The Background:

It oughtta be a national holiday: that magical day when, roughly, once a year the new SCOTT PILGRIM book from Oni Press arrives.  The fifth volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s series of chunky manga-style graphic novels hit the stands yesterday.  A heady brew of young love, martial arts, indie rock, random video game references and quirky silliness, every volume is a thing of frickin’ beauty and a joy forever.  So far, the series has earned love from such diverse fans as Entertainment Weekly (Independent Comic of the Year, 2006!), Wizard Magazine (Indie of the Year 2006!), the Harvey Awards, the Washington Post, and Slate.com.  It has also garnered Hollywood’s attention.  A major film is currently in pre-production under the auspices of mad genius Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) — more on that later.  But for right now… how does the latest edition measure up?

The Lowdown:

To catch you up to speed… Perennial slacker Scott Pilgrim, age 23 (Rating: AWESOME!) was living off the kindness of his long-suffering friends, practicing with his band Sex Bob-omb and dating a high schooler.  Before you get too grossed out by that last bit, you should know that (a) Scott was kind of regressing after a massive emotional core collapse following his break-up with man-eating ultravixen (and Clash at Demonhead front-woman) Envy Adams; and (b) Scott’s relationship with 17-year-old Knives Chau was pretty innocent.  (They never really kissed and they held hands maybe once?)

Then Scott met Ramona Flowers… and everything changed.  An American expat roller-bladin’ ninja delivery girl for amazon.ca (yes, the series is set in Canada), supercool, superamazing Ramona can take shortcuts through subspace.  Sexy, smart, sassy and a kick-ass titanium bat-wielding combat expert, Ramona is everything a guy like Scott dreams about.  But there’s only one problem…  if he wants to keep dating her, he has to fight through a league of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in some of the looniest anime / video game style martial art combats sequences you’ve ever encountered.

The Rundown:

Volume 5 kicks off with Scott’s birthday party where he vows to be “the best 24-year-old ever!”  After the events of the last book (Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together), we almost believe him.  Scott finally confronted his callow, immature inner nature and vowed to start acting a little more like a grown-up because he was afraid he was going to lose Ramona.  (Hell, he even got a job.)  But things aren’t all sweetness and light…

During a long, lugubrious summer, Scott’s band starts to fall apart and the focus shifts to Ramona — who seems to be having some serious commitment issues.  We also get some hints about her enigmatic past that address some of the longstanding mysteries of the series.  (Why does her head glow when she’s confronted with certain questions?  And what, exactly, was her last job?)  Things aren’t helped by the fact that high schooler Knives Chau has made obsessing over Scott her full-time job…  and they’re even further complicated by the unresolved feelings between Scott and his bandmate Kim Pine, who has carried a torch for him since middle school.   But forget the soap opera: it’s slipped in between the bits with Scott taking on Evil Boyfriends #5 & 6 –Kyle Katayanagi and his twin brother Ken.  Master strategists and expert roboticists, they intend to kick Scott’s ass without ever laying a hand on him personally.  They don’t need to when they have an arsenal of kung-fu mechadroids and an insidious scheme to exploit Scott’s hidden weakness!

The Breakdown:

It kicks off with the high-octane, Red Bull-fueled fun we’ve grown to expect from this series — starting off with the cover itself, which looks like its made out of those glossy, shiny chrome stickers you used to buy out of vending machines.  It’s chockful of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s quirky humor and unexpected transitions.  (Forget “Meanwhile…”  O’Malley’s captions tend to be more like: “Two and a half sucky-ass minutes later…”)  O’Malley’s art and form are at a peak here, but it’s neither the best volume in the series or the least.  A rapid page-turner, it’s “all middle”, as the dudes at Savage Critic have been known to vent: the stakes all depend on what’s come before and the tension of what’s to follow.  However, each volume in this series has its own emotional tone.  This one is all about doubt — when your faith falters in your dreams, in your abiding love for another, in your certainty about the future and as such it might be particularly relevant to the mixed up times we live in.

But the ultimate test is this…  I can guarantee Vs. The Universe is going to inspire me to do the same thing I do every year when the new PILGRIM comes out — pick up the series from Volume I, page 1 and read straight through, laughing at the same jokes, discovering new bits of humor lurking in the background and falling in love with the characters all over again.

RATING: K for Kick-Ass

What did you think?

(Coming soon… the latest on Edgar Wright’s movie version and whether the movie can possibly match the high insanity of the comics.)