God only knows how excited I was last Wednesday when I booked from work to head to my favorite Manhattan shop, Forbidden Planet, for the fourth iteration in the spectacular adventures of ex-boyfriend fighting hipster, Scott Pilgrim. For those who have followed this kinetic  soap opera, the annual Scott Pilgrim digests follow the adventures of a 23-year-old slacker who must battle his girlfriend’s seven evil exes in order to stay with her. The amazing thing about Bryan Lee O’Malley’s serials is how they analogize the drama and strife of 20-something dating through over-the-top kung fu fights and playful pop-culture commentary. Who hasn’t ever felt like dragon-punching your significant other’s pretentious vegan ex-boyfriend before head-butting him into oblivion (I’m literally pausing right now to fantasize)? Fortunately, the ridiculous fights are balanced with superb characterization and real affection for these characters, whose quirks are easily found in some of your real-life friends and flames.

Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together doesn’t live up to the standards of the previous three volumes. The ex he fights in this edition isn’t as memorable as the ex-professional skateboarder or aforementioned telekinetic vegan bass player from volumes past. Likewise, the hilarious parallels between Scott and video-gaming nostalgia are flimsy at best (a digital thirst meter?). My biggest complaint, though, is the characterization behind gay roommate Wallace and the rest of his friends. The characters stray from idiosyncratic lovability into some pretty strange directions that I won’t spoil. Suffice to say, Pilgrim always thrived in its balance between realism and fantasy, but this realism is strained into some tired territory that would fit more into exploitive teenage melodrama than everyone’s favorite Canadian Manga.

That said, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from picking this series up. A lackluster Scott Pilgrim shines brighter than 90% of anything else from the big two. Apparently I’m not alone in my praise for this series, as the stock at Forbidden Planet was clean sold out in hours and I had to travel to St. Mark’s where a lone copy thankfully remained.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Anime, Books, Comics, Culture, Manga, Sean Edgar. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.