In the coming weeks, itβs probable that much will be written about Bryan Lee OβMalleyβs SCOTT PILGRIM Volume #5. It is EXCELLENT. This has been said with every installment, but: Volume #5 is the best written, most confidently executed installment of the series yet. Every comic, every success story attracts its share of Grinches-- you know, itβs pretty fun to be that Grinch. But Volume #5 makes me so enormously sad for SCOTT PILGRIM's Grinches. What a terrible fate that must be, to lack the capacity to enjoy this book. You've made terrible choices in life.
So: I'm gushy sweaty spazzy about this book, basically-- not a state of mind where anything I can write is well-advised or likely to be helpful to you. But I noticed something in a few other reviews that had bothered me, something that I felt had been overlooked.
Most of those reviews had focused on Volume 5 in light of how it developed the stories of Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Kim Pine, Knives Chau, and/or Wallace Wells.
Why arenβt people talking about Young Neil?
Because, holy shit, dude: Young Neil!
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Spoilers, severe spoilers ahead.
I know there have been supply shortages and lines and screw-ups at Diamond. I know buying this comic book apparently resembles buying toilet paper in the old USSR in multiple ways for a great many of you out there, and I sincerely donβt want to spoil this episode for anyone. Because there is so very much to spoil. For example: the scene where Scott Pilgrim has sex with a hooker to restore his health and then murders her (just like in video-games!). Don't let anyone spoil that scene for you. Or the scene where Kim Pine takes off her pants and reveals her penis, Shiwasu No Okina style (itβs manga influenced!). Once these scenes are spoiled for you via textual summary, there is no un-spoiling them from your mind.
So, please be certain that I will 100% spoil this comic for you, if you read ahead, even though Iβm focusing on Young Neil who you might (incorrectly) think is not a major character in the series.
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SCOTT PILGRIM has never been a series without flaws. For example, in two words: vegan police. And if someone were to tell me that they couldnβt enjoy the series on account of the extent to which itβs saturated in crap culture-- well, I wouldnβt be upset by that. I don't imagine the bookβs use of video-game tropes, anime nods, etc. is for everyone, even though I happen to be personally amused by those elements. The most emotional moment of the Vol. 5, the departure of Ramona Flowers, vaguely recalls the worst moments of shitty anime like DNA-Squared or β¦ I donβt even want to know what. Some people might not be able to get past that.
But I think SCOTT PILGRIM fans might agree that anyone complaining too much about those elements is underestimating how relatable the characters are, and as importantly, how there are multiple characters to relate to. In other words, I understand if you don't know what a Super Mario Brother is, but were you really never aimless and selfish in your 20's? Lucky you.
In her book Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (or as most comic book critics call it, The Bible), Susan Douglas discusses how the success of the girl bands of the 1960's can be attributed to how they allowed girls of that generation to "try on" different sexual identities, whether the troubling thrills of dating the bad boy of Leader of the Pack or the hopeful uncertainty of the Shirelle's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
I've always thought SCOTT PILGRIM likely owed its success to that same quality-- that it didnβt merely randomly reflect some temporary spasm of the zeitgeist, that itβs not some fluke of particles colliding in a vacuum, but that its success can be tracked to how SCOTT PILGRIM fills a different vacuum, a vacuum for cartoon characters, modern cartoon characters, that speak to life experiences other cartoon characters canβt and/or historically havenβt.
Younger fans can see themselves in Knives Chau as much as Ramona Flowers, in Wallace Wells as much as Scott Pilgrim. But the true facts are that many of us, maybe even most of us, arenβt the heroes of any story. We face no thrilling battles; our romances are not action-adventures. Our presence or absence makes no difference to the world around us, maybe even the majority of the people around us.
Many of us are Young Neil.
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Volume 1 is the heyday for Young Neil. He's Stephen Stills's roommate, Sex Bob-Omb's only fan (besides Knives Chau). But by Volume 3, it's over. It's all over Young Neil before he even knew it. Heβs expelled from his group of friends for offenses he barely knew he committed.
Well, thatβs an overstatement: dating a friendβs ex without the proper hesitation or consideration isnβt a minor offense; you know: ignorance of the law is no excuse. But surely he paid for his crimes! Look at the poor guy.
He thought he might get laid, and instead he's ending the night watching a girl whoβs all wrong for him randomly crying for reasons he can't guess. At least, when I look at that scene, based on my life experience? Sheβs crying. I know: the fact heβs drawn with his heart literally on his sleeve is pretty overt, butβ¦ the poor son of a bitch.
I re-read the series on Tuesday, in anticipation for Volume 5. What does it say of my life experience that the thing I most related to in the entire goddamn series was Young Neil and the crying girl? Oh, right: it says I need to change my fucking life. Thank you, Internet. You are a comfort as always.
It was my first time through the books since I'd first read any of them. Probably my first time noticing Young Neil as anything besides comic relief. I hadn't paid attention to Young Neil before. But that's sort of the whole point of Young Neil, I think: because neither do his friends. Young Neil is just there. Until he's not.
Until finally, in Volume 5, there's Young Neil and he's in a dirty room, completely alienated from the people who he used to think (incorrectly) were his friends, just spending a day getting high and listening to music. Move over, crying girl: I now have a new βScene I Relate to the Mostβ winner.
How did he end up there? It wasnβt that his friends ever sat down and decided to hate Young Neil in the prior books. They just didnβt care. Iβve done to that people. Itβs, I donβt know-- itβs easy. And Iβve had it done to me. That was β¦ well, less easy.
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Itβs a tough book, the SCOTT PILGRIM Volume 5, with no shortage of bleak scenes for fans whoβve grown attached to these characters. My favorite scene in the book is the bus station scene, and the simplicity of its dialogue-- for me, it called to mind one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, the Bill Murray βSheβs my Rushmoreβ scene that begins the winter stretch of Wes Andersonβs RUSHMORE. There's something so powerful to watching an apology, and yet they seem so precious and rare in our fiction. Why do we always want to watch people fighting? Fights are brief; regrets take longer. What the hell is wrong with us, like, as a species?
Tribute must also be paid obviously to Volume 5's sex scene, a sad and wildly un-erotic scene. God, look at it. The last sex, the goodbye sex? Itβs a sex scene in silhouette. Itβs a sex scene that neither of the characters are actually PRESENT for. Just the shape of them in the technically correct poses. Crikey.
So, no, sir, thereβs no shortage of scenes to feel horrible about relating to in SCOTT PILGRIM Vol. 5. But I would argue to you that the final Young Neil scene in the book is not in any way less than those others, is in fact one of the hardest scenes to sit through if you have any affinity for that character (which you should).
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My theory is you donβt become less of an asshole when you get older. You just learn to hide it more. But setting that little future Hallmark card asideβ¦
Thereβs Young Neil at the end of book 5, angry at Ramona, lashing out at Stephen Stills. And thereβs Ramona not even pretending to care. And itβs strange and I donβt understand it. You take any close group of friends, and just add time. Itβs as if by some magical clock, everyone wakes up one day and decides to start hurting each other. And I wish I could say Iβve only seen it just the once, or that I knew why it happened. What is that exactly? What is the explanation for that? Why do we so persistently do that to each other?
SCOTT PILGRIM seems to subscribe to the same explanation for it that I had in my 20βs, that ancient Latin graffiti of βPenis erectus non compos mentisβ (a stiff prick knows no conscience). Stephen Stills betrays Scott Pilgrimβs confidences on account of his crush on Knives; Young Neilβs rejection by Knives didnβt seem to help, etc. Oh, barely legal Asian ladies: is there nothing good you canβt destroy!
But: that's just what I thought in my 20's. I don't think that anymore, though I haven't replaced that hypothesis with anything more considered. It just seems like too pat an answer; I donβt think it explains enough. Even if you could take stiff prick out of the equation, somehow, by some evil voodoo magic, I still maintain that even then, even assuming such a frightening & unpleasant premise, that youβd see that same exact phenomena repeat itself endlessly. What the hell is wrong with us, like, as a species?
Extra-reason why the Young Neil scene is great: volume 4 closes with all of the SCOTT PILGRIM cast around a restaurant table, laughing. Can you see them all together like that after the Young Neil scene in volume 5? The Young Neil scene is great because it makes scenes in earlier books retroactively sad. Goddamn, Young Neil! Goddamn!
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Bryan Lee O'Malley from 2007: "I actually kind of like most of my characters. Thereβs this character named Young Neil that I kind of donβt like drawing because his hair goes in his eyes. So he has no eyebrows. So itβs really hard to give him facial expressions. So he always looks kind of dopey. Sometimes he has to not look dopey, but maybe I should try writing him so heβs always like that."
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But if Young Neil is an asshole-- and in that final scene with Ramona, he absolutely is, well you can at least see how he got that way, book by book, scene by scene. I would argue that Young Neil in Volume 5 is as sad, as heartbreaking as anything in the book. So much of Volume 5 is about Scott gradually awakening to the fact that as he's had his epic story of growing up, everyone around him has had their own (the shout-out to Jason Kim is especially welcome in that regard).
With Young Neil, as much as is the case with Ramona, Kim Pine, whoever, the threat is that Scott might be waking up to that fact too late.
Heβll get a second chance in Book 6, which I look forward to, which I'm eager to read. But many of us donβt have that opportunity; will never have that opportunity. Absent friends. Friends who are no longer tethered to this, our mortal coil. All the people weβll never see again. And I donβt know how I can end a review of SCOTT PILGRIM Vol. 5 other than saying Iβm sorry Iβm sorry Iβm so sorry.
I know we fuss and fight some times. Sometimes we fight about money, some times about even sillier things, but, baby, you have to know that we love you with all of our hearts.
Oishinbo A la Carte Vol. 1: Japanese Cuisine
For those of you keeping track, 
I've been enjoying the online discussion of Final Crisis, especially as the last three parts have been coming out over the last three weeks. But one thing I think is particularly interesting about the reaction to the series is that a number of people who disliked it seem angry about it, or convinced that people who "actually enjoyed" it have somehow been duped. And even though I've been posting 
I can still remember, how the comics used to make me smile...
These days it's mostly just yawns or facepalms (or, in the case of FINAL CRISIS #6, both at the same time). I promised Brian I'd step up my contributions to the Savage Critics, which, given that I've had the consistency of Damon Lindelof lately, that's totally fair. Except I then spent two weeks scouring the new releases, looking for anything interesting enough to talk about; hell, I'd settle for some controversial news items, but all I've got is JEFF PARKER'S ON EXILES:
