Adaptation Brawl: Scott Pilgrim (Graphic Novels)

It's Scott Pilgrim vs. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World!



Welcome back everyone, for part two of my Scott Pilgrim review. I really meant to do the whole thing in one go... but there's actually a lot of levels to this, and I didn't want to leave anything out. So the last post covered the movie, and in this one I'm going to take on the original graphic novels. If you haven't read the first half, you should go do that now. It's cool; I'll wait.

Everyone back? Great. So here we go with the comics. The series was created and drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley and published by Oni Press. The eponymous hero was named after the title of a song by the band Plumtree (the song itself can be heard in the film's soundtrack, as a fun little nod). The first volume, Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, was released in 2004, and it came to a close in 2010, just weeks before the release of the film version, with volume six, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. Many of the visual effects in the film, especially the video game motifs, were copied directly from the books. But the books have a slightly less frantic pace, and some more subplots than the movie.

The story starts out just like the movie; in fact the entirety of volume one is more or less identical. Just to recap, 23-year-old Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler named Knives Chau, 17 years old. But then a mysterious girl on roller blades starts appearing in his dreams. When he learns that she's a real woman named Ramona Flowers, skating through his dreams via subspace, he decides to date her (without actually breaking up with Knives first). Scott invites Ramona to see his band, Sex Bob-Omb play at the Rockit, but the event is interrupted by Matthew Patel, the first of Ramona's seven evil ex-boyfriends. Matthew challenges Scott but Scott easily takes him down, making him burst into a pile of coins. Ramona then tells him that he'll have to defeat the rest of them if he wants to date her. The only major difference between the comic and the film is that at the end of this conversation, Ramona's head starts glowing for unknown and mysterious reasons, setting up a recurring plot point. In the comic, this happens whenever Ramona gets particularly upset.

The differences really start in volume two, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which is kind of ironic since the movie used that as its title. It starts out with a long flashback of how Scott met his ex-girlfriend and current drummer Kim Pine, already giving Kim more depth than she has in the film. The flashback begins with Scott making friends with another girl named Lisa Miller. She convinces him to start a band with her, but they need a drummer. Scott meets Kim in his geography class when they're assigned a project together, and then learns that she plays drums. Kim is then kidnapped by a gang from a rival school and Scott has to go rescue her. And if this premise sounds familiar, then you my friend are thinking of a little game called River City Ransom, and that's no coincidence.

Strap in, because this is only the beginning.

Scott beats up the gang's leader, Simon Lee, and rescues Kim, delivering possibly the best declaration of romantic interest ever: "I like you, Kim. We should be dating. Also, do you want to play drums in my band?" Seriously, I kinda want to start a band just so I can deliver that line. It's so stupid it comes full circle and becomes glorious somehow.

In real life, Scott finally breaks up with Knives, destroying her emotionally. But he gets over it quickly as soon as he has another date with Ramona. Scott's cool, gay roommate Wallace learns that Ramona's second evil ex, skater-turned-action-star Lucas Lee, is coming to town to shoot a movie. Scott goes to challenge him and defeats him by challenging him to grind a difficult railing, which he fails to do. At this point, by the way, there's still a full third of the book left. That wasn't the climax. The climax comes in the form of Knives challenging Ramona for Scott. Yeah, the fight that came at the very end of the movie, the climax of the Knives Chau story arc, takes place in volume 2 of 6. It's fair to ask what she's going to be doing for the rest of the damn series... but in all fairness, she actually spends most of that time being probably the most interesting and entertaining character in the secondary cast. Anyway, in the comics, Scott isn't around to put an end to the fight, so Ramona just kicks Knives' ass and sends her running away.

Knives' ninja training did not including proper taunting.

Scott gets a call from his ex-girlfriend Envy Adams, inviting Sex Bob-Omb to open for her band, The Clash at Demonhead, at a show the next Sunday. His bandmates pressure him into accepting, and they go see The Clash at Demonhead perform. While there, Ramona recognizes the bass player as her third evil ex, Todd Ingram.

Volume three, Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, begins as Scott challenges Todd backstage after the show, only to learn that Todd is vegan and has psychic powers. We then transition into a flashback retelling Scott's relationship with Envy. Holy Hell, it's like the characters actually have depth or something. And it turns out that Envy is actually a huge nerd. That's part of what I really like about the comic's depiction of her. She totally comes across as a girl I would date. Take from that what you will.

In my defense, that is a poster for Porco Rosso back there.

Envy, decided to change her image at some point during her relationship with Scott and sold all of her geek paraphernalia to buy fashionable clothes. She became emotionally distant until Scott suspected she was cheating on him. They finally got into a fight over Scott's hair and broke up. And being, well, Scott Pilgrim, Scott continues to believe that the breakup was entirely the fault of his haircut. Scott and Todd decide to finish their fight at a later date and part ways for the time being. Wallace gives Scott some genuinely insightful advice about Envy, reminding him that it's over, even if she's back now, and it leads to a flashback of how he and Scott met. It's actually a nested flashback, appearing within another Envy flashback, because that's always a classy and professional way of telling a story, right?

Ramona tells Scott how she met Todd, leading into yet another flashback, and... You know, there's something of a trend developing here. O'Malley should have just called this volume "Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Flashbacks" and been done with it. This flashback doesn't even serve much purpose, aside from the same punching-the-moon business as in the movie (because moon-punching is evidently the perfect way to show a girl you love her). We then see present-day Todd cheating on Envy with their bionic-armed drummer Lynette, and cheating on his vegan diet by eating gelato. Did you get all that? Because you might have missed it with him beating up Scott and destroying shit with psychic powers, but Todd's supposed to be a villain. Don't worry if you forget, the book will remind you of it about ten more times before it's all said and done.

In the meantime, Envy accuses Ramona of lying about her relationship with Gideon Graves, prompting Ramona to fight her with a giant hammer. Scott jumps in and takes Envy down by poking her in the sensitive spot on the back of her knee. If you're noticing the parallels here with the fight in the movie against Roxie, sharp eye. See, instead of giving each girl due character depth, the movie elected to cram everything into Roxie's character in hopes of making up for cutting out her entire story arc. And that's not even all; check out this page from a mini-comic released online between volumes 3 and 4, and see if it seems familiar:

Yep, even a bunch of nameless mooks got their scene welded together with Roxie's somehow.

So Envy goes into, you guessed it, another goddamn flashback about her relationship with Todd, which she claims is true love because they've been best friends since they were eleven.But Envy then discovers Todd's infidelity, and uses Ramona's hammer to break off Lynette's bionic arm. Todd knocks out Envy, and Scott decides to finally finish their battle. He can't land a single hit on Todd until the Vegan Police appear out of nowhere to take Todd's powers away for cheating on his diet. Then Scott easily takes him out with a headbutt, and the victory earns him an extra life. Envy and Scott share an extremely awkward goodbye and she leaves, bringing about the end of the volume, thankfully without more unnecessary flashbacks.

And here the comics and the film diverge entirely, since the movie was written while O'Malley was still working on volume three, when the rest of the plot was still undecided. But volume four, Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together, stands as one of the series' high points, and it's unfortunate that the movie hacked it down to an obligatory fight against Roxie Richter, with half her character cut out and replaced with half of Envy's. Volume 4 begins with the only colored pages in the series, wherein the gang is having fun at the beach, because nothing requires color more than blatant swimsuit fanservice. Nothing important happens in this section, though, unless you count this as important:

Which, to be fair, I do.

Back at home, Scott has a number of issues to deal with. Ramona wants him to get a job and his lease is up, leaving him to ponder whether he'll continue living with Wallace or take a big step forward and move in with Ramona. To top it off, he runs into Lisa Miller, who wants to reconnect with him and gives him her phone number. Well, that seems innocent enough. Surely it won't become a serious issue later.

Scott eventually lands a job as a dishwasher in the restaurant where Stephen Stills works. Immediately afterward, he's attacked by a middle-aged Asian man with a sword, who he presumes is Ramona's fourth ex. He narrowly escapes him by running through a subspace door. Later on, he's attacked again, this time by a blond ninja girl. Scott's finally had enough when he later sees the mysterious girl casually chatting with Ramona, and confronts them demanding to know what's going on. Ramona reveals that the girl is Roxie Richter, her former college roommate and fourth evil ex. Roxie challenges Scott while he's trying to come to grips with it all, but he refuses to fight her because she has a sword. She follows him and Ramona into subspace as they try to get away, and Ramona fights her with a baseball bat, because she's hardcore awesome and not the mopey little wuss she is in the movie. Roxie wins the fight, but then leaves, seemingly unwilling to finish her off.

See, that's the thing with Roxie. She's a complex and fairly sympathetic character. Out of all the evil exes, she's the one whose feelings seem most justified. She's bitter, not towards Ramona but towards the situation. Ramona didn't actually wrong her, and presumably only broke up with her because she grew out of her experimental phase. That means that their feelings towards each other are actually still positive. Ramona shows that she still likes Roxie and wants to reconnect with her, maybe even become friends with her again.

The fact that she's Scott's enemy but Ramona's friend is what makes this arc really interesting for me. But I'll come back to that point. Let's continue. Ramona asks Scott about Lisa, accusing him of having feelings for her. He tries to explain that he doesn't, but her head starts glowing and she doesn't listen to him. After she storms off, Scott returns home but finds that Wallace has his boyfriend over and won't let him in. With no other choices available (because Stills and Kim just blinked out of existence for the purposes of this story arc), Scott is forced to call Lisa and crash at her place.  While there she tries to seduce him, but he refuses her advances. Well, that's all wrapped up nicely. Surely it won't become a serious issue later.

As Scott heads to Ramona's house he encounters Knives and her dad, who it turns out is the man who attacked him earlier. You know, as fun as it is to say you should avoid girls named after deadly weapons, it suddenly occurs to me that the people you really want to avoid are the parents of those people, as in the ones who named their children after deadly weapons. Scott, probably having a similar revelation, runs away into subspace again, this time ending up in Ramona's dreams. He sees her kneeling contentedly at the feet of a shadowy, enthroned figure who is clearly Gideon. Kinky. After she chases him out of her head, Scott learns that Roxie spent the night at her house. His head starts to glow and he storms off, eventually running into a shadow clone of himself which he calls the "NegaScott".

After getting rid of the NegaScott, he returns to Ramona's house. He tells her that he loves her for the first time, earning him a flaming sword called The Power of Love. He uses the sword to defeat Roxie, who unlike the previous exes turns into a bunch of cute bunnies and birds instead of coins (in addition to the obvious Sonic the Hedgehog reference, this is another sign that inside, she wasn't really so evil after all). Mr. Chau decides that Scott's a decent sort after all and forgives him for... you know, I'm not really sure what he was so pissed off about, but anyway it's forgiven. And Ramona tells him that she's not upset about him spending the night at Lisa's place. Huh. I guess it really didn't become a serious issue. Cool.

Scott moves in with Ramona, Wallace moves in with his boyfriend Mobile, and Lisa says farewell and moves to the US to be an actress. Everything really turns out OK. But one serious question remains: what the hell is Mr. Chau planning to do with this helpless bunny rabbit?

Is it racist to ask if it's going to end up skinned and hanging upside down in a shop window? ... My lawyers are saying yes.

Volume five is titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, because Bryan Lee O'Malley had used up his originality ration for the month. It's probably the weakest of the volumes, reading less like its own story and more like a direct set-up to the final volume. The plot is really very basic. Ken and Kyle Katayanagi show up and challenge Scott by building robots to fight him. Because they're Japanese and all Japanese people build robots. Meanwhile, Knives tells Ramona that Scott had two-timed them, causing a big fight between Scott and Ramona. Before they can work everything out, Kim is kidnapped by the Katayanagis and Scott is forced to go rescue her. Despite being the architects of the entire scenario, the twins don't have another robot for him to fight this time and decide to face him themselves, because why the hell not I guess. He defeats them and rescues Kim, but when he returns home Ramona's head is glowing brighter than it ever has before. She seems to have forgiven him but is now severely self-loathing, to the point where she decides to simply disappear from Scott's life, which she does... literally, as in vanishing in a bright flash. Kim also decides to leave Toronto (though she just takes a bus like a normal person), which spells the end of Sex Bob-Omb. Scott  then receives a phone call from Gideon, challenging to the final showdown.

And that brings us to Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, the final chapter of the series. It begins after some time has passed. Ramona hasn't returned, Stills has formed a new band without Scott, and Scott has lost all drive in his life. He spends his days on his couch playing video games. That's supposed to signify that his life sucks, by the way, and not at all that his life is awesome. He encounters Knives Chau (17 years old Gotcha! She's 18 now!) and she tells him that she's moving away from Toronto as well, since she's graduating high school soon. She further tells him that she still loves him, but doesn't want to be with him anymore, finally achieving the emotional maturity that's been the apple dangling in front of her for the whole series.

Scott next encounters Envy... you know, his ex-girlfriend, the one that vanished halfway through the movie version. Here, as crazy as it sounds, O'Malley has decided to give her story arc, you know, an ending. She reappears, now in the middle of her launch as a solo artist, to play the opening of Gideon's Chaos Theater. She tells Scott that, contrary to what we saw in the 200 unnecessary flashbacks in volume three, he was just as responsible for their breakup as she was. Goddamn it, you pad an entire volume with boring, distracting flashbacks, and they don't even count? Goddamn it!! Rage! Rage and Hate!!

Kim invites Scott to visit her and Wallace forces him to go. Kim also tells Scott that, while he doesn't remember it, he had also been a jerk to her when they were dating. Even beating up Simon Lee had been a selfish act; he hadn't kidnapped her, she was dating him. Upon this revelation the NegaScott appears again. Scott fights him until Kim convinces him that he can't keep ignoring his dark side forever. Scott and the NegaScott join together, and Scott remembers all of the mistakes he's made. After coming to terms with himself, he decides to return to Toronto and fight Gideon.

Scott enters the Chaos Theater, where as contrivance would have it, the entire secondary cast is assembled to see Envy's show. Scott introduces his sister to Young Neil, who he now renames Neil (Neil nearly weeps with joy). I mention this because it's the only thing approaching closure for Neil, but it's merely a side note in terms of the plot. Gideon appears, and upon learning that Ramona has left Scott, steals the Power of Love and kills him with it.

Scott finds himself in a desert dreamscape, and Ramona finally reappears, somehow aware of everything that's going on. She apologizes for leaving, at which point the extra life he got in volume three brings him back to life. Ramona jumps out of Scott's chest and appears in the Chaos Theater. Which apparently she can do. Gideon hits them with a beam that makes their heads glow, which he explains is a technique he developed which traps people inside their own heads so that they can't consider anyone else's viewpoints. This just causes Ramona to try to disappear again, and Gideon realizes that she's been using the glow to run away from her problems. He stops her by stabbing her through the chest, because he's Gideon Graves: stabbing people through the chest is what he does.

Scott uses Ramona's bag of holding to enter subspace and go into her head. Gideon is there waiting for him, claiming that in that space he is all-powerful. He claims that being under his control is what Ramona secretly wants, which is kind of meaningless since he's the one that put that thought in her head in the first place; he knows how to mess with people's heads, and even changed Scott's memories just to screw with him. Scott doesn't buy it any more than you or I did, and charges into battle. He's no match for Gideon in Ramona's head, but then Ramona herself decides enough's enough and forces him out of her mind. Back in reality, she takes the Power of Love, which heals her gaping chest wound (love totally does that, didn't you know?). Scott realizes that he and Gideon aren't really so different, and earns a new sword called the Power of Understanding. He and Ramona then defeat Gideon... with the X-Strike dual tech from Chrono Trigger. Good, because I was getting worried for a minute that with all that personal growth and symbolism of fighting their enemy by overcoming their own issues, O'Malley was forgetting what really matters: more video game references.

Envy responds to Gideon's defeat by deciding to put her own issues behind her and forgiving Scott, setting up a single panel that could almost stand as an epic "fuck you" to the way the movie handled her character:

"Oh, so that's what it looks like." -Edgar Wright

Kim moves back to Toronto and starts a new band with Scott, Scott and Ramona decide to start over and give their relationship another shot, and everyone grows up and moves on with their lives. Oh, and Stephen Stills is gay now. Yes, you're right, that doesn't have a damn thing to do with anything, but O'Malley apparently thought that was vitally important to know at the very last minute.

So that final baffling plot twist aside, the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels tell a tale with a larger message than the movie could manage. On the surface level, yeah, it's a story about a guy fighting seven other guys. But the point of the story really is about growing up and getting a grip on your own life. Scott grows from a nonchalant slacker to a semi-mature adult with responsibilities, while Ramona learns to let people into her life and stop running away. And the message comes across a lot more clearly than it does in the film.

The characters get a lot more depth in the comics. Not only do Roxie and Envy get proper depth and relatability, on a far more important note we get real depth in the female lead. In the movie, Ramona was mysterious, but it was hard to tell what we were actually supposed to like about her. In the comics, she's fun, she cracks wise, she even makes references to cool shit like the Monkey Island computer games. She's a really cool chick, and it's no wonder Scott wants her. That being said, there are some characters who we really didn't need any background for, like the Katayanagi twins, and their scenes tend to come off as tedious. But for the most part the extra depth really helps move the story along.

There are definitely some areas where the movie excels, like the music and the visual effects, and that's why I wholeheartedly endorse the movie, but if it comes down to which version I just straight-up like better, I've got to go with the comics. Flashy graphics and catchy tunes are great, but they don't beat out a good story and fleshed-out characters. Do yourself a favor: watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and if you like it, find a copy of the graphic novels. They're definitely worth a read, and they add that much more to the movie.

Plus, none of this crap.

Scott Pilgrim is the property of Oni Press and Bryan Lee O'Malley. Images used from Scott Pilgrim  graphic novels, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and River City Ransom.