Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

The back is overstuffed; the beginning is as laconic as the series gets. Bryan Lee O'Malley has a lot to get done in the last book of the Scott Pilgrim series, but he starts in a moment of stasis - a moment that takes up roughly half the book.

In the previous book, Vs. the Universe, Scott sort-of cheated on his girlfriend Ramona Flowers - or, more specifically, drew her attention to the fact that their relationship started with her as the other woman while he was supposedly dating "17-year-old Knives Chau." They had a fight - as much of a fight as the conflict-averse Scott could ever participate in, at least - and she ran off to parts unknown.

In Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, it's a few months later, or maybe those months pass as the book goes on. Time is passing, in that way that seems confusing and unusual to people in their mid-twenties, dropped into a world much less structured than they were used to for so long and realizing they have to make their own lives themselves, out of whatever materials they have at hand. Scott, of course, is not good at this, and is mostly lying on a couch in the apartment his parents got him, playing video games and talking distractedly to whatever friends come to try to get him back out into the world.

The world has moved on. Knives has turned eighteen [1]; Young Neil is no longer young; we don't learn if Sex Bob-Om's record came out, or if anyone cared; Kim has rusticated herself at her parents' place back up north; Scott does something similar in the middle of the book.

And the new big name in Toronto is Gideon Graves, some kind of promoter whose hot new club is opening soon. He's also Ramona's last evil ex - and, of course, the most evil ex, the ringleader who gathered the others in the first place.

Scott is sure that Ramona is missing because Gideon has kidnapped her, and is holding her hostage - as I like to think of it, in this or some other castle. It's a reasonable assumption, and isn't entirely wrong - Gideon has infiltrated himself deeply into Ramona's head, in a very literal way - but he is not physically holding her.

Scott is painfully immature and oblivious; the whole series is about how he sort-of grows up a bit, and becomes slightly less of a clueless goofball. For me, this line from Envy Adams sums up the Scott early in the book:

So: Scott gets whacked with a whole bunch of cluesticks for a long time, and some of it finally starts to take. He goes to the big opening of Gideon's fancy club, and the inevitable final boss fight ensues.

It does not initially go as you might expect, unless you are both tracking to the Hero's Journey and remembering a minor moment from the third book. But Scott finds Ramona again, and they reconcile as best they can, as two conflict-avoidant, messy, immature people. And then they both fight Gideon, on a couple of planes of realty, as a whole lot of backstory and explanation is shouted among them at high volume. (This is silly and a bit much but entirely appropriate.) And then they walk off together into the sunset...more or less.

It's a good ending, and it doesn't promise too much. Scott is still a forgetful goofball, starting another currently-horrible band. And he and Ramona will have relationship stuff they can't fix by punching evil exes in the future - but, we think, they're in a better place, and can maybe talk about things, at least somewhat, now. We'll take that as a win: they're still, as I said when I started this re-read, so, so very young still.

And, looking back at the whole series, the arc is still strong and still works well, even twenty years later. The style and video-game tropes are quirky and specific in ways that kept Scott Pilgrim from being obviously dated, at least so far. O'Malley's art is occasionally goofy - I thought that at the time; I thought it again on this re-read - with eyeballs blowing up to nearly full-panel size disconcertingly. But that's the look of this project; it's part of the whole deal. Last, added to the deal for this revised edition are Nathan Fairbairn's colors - and the best thing I can say about them is that I forgot that this was originally black and white while reading it. (And I say this as a GenX '80s-comics black-and-white snob.) The color works entirely, and looks like it always was and should have been there.

[1] Signposted by a caption, which apparently Scott can read. As always, the metafictional elements are rich and deeply integrated - this is a world that operates on video-game logic much of the time, and everyone knows that.