got was his full name, Gideon Gordon Graves, and a few burry photos, one with Ramona confirming this is our douche, but given he had only a first name and an ex to work with this is some damn fine work. Wallace asks scott about his future with Ramona but he just.. has no earthly idea because of course he dosen’t. He hasn’t REALLY thought about what comes after beating the exes because he never thinks anything through. Interesting stuff The next day Scott meets up with Kim at No Account Video and we get our first, and I mean literally first, indiciation things are falling apart with her and Hollie. Scott wants to say hi, Kim refuses him and gives a smart ass comment when he asks if them being roomates isn’t working out. He wasn’t even being a dick it’s just clear SOMETHING bad’s going on she won’t talk about because she puts up walls around hrself on a GOOD day and this clearly isn’t one.

It gets worse when they stop by Stephen’s place only to find Neil whose both taken up a combination of smoking and moping in a dark room. Never a good sign. Nor is Stephen apparenlty being at band practice.. meaning either he lied to Neil about where he went.. or he already started the band we’ll see him with next volume and is already stabbing his friends in the back. There wasn’t much to like about the guy to BEGIN with, but his behavior just gets worse with every volume and it’s reached it’s apex here. The speech was shitty enough, I spent several paragraphs explaning why, but the rest of his behavior isn’t much better. He abandoned two people who were, for god knows what reason loyal to him and abandoned the band because of some bearded asshole probably encouraging him to.

We also get some telling behavior on Kim’s part. Whlie she’s usually morose around Scott in the face of this both just hang out, it’s plesant. She even smiles when she asks if it’s going to be a regular occurance when he stays with her that night. Granted she brings back her frown soon after, but as has been clear her feelings for him never really went away entirely, and this is the closest the two have been in volumes, just enjoying each others company. It’s also telling that Scott trusts kim with a favor.

We see the favor the next page: Kim hangs out with Ramona.. and Scott marchs in completely on purpose soon after. Granted Kim probably didn’t know THIS was part of the plan, and it’s mildly stupid.. but it DOES show progress for Scott. Keep in mind his usual tactic is “avoid the fuck out of it and hope it goes away’ So ACTUALLY wanting to talk about things and find her again, and not doing it in a creepy way but simply drawing her out with a friend, shows SOME maturlity. It’s still not the most mature.. but with Ramona clearly not wanting him at their place, her work not having a set location as she just picks stuff up and drops it off (And even if she’s picking up packages at the post office we don’t know which one or if there’s multiple and even if we did scott sure as hel l does not), he was out of options. It also WORKS, with Ramona breaking her mopeynesss to laugh and Kim stunned it didn’t just piss her off further.

So we find out what happened with Hollie when Scott brings up jason. She points out they were dating but... welllllllll

Yeah... as you could probably tell I do not like this plot point at all. For one thing we never really got to KNOW Jason, and with him and Hollie getting a little too cozy at the end of the last volume...

It’s clear his ONLY roll in the story was to be there so Hollie could betray Kim in some way. And look I get a LOT in this series happens while we’re not looking, ti’s part of it’s charm. Things not pausing for the side cast is a trope I enjoy: it allows some things to progress faster and allows for some intresting stories when the main cast catches up. Steven Unvierse and Ducktales both used this well as does Scott Pilgrim but all three weren’t immune to someitnes goofing up and taking it too far.

This whole situation is that: Hollie is a character I got attached to: She had a great report with kim, they were really close and she offered her a place to stay when it was clear she was miserable with the four horseman of the bitchpocalypse she lived with. So while having her suddenly heel turn is realistic... it just feels thorughly unsatisfying. We do not see Hollie again after she’s sudeenly derailed, so we never get to see what she’s apparenlty REALLY like or get any explination why this happened. Suddenly Kim’s best friend is a douchebag even though it makes no sense for her character. Just because in real life people can turn out to be really shitty on a dime dosen’t mean it’s a neat thing to READ in a story and it feels like a waste of what was one of the series best side characters. And granted i’ve been through FAR worse treatment of side characters, trust me but this one still blows to this day and if there is a netflix adaptation this either needs to not happen or have actual depth. Seriously Netflix your adapting everything else, get on the bus already.

Scott is GENUINELY apologetic, we’ve rarely seen him this nice but he genuinely feels bad for her.. and unlike Stephen’s thing it’s okay to feel shitty someone got cheated on even if you were a cheater in the past. As I said Stephen wasn’t wrong about how Scott treeted knives.. he just also was trying to take moral high ground which Knives proved he absolutely did not have in seconds.

This triggers Ramona’s glow, the squggly line thing that shows up over her head ocasoinally.. and while Ramona grills Scott... Kim just finally asks what the hells up with her head. Scott’s reaction is “OH good you guys see it too”. Kim does try to show it to ramona but it’s gone by then and she drops it for now and outside encourages her to come to Julie’s latest shitty party.. I mean their miserable but at least it gives thems omething to do

So we get another instalment of “Scott rambles about the X-Men” or New Mutants in this case as we’re talking about Magik, Aka Illyana Rasputin

So for the long version: The X-Men were staying at a creepy temple that Magneto had been working out of beause the mansion was being repaired. Colossus, everyone’s favorite Russian and Deadpool co-star, had his kid sister Illyana with him as Arcade, a ginger maniac assasian whose gimmick is creating elaborate murder theme parks, kidnapped her in a plot to get the x-men to fight Dr. Doom for him. Given this was during the Cold War they coudln’t exactly take her back, so she stayed with the X-Men and her beloved big brother.

So naturlaly the spooky temple decorated in Cthulu’s had a portal to hell in it and an evil and genirc looking fucker named Belasco kidnapped her to a hell dimension known as Limbo> the X-Men went after her as you’d expect and things got WEIRD as due to some complicated and weird time dialition stuff I sitll don’t quite understand there ended up being two copies of the x-men: ours who came in right after, and a second batch who stayed there for about 7-8 years and got warped by Bellsaco’s magic as he killed or changed most of them. As a result Storm became a sorcerer to fight back, Kitty Pryde became some sort of cat creature and Kurt became a creepy evil version of himself. Illyana stayed htere, learned magics from both storm and asshole, learned to fight from cat kitty, and eventually escaped after a lot of horrible bullshit, hardnered and with her soul scarred from it, now a teenager. She joined the New Mutants, the training class of x-men in the comics, soon after. She’s a member agian in present day, one of the great captains of Krakoa, and one of the two co-leaders of Krakoa’s younger mutants, i.e. 20 something to teens and kids.

This is the best of the two scenes as the narrative , or at least Scott’s versions parallels Ramona’s own; Getting taken in by an evil man and feeling tainted by that.

So at the party Ramona runs into Neil whose a dick about it and with some girl. She WAS going to be fleshed out more in the original draft but Brian ended up scrapping it for time, but does regret it. It’s here we get Neil’s face punchingly dickish comment that’s also a massive hint as to Stephen’s sexuality.

Yeah even if Stephen’s been an UTTERLY shitty friend to him.. this was uncalled for even for the late 2000′s. What a prick. I do like the arc of Neil slowly falling apart though getting more and more bitter as his old friends abandoned him casually, especailly Stephen. While his comment was still HORRIBLY unwarranted even with Stephen being a dipshit.

Speaking of assholes we get our last major with Julie who berates Scott for grabbing some booze and brings in the twist. I’m.. i’m not even bothering to give her an insluting and weird nickname. She’s still a HORRIBLE piece of shit, as she brought Scott’s enemies there to try and beat him to death for her own amusment and berated him for getting booze at a party she CLEARLY expected him to come to, but she’s ALMOST gone. Seriously after this she’s GONE for the volume and barely in the rest of the series. So i’d rather celebrate FINALLY having earned my freedom over worrying about her any more than i have to. Cue the music!

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So with that Kyle.. or is it Ken.

But the blonde one needles ramona, giving her her faviorite booze and telling her “this is all just temproary”

So Ramona gets all glowy.. and Kim gets her phone out....

The Universe Fights Back So in a random bedroom Ramona gives up the ghost: SHe DOES know what that is she just can’t tell Kim. Kim accepts it and they share some drinks. Scott, after beheading the douche bros latest science project, joins them and we get a lovely scene of the three drinking and bonding and geneuinely just having a good time. Though Kim DOES mention that she wants to go back to school.. This will naturally be very important.

What’s more important is this scene is ENITRELY while I poly ship these three dum dums. I mean while part of thier hapiness here is their blasted out of hteir heads, it’s also just Kim’s wall sbeing down. She tells the two she loves them, and I think MEANS IT. Not to mention this...

Okay maybe it’s just the two of them but they also love Scott. And again I get htier VERY obviously drunk.. but given Kim and Ramona are clearly actively supressing any bi parts of themselves most of hte time this is telling. The fact Ramona asks kim to sleep in THIER bed, likely with them, is ALSO very telling and Kim only dosen’t because their using sub space. No really that’s the only reason this volume didn’t end VERY diffrently with the three of htem having a three way before the argument coming up.. and possibly fixing said argument by having kim to mediate. I mean I get Scott’s not a big part of this so if you don’t want to ship him with them and just leave them alone that’s fine, ut I like the idea of them as a throuple: they ballance each other out.. and frakly with Scott’s irresponsblity and Ramona’s emotoinal issues they need someone to call them b oth out in the relationship, while these two are two of the only three people in the work i’ve seen Kim take her walls down for. Not even Jason got that, but Jason was also a carboard cutout.

Things take a turn from Kim.. from an almost threesome where she CLEARLY would be getting most of the attention... to two assholes kidnapping her. Now while I don’t like the twins that much their plan for the final act IS actually clever: their the first ones to think to actually use the people Scott cares about.. or anything resembling strategy really. Matt just charged int here, Lucas coudln’t give less of a fuck, Todd just used brute strength like a teletkentic juggernaught, and Roxy DID use some but it was less to actually fight scott and more to get into ramona’s pants again. The twins see Kim clearly still loves Scott, and that while he acts aloff to her sometimes she really is one of his best friends. No really, think about it. Wallace is his BEST friend.. but Kim sticks by him even when he’s shitty, calls him out when needed, and despite her grumpiness is the one who has the most faith in him out of ANYONE. It’s a large point of the volume: she dosen’t bother watching the fights.. because she belivies he’ll win simply because he’s Scott. That’s love right there. The kind of love that gets you kidnapped as part of an elaborate scheme but love nonetheless.

So we then get the scene that’s been coming for five volumes... after having sex, Ramona confronts Scott. While Scott admits he didn’t cheat on her with knvies, the other way around, that’s not better. He admits he’s been trying to forget about it.. and she calls him a bad person. And that. .hits him hard. While he DESERVES scorn for what he did... as he puts it next he’s been trying to change for her. To BE better. And all she sees, and outright confirms is another evil ex in waiting with Scott DESPERATE to prove her wrong and wrongly thinking beating the next three exes will fix this. It’s a VERY hard sceen to watch as while Scott does deserve this.. it’s also hard not to feel bad for him too. It really sums up the character: He is a dick.. but he’s TRYING to be better. He WANTS to be, he just dosen’t know how. And MAN can I relate to that. It dosen’t help that Ramona is clearly projecting her own insecurties about this lasting, about actually being happy and about this really being her life onto him, using this as an easy out after having a month of doubt. Yes Scott did something unbelivibely shitty.. but both are trying to take the easy way out of it instead of genuinely discussing why it’s shitty, what he did was wrong and geniuinely unpacking if this is the end. Ramona clearly wants to bail, and Scott clearly just wants to punch a few guys to make it better. Neither thing will work. They need to work thorugh their issues to work... but neither is capable of that right now. They both want to run from the problem.

This volume is in part about Ramona herself.. and showcasing her OWN flaws.. and like Scott her biggest is that she runs. She wants to escape her past too and both assumed the other would be an easy fix, that by having a good partner they’d be better.. when really their both mildly shitty people who need to make peace with their past and repair the bridges they’ve burnt and flip off the ones not worht reparing instead of running from it all the time. But sadly before both can.. their just gonna run again. Because sometimes fixing yourself is just not that easy.

So the next morning Scott’s heart stops fo ra second when Ramona is seemingly gone.. only for her to instead be in teh shower. But Scott gets a text telling him the twins have Kim and TRIES to tell Ramona.. but she’s in the shower. As a result she’s worried he just ran off... and makes a decision , her hair cut back down after growing it out this volume, a sign of her hapiness.. now gone.

The Glow Part 2 So at an abandoned wherehouse the fight is on. The twins have the advantage in part because Scott is hung over.. something they take offense to.. even though they were THERE last night. He was at a party. They don’t know he teatotles. What state did they THINK he’d be in this morning?

We also find out their origin: as Scott correctly guessed at the end of last volume, Ramona dated them both at the same time and pit them against each other. They found out and vowed to always fight as one.. which means Scott is not only fighting two equally powerful opponents at once, but two who work as a perfct team and double hurricane kick him. They also mentally break him down, pointing out her previous job and how she’s a runner and she’s here to run from her past working for Gideon.

They aren’t but I already went into that so let’s get onto more pressing issues: Scott is not only hung over but now doubting himself and his dumbass plan to beat gideon and magically fix things, while Kim is naturally not happy about being stuck in a cage all night. And while at first she’s genuinely just grumpy as always as it becomes clear Scott has lost hope and the twins are going to win this one her expression is heartbreaking...

After EVERYTHING she still loves him and can’t bear to see him in so much pain... and can’t loose him.. so she gets desperate and claims Ramona texted him to give him hope.

This is one of Kim’s definting moments, the other coming next month. When faced with the person she loves possibly dying.. she lies to him.. so he can surivive. So he can have hope and make it through this.. despite how much it’s CLEARLY KILLING HER to not only tell him someone else loves him but to clealry lie that person loves him, knowing it’ll hurt him more.. but knowing if she DOSEN’T he’ll die. It’s one of the most painful, heartbreaking and beautiful moments in the entire series. It’s why I said earlier while I don’t like the brothers their climactic fight his excellent.. because it is. Their verbal breaking down of Scott is hearbreaking and Kim’s sacrifice equally so.

And before stomping them into coins SCott shows further growth.. by showing he CAN give off a good one liner now...

So Scott beats them and gets Kim out of the cage, worried about her.. but despite having a chance, Kim lets him get on his way to ramona and morsoely wlaks off... while ominously the sign points out this will soon be the Chaos Theater. There’s still one left to go.

But.. it’s sadly not enough. While Scott gives her a heartfelt speech... even if he quotes the song as long as you love me... he dosen’t care who she is.. but Ramona does.. calling herself a bad person.. as she vanishes.... and I cry my eyes out again. God two really heartbreaking scenes in a row sweet jesus this volume will be the death of me.. and not just because i’ts taken so damn long to write this review. And on top of tha the looses the cat and ends up locked out.

World of Ruin:

So yeah if you thought those bits weren’t easy.. it only gets roughter as we see Scott in the aftermath of the breakup. His dream world is now desolate and he’s alone. Now to his creidt as much shit as i’ve given him Stephen didn’t ENTIRELY abandon Scott: he put him up fo rth enight (though he kicks him out after work) and offers to take him to after work drinks. We also see a nice side of Scott’s intimdating boss as she offers her symaptheties at him crying... while he says it’s the onions... he’s transparenlty lying.

Next up is Kim. Though she dosen’t have a couch because Hollie sold it.. which as dickish as she suddenly is it IS her couch as Kim points out.. so yeah Kim and Scott end up sleeping awkardly in the same bed facing away from each other.. and to add another emotional guttpunch at the worst possible time: She’s going back home.

Stacey is even lesss helpful as SCott continues to ask about cats and is unsypantethic about her leaving despite you know, him REALLY not being at the shit talking her stage yet bud. At least we do get to see Stacey in this one I genuinely forgot she was in it.

So at Wallace’s he’s no help either pointing out she might be with someone else because he’s wallace and we meet a guy with Glases.. and in his bad state Scott assumes i’ts gideon. it’s not though. WE finally meet Mobile!

He’s exactly what wallace needs.. a fellow sarcastic asshole.

So next up is Kim’s goodbye.. which once again is really emotinal..a nd not just because my faviorite character is leaving and again, younger me didn’t know this wasn’t forever.. or that she’d be back for a rather huge role next time. But still it’s a damn good scene that shows how far Scott’s come...

While the first part is standard... the second is Scott realizing that she still had feelings for him, clearly given her actions during the fight, and he’d been a right dick this whole time never dealing with it or apolgoizing for his past. Granted he still has a way to go to REALLY apologize for it... but he’s trying and means it. And with her possibly never seeing again.. she needed that. Also her coat is damn cool. I’d say I want one like that btu i’d really prefer one like Scotts complete with x-men patch. Pax Krakoa bitches.

We get a really nice scene after where we meet Scott’s parents! Their also really kind helping him get a new place and move on... and runs into another glasses guy. But this time it’s Laurence! Who he drop kicks.. and then gives a broken bass back to. Eh... i’ve seen worse relationship with siblings honestly. He didn’t murder scott’s friend or plunge a whole galaxy into war or try and murder his daughter. Other Scott’s weren’t so lucky.

So after that awkardness SCott finds the note to gideon which is a break up letter... she never sent. However there’s something more pressing as he gets a call... and you can probably guess given his luck lately who that’s from.

Eh it’s not that murderoius creep but another one.

The end.. is in a few weeks.

Final Thoughts:

As I said I hated Vs the Universe on first read but re-reading it with hindsight and maturity.. it’s damn good. It’s depressing as hell.. but the things it does need to happen to push scott into a bad enough place for the next volume to work, and are natural: Ramona and Kim leaving, The band breaking up, Scott kicking his brother in the face.. all natural things. It hurts, this was a HARD one to write and I only feel the next one will be harder because it’s way longer with less slice of lifey stuff to skim through in my recapping.

But it’s a damn good one, with fantastic art, really gripping scenes, x-men refrenes and a spotlight shone on my girl kim. Even it’s weak spots dont’ hurt it: the twins are only weak by comparison, and still work well enough for the story, pushing ramona into the bad mental place she needs to be for the story to work. Hollie’s thing DID Need to be written way fucking better... but it does push kim into leaving which is CRITICAL for next time. So they aren’t GREAT elements, but they work. The only real other problem I have is knives just.. vanishes after her scene outside of one bit with Stephen, but that I can understand as the book is pretty tightly packed and she gets a fitting sendoff next time anyway. All in all another amazing entry and the perfect warm up for one of the best endings in comics history

Next Time: I said it and I meant it: one of the best endings in comics history as Scott hits on some exes, fights himself and betters himself as he prepares for his finest hour! Will Ramona Come back? Will Kim? Will Julie?... to answer your questions yes yes, and god dammit. Thank you all for reading, see you at the next rainbow.

#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim vs the world #scott pilgrim vs the unvierse #kim pine #ramona flowers #julie powers #julie power #steven stills #stephen stills #joseph #wallace wells #kyle kyatanagi #ken kyatanagi #gideon gordon graves #gideon graves #stacey pilgrim #mobile #laurence pilgrim #knives chau

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness

Welcome back my Scottaholics! We’re moving right along fun and fancy free just a few days later from Book 2 to 3. Which fits: As I mentioned in my review of book 1 I first encountered Scott, Ramona and Wallace in a free comic book story, and VERY intrigued, bought volumes 2 and 3 from the same comic shop after reading it in line.. or maybe I went there again later and bought them. My brain is a foggy sinkhole. Point is I was hooked from then on out, and bought the next three volumes as I came out, and through the internet because by then i’d leanred to use Amazon. Ironic given Ramona’s work for them is not only iconic to the series but plot important in volumes 1 and 2. As is Scott’s package toss in the movie. But the story of my long wait for volume 4 can wait for February. Point is it was these two and Free Scott PIlgrim are the ones I poured over again and agian, obessing over as a teen and the ones that stick in my brain the most. But even with that last time the exaustive process of covering it exposed a LOT of volume 2′s weakness: While it has a lot of iconic scenes, including Scott accidently convincing a man to skateboard himself to death, the Ramona and Knives fight, the envy call, the flashback, and is still very enjoyable..it also feels the most like a collection of loose events out of the books. Good stuff and character and tone wise better than last time.. but not quite as narratively strong. The series was GETTING there, the art was solidfiying into it’s final form, the characters were in the right place, SCott was more likeable.. but it hadn’t quite hit it’s stride yet. Three guesses when it did and the first two didn’t count. Infinite Sadness is one of my favorite volumes, along with 4 and 6. And while part of that is nostaliga and a personal connection.. the bulk of it is just this volume being even BETTER on the re-read. I picked up subtle bits that I didn’t notice before that only enritched the experince, the pacing is sublime, the character work is top notch and compelling, the art work is finally crystlalized into what the series is known for, and would only get even better as it goes, and the fights are some of the series best. This is one hell of a story and I warmly invite you to join me as I break it down after the break.

Previously on Scott Pilgrim: Scott defeated Lucas Lee, the second Evil Ex, met Luke Wilson, and prepared to go to his ex girlfriend’s concert despite this being a terrible idea to discuss a gig. It was there he and Ramona found out Envy’s base player Todd, the douchenozzle who she cheated on Scott with, is also the douchenozzle Ramona cheated on Lucas with.

So we open.. exactly from that moment, with Scott and Ramona starring wide eyed while the band plays in an utterly dazzling sequence that’s been brought up a notch in the color remaster. Also one of a handful of moments that was barely touched from page to screen, with only slight adaptations to make it better on screen, and the addition of Metric’s now iconic “Black Sheep”. And when reading the scene.. I couldn’t resisit turning black sheep on as it matched it perfectly.. so yeah have the Clash at the Demonhead performance from the film

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So while that worms it’s way into your head, let’s talk about the character designs for Clash Of the Demonhead, since volume 2 is the last time in the color editions O’Malley really talks about character origins and stuff. I could’ve missed something of course, we’ll see as we go won’t we. I just saved it for here as the Volume 2 review was running a bit long as is and while their shown on covers and on the back cover of the black and white edition, they don’t show up in person and in their full glory till the last panel, hence saving it for here where Envy and Todd are the main antagonists and Lynette is... plot relevant.

Envy was based on the front woman for the band Metric, Emily Haines, designed much like hanes to be a tough, confrotnational, sexy woman, his words not mine, who’d gone through a lot of change in a few years since according to him, and i’m willing to take his word for it since I don’t know the band outside of the one song he picked for the movie, a lot of the bands songs are about that. And honeslty it makes me want to check them out more, as does how awesome black sheep is I can’t belivie I took this long, and is supremely intresting as I hadn’t realized there was a good reason there wasn’t just an original song written for clash at the demonhead. I mean if you base your character on the frontwoman for a band why NOT use one of their songs.

Speaking of band, Plumtree’s drummer, Lynette Gillis, was the inspiration for Lynette Gycott, though the final version of her is more cold and robotic and less like Gillis than initially envisioned.

Finally Todd..was based on Scott, and while he evolved out from that a bit especially in powers.. the concept basically stuck as Todd is a stronger, dumber, more agressive and douchey version of Scott whose mistreatment of women is far more deliberate than Scott’s untetional douchebaggery.

So after some interview segments for some sort of documentary on the band with the crowd, we cut to our heroes after the show, all standing around and being nervous. Stephen’s first words are “Decent show eh, told you they were good”.

Admitely re-reading this one and answering a reader question, unrealted but it got me to thinking, made me realize Stephen wasn’t AS much of a dick as I thought: I didn’t think about the fact Scott and Envy’s blow up cost him their old band which was close to singing, and that Scott both as revealed in volume 3 and in bits here, was kind of a dick towards the end, intitating the breakup while drunk and belligernt and saying a facepunchingly dickish comment we’ll get to. So he wasn’t BLAMELESS and it’s understandable Stephen dosen’t hate her as much. She was friends with his horrible albatross of a girlfriend and didn’t break his heart.

However.. he’s still an asshole and deserve jeff blim’s theatrical fuck you up there. He still ignores Scott’s pain, or the fact that most of the breakup WAS Envy’s fault as we’ll see. We’ll get into it in full obviously but for the cliffs notes so I can yell at a fictional grumpy closted canadian man: She slowly drifted away from him, treated him like he had no say in a band he helped found or took his feelings into account in the record deal, and cheated on him with Todd and possibly another guy. And as seen here she used her fame to bribe her ex and friends into showing up just so, as we see, she can torture him and his new girlfriend a bit. Envy is not a good person and Stephen is ignoring that and his friends VERY obvious emtoinal turmoil. Especially dickish since by this point Scott has clearly swallowed his pride and agreed to a show with someone who really DEEPLY hurt him for Stephen and Kim’s sake.. and he’s not even remotely greatful for it clearly. The only reason he’s not the biggest asshole left in the building is because Todd, Envy and Julie, queen of bitches, is in there.

So after a save point gag that goes nowhere, Envy shows up to take the group back stage... awkward, uncomfortable and very intentional silence insues to makes Scott even more sweaty and nervous and Ramona visably and understandably annoyed. Knives tries to talk to her hero but gets ignored because Envy’s a bitch.. and so’s Julie who not only joins in the shunning of a fucking teenager who clearly loves this band, but also is clearly trying to conversationally surgically attach her lips to Envy’s ass. Her toadying is obnxoious as you’d expect and as transparent as you’d expect, trying to drudge up old nostalgia while Envy’s clearly barely intrested, and the only thing that makes it more tolerable than normal Julie is Envy clearly barely tolerates this and likely is only going with it because she could be a useful minon in the future.

Thankfully this is broken up. Unthakfully it’s by knives shouting her most iconic line:

Given Envy is shown to not be the best person.. her response is to have her cyborg goon belt knives in the face

Which leads to an even better line seconds later

Envy then to just .. complete the circle of being a bitch has NEil take knives out then mocks her when Julie explains why knives and neil were even here. And it’s VERY telling that even Julie, who was must minutes from humping envy’s leg and begging to go with her when she leaves, is visably put off by Envy’s attitude. So while Ramona is understandably fucking done with this, as even she has some shred of sympathy for the teenager who tried to stab her a day ago, Scott has to take a minute to have a flashback. We see two brief bits of Scott with Envy, at the start of their college band Kid Chamelon where they were all happy.. and shortly after the breakup where Scott is miserable, in the middle of the street, sadly saying their name while saying “I’m so alone”.. explaning that desert bit from volume 1.. and making it ten times more painful. Nicely done Brian.

So with Knives gone we get our usual character age intros and descriptoins, my favioritte being Stephen “wants a damn buritto dammit” which I can relate to and thankfully got it monday. He also does show a bit more of his noble self as, things have escalated to the point even he can see Envy has some sort of evil scheme planned and he walked right into it so he asks what her ulterior motive is. Julie pipes up with “She dosen’t NEED ulterior motives she was written up with in spin!”

So Envy grills Ramona a bit clearly trying to make her squirm..though at least when Julie TRIES to jump in she shoots her down, like some asshole pulling a yappy dog on it’s leash hard. Eventually Scott flips out and .. well I don’t want to overpanel this review but this is just.. quotes cannot do this justice.

The result.. is the reveal Todd is psychic due to being a vegan and he throwing scott through a wall with telkenisis, kyle!

It’s explained he has these powers because he’s a vegan and even was top of his class at the vegan academy. Citation... needed. Not because of his power but because Todd may be one of the stupidest beings that’s ever lived. And I once had a friend whose other friend told me, since they’d be going to diffrent high schools and he was trying to pass off his mummies curse of keeping him from destroying himself with his own stupidity, tried to run into a wall to loose weight. No I don’t get how this would’ve worked but having known the guy I guarnatee he was arrogant and dumb enough at the time to try it. Nowadays I assume he’s much better... I assume. You.. you’d have to be to have survived another decade.

Todd is also THAT kind of smug dickhead. Thankfully I haven’t met one in real life or online, as the two vegetarians I have known, one of my best friends micheal and my uncle drew, the former of whom now also eats fish and the latter of whom gave it up once he moved to places he could get meat that was raced humanely easier, but who I still respect for having that amount of self control. But Todd is a clear parody of the type of vegan and vegetarian who think their better than everyone.. by thinking he’s even BETTER than regular vegans because not every vegan can take the strain of psychic powers, with Kim naturally sniping at him.. then flipping him off when he says “don’t get snippy babe” and is very lucky he has psychic powers as otherwise he’d suddenly be wondering where his dick is and why kim’s holding a broken bottle.

Brian also pokes fun at the old 90 percent of your brain trope. You know the old one that claims you only use 10 percent..

But it’s only because your only ACTIVELY using it and the rest is simply other functions. But hey we got Deathstroke out of that claim so good enough. Todd claims it’s because the other 90 percent is curds and whey. This might be the greatest use of this outdated trope in human history. No.. no.. it is. It exactly is.

Envy brags that’s why he can’t beat him having clearly traded disappearing up her own ass for disappearing up todd’s, Julie was also crammed up there, it was getting crowded. Envy claims to have been with todd since age 11.. which.. is more.. delusion than anything and she brushes off Ramona rightfully pointing out that’d mean he cheated on her with Ramona as Rammy trying to distract her and trying to smack talk SCott more who has another flashback.

SOME YEARS AGO.. I DUNNO 5? 5 YEARS AGO?

We see Scott’s first meeting with Envy, who was rooming with Julie. Julie, it might shock you.. has not changed at all in 5 or so years. She’s seen bitching at her roomate Natalie V. Adams, the future Envy, for not wanting to get drunk and high and for hanging out in her room with all her anime posters and stuff. As you can tell, she’s a vastly diffrent person at this point, a nerdy interverted otaku and as you can probably guess now the flashbacks have started at the top, we’ll be seeing how she became the sexpot rockstar she is now and how that drove a wedge betwene her and Scott. Julie SHOCKINGLY does not take this well and as Stephen to kil lher if she ever becomes friends with her. I mean I would but If I could travel into fictional works I certainly woudln’t be wasting my time murdering Julie. I’d be asking kim out and trying to get into some cool video game ablities myself. I ain’t got time for that bitch.

Next cut Julie is ... even worse as she’s calling Scott some “jerky jerky ladykiller”, pointing out he’s hooked up with recurring background characters Sandra and Monique. Now GRANTED, Scott could’ve hurt them and Julie could be right for once.. we’ve seen he has a history of being an insenstive douche by pure accident. But.. from the sounds of it given his encounters with Sandra and Monique were both in seperate ladies rooms, as in casual hookups I assume are common in universities. As long as he used a condom and dind’t lie about being in it longterm, who the hell does it hurt. Same if he and Natlie ended up being that. He’s not a “ladykiller” if he got busy on a washroom sink. He just had casual sex in an awful location and given Scott is both horny and stupid freqently, I could buy he either inittated it clumsily and sandra and or monqiue went for it, or one of them thought he was cute and wanted a quick one with him and it just never went anywhere either due to lack of intrest or Scott being kind of a moron. I don’t buy he INTENTIONALLY hurt anyone, he MIGHT of hurt Sandra she seems kind of ditzy and might’ve not realized it wans’t serious.. but it just entirely sounds like a casual, consesual one time hookup with two seperate women. And as long as he wore a condom and repsected their needs what the fuck is it Julie’s buisness. BEcause their here freinds? I mean they told her but they weren’t expecting her to play dick sheirff with scott probably. And Natlie is not her buisness: their not really friends.. she’s just trying to ruin Scott’s day. I honestly get the sense she only hates Scott because she can’t get rid of him, Stephen won’t dump him as a friend and he fucked her friends once. Which makes me hate her MORE. Natlie/Envy however also calls bullshit and thinks Scott’s much too awkward to be a ladykiller. Accurate. I mean he’s good with women and gets dates easily, he’s just not inteitonally leaving them high and dry. He’s just not great with empathy.

Scott snaps back to the present and gets pissed.. and we get the real reason for the outburst as he shouts “You you ass! She USED to be NICE!”. It’s very clear that Scott blames Todd for Envy’s change into an cold and cruel person. But .. that’s not on him entirely. I do think Envy’s cattier, more cruel “play with prey like a cat with a mouse” personality at this point is due to Todd feeding into her worse impulses.... but the flashbacks make clear even before she saw him again she was slowly changing as a person for better, gaining a drive and passion for music.. and for worse, shutting scott out cheating on him and generally not carring about anything but her career, especially Scott. As much as he wants to belivie it she didn’t MAGICALLY change into a bitch overnight and beating todd won’t fix that. She became what she is as a choice. Todd just made what she became worse.

After the predictable result of Scott getting flung into the air and falling back down, he has another flashback and we see the next phase of their relationship: Scott, Envy and Stephen playing in a band for Stacey and Wallace (!), whose hair is certainly a... choice. And the two falling in love and julie grilling scott on if he and nat are a couple because why stop making me wish for a bus to hit you NOW Jules?

So we then get ANOTHER iconic line and another scene that was perfectly translated into the film

Comic gold no matter the medium.. Brandon Routh just nailed it and I watched the scene again before writing this just out of curoisty. Flawless stuff. Check it out

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I will say however that while Movie!Envy’s response of just quickly covering is pretty funny.. I prefer the comic’s envy’s utterly baffled and pissed off “What are you talking about Todd?”. Even she can’t fathom what the fuck just happened. But since it’s late and Todd’s brain is pretty fried, Envy calls for everyone to get some sleep and they’ll regroup tommorow at 1pm at Honest Ed’s. Honest Ed’s WAS a famous discount Store in Canada that sadly closed in 2016, making what ‘s about to happen to it here sad in hindsight. It was known for big sales, big spectacle and i’ts larger than life owner who sadly passed a few years after this volume. But god bless him for giving this series one of it’s best settings. More on that when we get there for now FLASHBACK

Back in College, we see Nat’s change into envy as she sells all her stuff for some bitching new boots and cd’s and during sex with Scott asks him to start calling her Envy. Their still somewhat happy, as the next flashback has Scott remembering their 8 month anniversary and her playfully mocking him as the girl.. before we get a much starker one of him telling her he loved her and her not responding.. and looking at him.. more.. bored than anything.

Back in the present our heroes try to wait out the rain under a bank thing, can relate to the times i’ve visted the city and came out to rain, and when that fails Kim says she’s off and will see them at practice and tells Stephen to blow her when he asks her if she’s going to Honest Ed’s, then seems genuinly confused if he pissed her off before heading home. Swing and a miss stevie, swing and a miss.

Scott is hungry and sorta drags Ramona, whose not in the mood for anything, over to Pizza Pete’s a nearbye eatery. It’s there they happen to run into Other Scott... Other Scott is another guy named Scott. He dosen’t do much in the books. But the name Other Scott is objectively funny and he is objectively nice so he’s fine in my book and I applaud the movie for using him as Wallace’s love intrest. Though I wouldn’t be REMOTELY suprised if they were fucking in the books too. And of course with him is Wallace himself, who really is just.. entering this volume in the most Wallace way possible.

A little drunk, eating some cheap but good food, with a million dollar style and in just the exact right place at the exact right time. If that’s not Wallace Wells, I don’t know what is. Wallace and Other Scott were clubbin, not a huge suprise given Wallace has his own deep and complicated social life we never see and Wallace is naturally a little bit absolutley livid when he finds out Scott went to see Envy’s show anyway despite you know, putting him in a misery coma. Who do you think has to clean you and feed you when your like that Scott? Elves? Well I mean .. Wallace MIGHT be an elf.. but he stilld soen’t want to do either of those things. He breifly gets sidetracked by the fact that Scott is wearing his shirt.. maybe. I mean he wore it the other day but given their living situation it’s honestly hard to tell. Ramona reminds him of his priorites

That’s part of the fun of rereading these again so soon after rereading them in december: I’m noticing tons of little moments like this I didn’t really before. The two explain things, including Ramona pointing out Scott’s extra stupid around Envy. I mean it’s a bit mean to point out given this is clearly a lot for him.

Wallace brushes it off and promises to help him train like a true pal before being prompted to talk about this new boy he picked up Mobile.. who we wont’ see in person for a while but Wallace is clearly head over heels for and begs Scott to let him have the apartment.. or more accuratley Ramona, whose clearly not in the best of moods with Scott, to take him. His sales pitch is immaculate

So she agrees and a friendship is forged based on mutual hatred and being someone’s dipping sauce bitch. I’ve forged longer lasting friendships on far less. Also Wallace forgot his keys but wisely banked on his Gladstone Gander esque luck to help him out.. seriously i’m convinced he has a lower yield version of that. Or God wants to bang him but can’t because his penis is so powerful it CAN SPLIT A MOUNTAIN IN TWAINNNNN. You make the call.

So they sleep it off, and Scott heads home early next morning.. and forgot he gave wallace his keys. Thankfully wallace finds him, and even got him donuts for when he came back, what a guy, makes you cry and I did. He also shows off a new trick about using your chi to dust rain off you. Turns out Mobile is psyhich which.. dosen’t come into play but for vallad reasons: Scott assumes Mobile can just.. give him psyhic powers and training but a) he and Wallace JUST met and while they’ll remain together for the rest of the series, it’s a big ask to have him help train his best friend to fight a man as dumb and chisled as a mountain, and B) “It dosen’t work that way” meaning scott’s probably not psi adept and even if he can be taught, there’s not NEARLY enough time for him to get good enough at shielding himself from Telkenisis in time given Todd’s already fighting him today and has two other oppprotunites afterwords to beat his ass to death. There’s just not enough time. So scott collapses with a donut in his mouth.. are .. are we sure this isn’t just a more attractive more sucessful canadian alternate me?

We flashback to when Wallace met Envy and since i’ts post-becoming envy, it dosen’t go well and he hates her immidetly, and expects Scott to break up with her asap.. which while bitchy.. actually woudl’ve been a good move in the long run. And “Bitchily phrased but a good move in the long run” has apparently always been Wallace’s go-to move.

In the present Wallace helps Scott , who thinks everything sucks, realize it does not, with the help of fresh bacon and perspective, helping him avoid thinking Envy is “back” when she’s just vistiing and somewhat forces him to admit it’s not happening again nor should it. And implicity your both with other people, you’ve moved on, stay moved on. ANOTHER Flashback, this time with Envy asking Scott how he and Wallace met after dinner with Scott’s parents. It’s the story we’ve been hinting at since.. uh last volume.

And indeed it is somewhat gay! Behold! The origin of a friendship to piece the heavens or .. something like that. I’m tired.

It’s a quick breezy story that honestly both explains a lot and is what you’d expect; Wallace taking an intrest, Wallace presumibly realising Scott is straight off screen but deciding fuck it I like this guy let’s be pals instead, and jjust sorta showing up at his house. But since it’s Wallace and he and Scott both love gaming.. it just stuck. And it’s easy to see why. Scott’s a bit of an introvert and Wallace is a ton of an extrovert. Wallce is nice, naturally charming and endlessly cool, and as you can see it took him probably just an afternoon to go from freaking scott out for showing up randomly, to Scott talking the guy up and clearly being the bosom buddies they are now. The two just ballance each other out well. Wallace need’s scott’s weirdness and general heart, and Scott needs Wallace to keep him from running into the brick walls of life via his own stupidity and conflict avoidance. It’s what they do, they make it a two player game.

So later that day, and some off screen training later, presumibly to the song Two Player Game despite the fact it didn’t exist yet, our heroes (Scott, Ramona and Wallace), Villians (Envy and Todd) and other not so much evil as just cretionus assholes (Stephen and Julie) arrive. It’s also clear that Envy just made up the challenge as she went and I fucking love it, just saying they’ll run to the back, try and kill each other and no psychic powers, with Scott’s own handicap being “He isn’t a surivivor” which earns a rightful you unebleiviable bitch from wallace and a just ast rightful “fair enough” from Scott.

Stephen wonders what the deal is and Julie’s answer is... I don’t.. I can’t unpack this.

Meanwhile Wallace says “I hate her so much” Which I THINK was meant for Envy, but as a teen I interpited as being for Julie. Then again it being BOTH is entirely possible given no one can stand Julie for more than five mintues other than Stephen. And that’s because he’s still in the closet and hasn’t come out as bi or gay and thus sees her as a safe option or he really sucks with his taste in partners. Or a little from collumn a , a little from collumn b. So yeah Scott wants a Strategy and Wallace has.. nothing other than “Well he can’t use his powers so.. use that. I guess.. I dunno. I’m hungover” though Ramona warns he can’t go long without using them without freaking out. So gooood? I’m starting to think Kim is the most useful member in his crew for this fight.. and she’s the one who decided to nope out of it because she didn’t want to watch his ex pick him apart mentally and her muscly new boyfriend pick him apart with MIND BULLETS. Wallace isn’t really helping this go round, though he’s still a treasure, Ramona is trying but dosen’t have much, and Stephen thought bringing Julie was in any way shape or form a good idea. Which really sums up their entire relationship so it’s not surprising, it just makes me question why the two are friends at all.

No really, out of Scott’s three close friends.. this friendship feels the most like two guys who just used to hang out but have no real reason too other than convience. Wallace would go to bat for scott.. with an actual bat.. to Envy’s skull. He just dosen’t want to go to jail.. again. Kim pines for him, pun intended, and also does care, she just dosen’t show it because scott’s kinda a moron parade and an insenstivity brunch rolled into one. So she sticks around even though it hurts to. Stephen.. lost his big shot in part due to Scott (Though Envy’s pushness and lack of consideration for his feelings didn’t help), his shrew of a girlfriend hates him and he’s not that good at bass... and I just got it. While Tornoto’s a big city , he’s probably not sure if Kim would be doing this without Scott. He’s.. entirely still his friend because he needs a bass player and kim’s a damn fine drummer whose hard to replace. I just got it.. it makes him a self serving douchecanoe for only being someone's friend because he needs a bass player even though he doesn’t like him, but I at least GET IT now.

So the rush into Honest Ed’s begins and.. my god this whole sequence is sublimely redelcous. It feels like what would ACTUALLY happen if two guys fought for the reasons scott and todd are fighting: just two idiots dinking around in a discount store. Scott dosen’t even last a few seconds before shouting in response to Todd’s taunts “We are all dead”, tripping while looking for eyeware and well..

Meanwhile Todd starts to break down while shouting FATHEERRRRRRR like all good psychics. As for how long this beautiful nonsense has been going on....

Oh and if you thought it hadn’t gotten redicously hilarious enough... wait till you see what’s next.

No words.. should’ve.. sent a poet.. got a tubby asshole who reviews comics, disney shows and disney comics instead....

So we then get a montage in todd’s head with his SHOCKINGLY OLD dad telling him he dosen’t have the willpower to be a vegan.. Lynette telling him she’s his for the taking and Envy will never know as she opens her shirt, and

Gideon.. showing he not only consults the league but confriming what the audience and scott realized: He’s behind these assholes.. but it also shows how much. He’s actively coaching them.. and granted we KNEW the exes were in contact with one another given Lucas was having an understandable sigh about Matthew.. but this shows Gideon isn’t just some player and this isn’t some automated service. He brought them all together. The how ends up being hilarious, and we’ll get to that but while it was obvious he was the final boss this is a nice and terrifying bit of clarification. As for what happened next.. well Todd freaks out with his powers from not using them

Really sad in hindsight.. but still really funny despite the horrifying concidence. So yeah our hero declares victory but dind’t really when and things just kinda end. This segment went basically nowhere and acomplished nothing. .but was still really fun, with great lines and is one of the most memorable and awesome scenes in the series. It also shows the series growth between volumes: Last volume had a lot of cool moments.. but no real plot structure, just a bunch of things that needed to happen to get here. With Volume 3.. things are VERY tightly plotted, and even a fun but kinda pointless diversion like this... still fits in perfectly, giving us a second Scott and Todd fight to build him up, showing off just HOW powerful Todd is, and fleshing out the tofu headed douche a bit. As we’ve seen this volume still has it’s little slice of life moments the series does well. their just well put into a very compelling and fast paced plot, one we’re fully invested in as we see Scott’s torment and Ramona’s mounting anger at envy’s bullshit. It helps that Envy and Todd are the second best big bads of a volume behind gideon himslef in the fimale, with Roxy close at their heels if you were curious. Envy just oozes ego and superiority and is fun to watch every time, while we see moments once in a while that show she’s still human underneath even if she acts like a goddes.. and is admitely one of my types but that’s enough of that. She provides a nice contrast to ramona, also being standofish and mysterious but wheras ramona is clearly mysterious out of shame for a past she’s not proud of Envy is out of a past.. she has no reason to flee from and was never that bad.The only part Envy kept was Todd which was an objectively bad decision.

Todd meanwhile like all the exes as I re-realized.. is a mirror to scott. Each one has a piece of his worse traits amplified and expanded. So far Patel has been scott’s dorkyness, expanded from

To being a giant showy hipster douche desperate to seem cool and important. Lucas is scott’s afabliity and laziness taken to just outright avoiding a fight.. not nearly as bad as the others given he still has one of Scott’s best qualities with no drawbacks. But Todd.. is probably the ex that mirrors scott the second most. Besides both being base players with shaggy hair, both are delightfully stupid, both have a lot of charisma besides that and both are extremley good in a fight. But noticably.. Todd zigs a lot where Scott zags and the simlarites sort of stop. While both are objectively attractive, Todd is more conventinually chisled while Scott is more adorable, expertly reflected in the movie by having former Superman Brandon Routh opposite former George Micheal, Micheal Cera. Todd’s ablities are mental while Scott’s are entirely in martial arts and later swordplay. Todd has a rough relationship with his dad who never supported him and constnatly doubted him while Scott’s parents fully support him and love him uncdoitoinaly and despite his protests and annoyance with them.. it’s clear he still cares about them and loves them. And most damingly.. Scott treats people like garbage sometimes.. but it’s because he’s oblivoius. He’s a finaical burden on Wallace, cheated on Knives, gave Kim no closure, blew up Stephen’s chances at the big time, and in general can be kind of a dick.. but NONE of that is intetnional. It dosen’t make it okay, the books make that clear.. but it’s why we can still root for him: It’s something that can be fixed. Scott hurts people a lot but he lacks gneuinely malicious intent. He leaves a lot of pain in his wake.. but it’s because he’s socially inept, and again and I say this as someone with atusitim myself, defintely on the spectrum , so he dosen’t GET he’s hurting people unless they tell him. Something that will probably not shock you but I relate to and has happened to me in the past, hence while i’ll clal him a douche or stupid, because he’s both, I do sympathize with the guy as the whilrwilnd of descrution is just him being so intent on being seen as a good person and moving past things he can’t see the wreckage in ihs wake, and the series is about him growing past that mindset.

Todd.. is just an entitled dick who KNOWS he’s probably going to hurt people but does the things anyway because he thinks as a rock star he can do whatever he wants. As a Vegan he’s superior so he’s allwoed to do WHATEVER he wants. He’s so obessed with making his dad not see him as a failure he’s developed an Ego that can only be visualized properly using well.. Ego

That’s what his ego has become. He’s so up his own ass his head is coming out of his mouth somehow. He’s so in love with himself he’s probably googled “How to make a sexy clone of yourself”. He’s scott’s oblivoiusness and selfishness, but with genuine intent. He’s scott if he KNEW what he was doing was wrong.. and said fuck it anyway i’m a rockstar baby. Todd, is EASILY what scott could’ve been at envy’s side had they not broken up.. successful.. but an utter bastard who only cares about themselves. Anyways we cut to practice that night were Stephen is spiraling and Kim declines going to the show.. not for the obvious reasons of wanting to avoid another round of “watch Envy tourture scott before Todd beats his skull in with his psychic powers”, but because she has a date. Lucky bastard. The guys are naturally as tactful as you’d expect about this and suggest she’s doing a collage or puzzles before she shuts htem down and they awkardly recover and I laugh my ass off.

So Scott and Ramona head out, trading some talk and what have you and having some Sushi, not going there often because they can’t afford it.. but it’s cool Scott swipied Wallace’s card. When pressed on his douchebaggery Scott assures her.

We’ll get more into this next time, but needless to say Scott’s mooching is finally becoming a plot point next time. Speaking of next time on the way to the show Ramona realizes “Wait why the hell are we doing this” and convinces Scott not to go as they can relax, have a night off, cuddle and stuff, and then Scott can fight Todd tommorow at the big show. Why DO they need to sit in with two assholes who are only inviting them to fuck with their heads some more. Well okay one asshole while Todd is okay with all this he probably just mubled some “sure whatevers” while trying to solve a rubix cube while Envy outlined her plans to him before rearanging the stickers so he could win.. I Mean with his mind so it’s sitll a little impressive but still.

So they TRY making out, complete with being in their undies.. but it just dosen’t work as both of them keep picturing Envy’s face and that’s not good for either of them.

AND it was at this point fucking tumblr.. ate an hour’s worth of work I just did. Probably not something you need to know or care about but something that pisses me off greatly as I was approaching the end of the review and now have to either retype or entirely rethink what I JUST spent a while working hard on.

And this time I mean it. The only reason i’m not giving up and shelving this review for a bit.. is ithat i’m a stubborn bastard who refuses to give up that easily and who needed to vent about this to somewhere.

So Ramona finally comes clean about Todd.. and in a nice moment admits to cheating on Lucas with him “It wasn’t very nice but I wasn’t a nice person”. It’s a small thing, something I didn’t notice before.. but it’s actually a big step given how guarded Ramona is to admit to doing something this bad. Last volume, just a few days ago time wise, she lied entirely about this and probably has no idea Scott knows already. But she’s being honest, telling him the truth so he’ll be prepared for what’s coming and know the full story. The full story is they were both little shits who raised hell together till Todd disappeared for a while. He shows up as you’d expect, dickishily interupting class before explaning Dairy Scientests kidnapped and experimented on him. He also says this

So he proves his love. in the most badass and horrifying way possible: BY MAKING ONE OF THE TWO BIG NOTICABLE CRATERS ON THE GODDAMN MOON.

One of the series best jokes. Ramona also takes a hard pass to learning about envy and asks about Kim... not for any reason.. just thinks sh’es nice. It’s not like she wants to make out with her face.. a lot. Just.. girl things. SHUT UP. She’s also unsatisfied with Scott’s piss take version of his relationship with her. Closing out the chapter, Knives.. has somehow climbed a huge pile of billboardsi n the middle of tornoto.. which would be awesome.. if it weren’t such a beautifully sad image.

Whelp my heart just exploded with pain at this poor girl whose lost the love of her live, which is a goood thing mind you but dosen’t mean it dosen’t hurt less, her faviorte band and her highlights all in the span of a month. Moving on as we approach the final act, we get a brief scene as Todd orders some Gelato, which is itallian icec ream, very not vegan and Envy does not relaize this. Todd however rants about being a rock star, being so above people and as for the rules

We also get this lovely bit

And then they make out and i’ts treated as a big shocker despite.. us.. finding that out several dozen pages ago. We know already.

Back at Scott and Wallace’s place, Ramona shows up with cool new blue hairdoo, which I agree with Wallace is awesome and admits she changes her hair up every couple of weeks.. someething that in the color version we do see better. We also get a gag that no longer makes sense as he asks if that’s her natural haircolor and she says yay and the caption admits this was funnier in black and white. Eh one or two jokes for some really pretty colors is a fair enough trade.

Scott however once again bitches about his hair, despite Ramona pointing out to him and Wallace that.. there’s like dozens of haircut places within walking distance. I remain unsuprised thier that oblivous. But to shut her boyfriend up she agrees to cut his hair and while they do asks what Envy’s actual name is.. scott’s response .. is pretty heartbreaking “Natalie. She stopped liking it. Then she stopped liking me. So Scott shows up with his NEW HAIR CUT.. aka his old one just trimmed up a bit, but the one you see in modern merch and the game. A bit shaggy but not as long. Scott reassures Stephen whose spiraling with panic that it won’t be the same as last time and they’ll have fun. Kim, understandably and having not been told anything, wonders what “last time was”. After everyone chimes in Kid chamelon i’ts time for another FLASHBACK.. as you were probably expecting by now.. but this time I added some proper effects to spice it up.

So we find out more of whta drove a wedge between the two: Envy slowly but surely took a tryanical death grip on the band, adding some guy named Joel on the drums, possibly the same guy from Crash and the Boys, and bumping Scott to bass, without asking him or Stephen about this and just sorta.. demanding it. While her intetnions are understandable, she just wants the band’s best sound.. her actions are still head tiltingly obnoxious, and clearly show she had not studied rock history yet as usually taking absolute control of the band and ignoring your band mates is the easiet way to destroy a band. Sometimes it’s just envy, pun unintneded but welcome, but yeah.. it’s no wonder they didn’t last. Scott is also shown to be more and more uncomfortable with the band going from a fun thing he did with his friend and girlfriend.. to something that could make him famous.. something he’s very transparently not ready for and dosen’t want. And it makes sense: he was just a dumb college kid in love.. he didn’t start the band for fame or glory.. he just wanted to have fun. Same with his current band. And while in the PRESENT his lack of ambition can be obnoxious and will be a problem in the next volume, here.. he’s still in college and sudeenly got thrust into a career he dosen’t want with a person who no longer loves or respects him. It’s understandable that he’s a nervous , miserable wreck.

So in the present, Stephen is throwing up and asking for julie and Scott.. is a dick and ignores him. Were it anyone else and any other relationship currrently int he books I would actually give a shit. So he wonders around a bit, running into some teens who are intrested in him, word travels fast apparently, Julie, who for once displays a human emotion of concern for Stephen or the closest she can, and thankfully Wallace, Stacey and Micheal,who now has a spooky skeleton ring from the future and badly needs his own spinoff. Stacey TRIES to pump her brother up.. but it’s clear he’s in no good mental place for that and trudges off while Wallace, man of the year, worries about him. One GOOD THING about the astronomical setback that happened is in the orignal draft of this.. I forgot to talk about Stacey. Despite promising to. So here it goes: After this Stacey.. just sorta vanishes from the series. She’s still around and while not super promient gets a decent amount of screentime in the finale, she makes cameos before then. But from this book on she’s no longer a main character like she was in the first two books. There she had several scenes, lots of focus, and her own mini arc in the first one about Wallace stealing her boyfriends. There’s. an actual reason for this as O’Malley regretted naming her after his sister and thus basically stopped writing her unless he had to, sticking her in once in a while to assure fans he hadn’t forgotten her but removing her from the main plot. That being said while his reason is weak.. I dn’t think it’s the ONLY reason she slid into the background. The main cast already had 6 characters, and on top of that this volume heavily focuses on Envy, the next adds Lisa Miller to the mix, and every volume frmo this one on has increased focus on the ex of the week, building them up more as characters and giving them way more screen time. Stacey.. really didn’t have a unique niche or roll in the sotry the other 5 non-scott leads didn’t: Knives filled out the position as the baby of Scott’s friend group, Ramona and Wallace served as better voices of reason, Kim and Wallace had better chemistry with Ramona and thus worked better as her friends, and Stpehn. did nothing she did but still at least had a part to play as band leader and the only one of Sex Bomb-Omb with ambition. Stacey is not a bd character and DID deserve to still be way more prominent.. but her move to the back let Kim take her place and rightfully so. And not just because of the crush on kim thing, Kim’s just more compelling and tha’ts an objective fact. Still would’ve been nice to learn more about Stacey though.

Scott then frees his girlfriend from a conversatoin with Sandra and Monique, as Julie bitchily told both about Gideon which Envy told her about, because as your every couple of paragraphs reminder, Julie is a piece of shit. Scott then orders them some alchols, breaking his usual teetotling and runs into kim, hollie and joseph. with Hollie here to see the band and .. Joseph here to see todd. At least h’es honest.. for this volume. Anyways, our happy couple soon split off for a bit and while we bounce back and forth.. i’m just going to cover what hapepned with each seperately as SOMEHOW tumblr once again ate a good hour’s worth of work, this review is already a day late, and I have both abother one and a dental apointment today. So in short

Ramona and Kim: Kim fills Ramona in on her past.. via tone down, seemingly contridctary, and as we’ll find out later the true version of what happened: She was with Simon, he was a dick, Scott showed up he was also a dick, things happened. I guess. Ramona is disapointed, though Kim does provide some crucial info on her moving to tronto.. and reuniting with scott.

It honestly.. explains a LOT of why Scott is the way he is what happened with Envy. He saw Envy change entirley as a person.. and thus feels changing as a person , and smoking, is a sign of something bad.. when really it just means.. your changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst but we area LWAYS changing and it took me a lont time to realize that. The two are distracted from this though by Todd sloppily making out with Lynette in front of everyone.

We’re also reintroduced to Crash and the Boys, now redubbed the boys and crash, and seemingly playing music without intsturments. The thorughly lovely and rediculous explinaton for this and their new gloves and goggles, i’ll save for in a bit.

Scott and Envy, Scott and Knives: Scott goes out to get some air.. only to find Envy, who despite menally tourturing him for a few days insits they talk like regular people.. Scott wisely counters with “Nat when did we ever talk like real people” and while saying he won’t get to call her that again, it still chips down her walls for a second and shows that a bit of who she used to be, loath as she is to admit it, is still there.

Scott then spots knives... and has a moment of truth. And a hell of a series of reaction panels

It’s a VERY good scene.. that i’ve written about TWICE now but regardless, it shows Scott.. genuinely changing. Ignoring his past actions, running away from them and trying to pretend he never fucked up once... that’s been his go to. It’s his main flaw and hte one that takes the entire series to deal with as we’ll get into. And it’s here.. he faces it for the first time. He’s scared of knives at first.. but realizes.. he genuinely hurt her, and she’s where she is, cold, alone, and huddled in an ally lost and confused, because of him. Sure Envy hurt her.. but so did he.. and what’s worse. he did it just like Envy hurt him. Not thinking of her as a persona nd throwing her away when he didn’t need her. And so after books of build up.. he finally takes some responisblity and talks to her. It’s WHY the books work: Sure scott’s a dick, and remains a bit of one throughout, but.. he means well, isn’t inteitonally a standoffish prick, and slowly grows PAST this, and tries to be better, for Ramona.. and just because it’s the right thing to do.

So Knives reflects on the past few weeks, admitting that it’s been unbearably painful.. but she can’t and won’t go back to who she used to be. She’s lost her innocnce and all that, been dumped by the “love of her life”, been punched in the face by her faviorite drummer and treated like dogshit by her faviorite artist. Todd did nothing for once but gets no credit because of who we’re dealing with here. Point is.. it was a lot and while sh’es not HAPPY.. she’s greatful for it. Scott however.. steps up, saying what Envy did was wrong, she deserved better.. and finally, after how terribly he broke up wit hher.. apologizes for how he hurt her. And while Knives takes this as hope they’l get back together, Scott continues to be very mature, especially for his usual behavior, telling her no, it won’t happen, to give neil a try as whle she is dating him because he looks like Scott he’s not all bad, and that wallce was right: she was too good for him. And while Knives isn’t ready to accept it.. Scott did the right thing. Good for you man.

So while he, and later kim and stephen seperatly, get ready, Ramona.. runs into Envy. Whose oddly nice for ahlf a second.. before bringing up Gideon and giving Ramona a barrage of insults, clearly trying ONCE AGAIN, to knock her down and wreck her. Thing is while Scott clearlya nd understandably has baggage with Envy is easy prey for her manipulative elephant dung, Ramona. isn’t. All Envy’s done is piss her off more and more with each act of high school level mean girl bullshit... and sh’es done with it.

FIGHT’S ON. This Volume.. is honestly where Ramona really comes into bloom, pun intended, as the duetragonist of the books. While the book IS about Scott getting his life together and their relationship and he’s still her hero.. the books are also about RAMONA growing as a person, her own flaws and past, and the climax of all of them.. is just as much about her as it is scott. And this book has her own flaws come into play: Just like Scott she runs from the past, from who she was, and only faces it when needed, which will become more apparent as we go. But at the same time, we get to see far more of her personality as a result as her mysterious facade continues to drop. She’s prone to getting upset, but also clever and witty and knows her limits, knowing that going to that second performance would’ve just done no good and knowing herself very well, something Scott has genuine trouble with. She’s strong, sarcastic and knows who she is and what she wants and this volume finally brings that into focus. Not only that but her fight with Envy, is just as warranted, climatic and awesome as Scott’s fight coming up, as no one has stood up to envy due to her fame.. but Ramona.. dosen’t care. Someone’s gotta stop her, and Ramona’s taking up the job. And the awesome looking hammer.

That being said taking up a giant hammer against a beloved celebrity dosen’t win you any point, so Ramona finds herself discouraged, even if Envy can very clearly handle herself. Thankfully she gets some encouragment from exactly who you’d expect.

And Wallce.. turns out to be pretty useful. At least in this one fight. His shouting not only gives Ramona her fight back.. but keeps distracting envy, leaving her wide open. The tide turns though when Wallace has to pee, and Envy uses the distraction to knock the hamme rout of Raona’s hand and prepare to flatten her. But once again.. someone save sher in the knick of time.. and this time it’s the LAST person you’d expect, as Knives gives the hammer a flying kick.. and then crashes into a wall, and when Ramona, understandably not getting this since she tried to turn her into swiss cheese earlier this week, asks why, Knives admit’s she just wants Scott to be happy. Knives has grown too, and while she’s still obessed with Scott and waiting for themt o break up.. she’s no longer going to try and wedge her way in. If Ramona is what Scott wants, tha’ts what he gets.

All three are distracted by well.. this...

State of your outfits mates. Though that line is iconic. But serously the outfits are hilaroiusly and reaslitically mismatched. Kim’s home made and overdone gothica lolita outfit that dosen’t match her AT ALL, goth yes , poofy goth no. Stephen’s johnny cash outfit he clearly had lying around and Scott’s Dad Suit.

That being said.. still the best looking one of the three. But Envy takes advantage to regrab the hammer and try and murder the two of them.. but Scott sees this.. and well... you get it by now, one more time. Bake me away toys!

So we get the final weeks or days or whatever of the relationship. In a nice parallel to Scott playing Ramona a song he does the same for Envy.. who both questions what this is for then is confused why he’d do something so sweet. Next scene is her getting a call while their cuddling in bed from some guy she idntiefies as Jason and.. barely disguises is clearly cheating on Scott with. and could possibly be todd I dunno. After that we get to Kid Chamelon preparing to sign a deal and Envy.. trying to press Scott into sginging it, ignoring his obvious discomfort, and then casually threanting to replace him. While Scott does give us a face punchingly dickish comment about “How he started this band to meet chicks and maybe he met the wrong chick”... he’s still somehow in the right as while he’s being a manic dickhead... Envy has ceased seeing him as a person or even something she cares about and tells him to get a hair cut and leave.

We then get the breakup itself as Scott goes up to envy.. and she tells him to get out of her life. ack in the present, Scott’s grown enough to realize he has to stop her and does so.. by touching hte back of her knee which.. uhhhh.

So yeah.. he beat her with an orgasm, and that looks oddly hot. And i’m moving on before that last part of the sentence sinks in. Envy, once she recovers, orders Todd to do a murder on them, but Todd’s not there and Ramona, naturally, brags about him having cheated on her. Envy.. denis.. this.

I .. don’t have time to unpack that. This review is late, I have two other reviews to get to today. Time for ANOTHER flashback.

This time it’s Envy teling a story bok verion of her and Toddd’s relationship. It’s a real poetic and well done sequence. In a nuthsell: Envy and Todd were best friends and deeply in love as kids until todd moved away i’m guessing sometime in middle school. Deeply depressed, Envy sailed through life as sort of a ghost, TRYING to find another connection like that, but failing. Todd returned after she graduated though, and gave her a symbol of his love.. a hole on the moon. Yes another one. And they both promised to never waiver as he went off to the vegan academy. Clearly Envy did with Scott... but it paints her ambition in another light. One where she wanted to be big and bold enough for him.. but slowly carved out her old self to do so.

And as is obvious it was pointlness: not only did Envy love someone else.. but Todd never cared as much as she did. As Ramona points out, and relcutnantly because even she feels a little bad about this one, he did the moon trick with her.. and this time Envy CAN’T deny it.. becaue the evidence is right there.

And of course Todd.. makes his case even WORSE by picking that moment to come out of the bathroom, sipping up his pants, with panties on his head, and with Lynette following right after him. Envy.. tries to murder Lynette, her go to, but LYnette teleports out. Because she can do that. Though Envy does hit her cyborg arm so she looes that and the panties and Ramona offers to mount it at her place if Kim takes the panties, but kim admits she wasn’t scrapbooking, she said she was and was just making the dress. Horay, as ramona puts it “Col se can still be friends. Right.. FRIENDS.

Envy TRIES to cave Todd’s skull in, get some therapy woman, but Todd naturally tk’s it away but despite being the king of all assholes DOES care enough not to fight her. Envy... plays nice then knees him in the nuts like he fucking deserves. Todd then returns to being the once and future douchebag by TK’ing her into the crowd and bragging about it.

Scott dosen’t take this well, even after everything and the final fight begins. They have a bass fight.. but like the game i’ts redicuously one sided since Todd both is a skilled bassist compared to Scott.. and is still using his psychic powers lest you forget he’s a bastard man.

The Boys and Crash however show up to even the odds.. and their trainig is the reason they can play music without insturments as they can now manipulate pur sound. Fucking beautiful. But even they aren’t enough and Todd swats them aside.

While poorly is a bit harsh.. the vegan police show up, which is awesome, though the movie got thomas jane for one of them and had that high five so they win. But yeah.. while this is hilarous.. and the scene with them is great.. it’s also the weakest part of an otherwise near perfect book. It just feels a bit anti clmatic that after all this build up.. Todd is just.. beaten with a sloppy depower. The boys and crash would’ve still been a cop out, but it would’ve been a freaking cool cop out. The thing that saves it is afterwords Scott still gets an epic finish: after they devganize him for the gelato earlier, scott headbutts him epicly and wins. He gets money and.

A 1-up, which understandibly terrfies him but will come in hand in a few volumes. Trust me. Scot checks on everyone. Ramona’s fine, Envy is not and breifly blames scott before he points out Todd was a no good cheating dickwad, and Kim is obviously fine as nothing happend, but him asking is a nice bit of charcter growth. Kim asks about kinves but she’s okay and neil is helping her. But theshow must go on and since the headliners are dead (don’t worry he’ll respawn), in parts unknown and in emotoinal apocalypse, someone’s gotta play.

So our heroes have the show of their lives, and crowd reaction is mostly positive with Jospeh noticing htier levels were horrible, a hint for next time, and the crew interviewing everyone.. including a mysterous gentleman having a beer, who has no commenta nd walks away.

Gideon.. was here the whole time,but he’s not ready for Scott JUST yet. Still a really damn cool tease for the final boss.

So we close the next day, Scott and Envy sorta make up, with both apologizing for their behavor and while Scott gets no closure, envy promises to return.. and makes good on it. But.. that’s for the finale. For now Scott’s girlfriend and best buddy give him a moment to baste in his pathos, before heading off. And in a nice bit of metaphor, the clouds part, and our three amigos walk off into the sunset and a bright future. Three down 4 to go. Next time: Lesbian Artist Ninjas! Side Stories! Scott Gets A Job! The Band gets a producer! Kim gets a decent apartment and a boyfriend! Lisa returns! See you in feburary.

Until then if you liked this review, spread it around andi f ther’es a comic you want me to cover, my comissions are open. Until the next rainbow, it was a pleasure.

#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim and the infinite sadness #ramona flowers #wallace wells #kim pine #stephen stiles #neil nordgraf #envy adams #todd ingram #lynette gycott #julie powers #other scott #monique #sandra #college #comics #Brian Lee O'malley #oni press

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