[Comics] Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Vol. 2)

For an independent comic book creator, what is the biggest goal for them? Seriously, have you ever thought about why these guys spend so much of their own hard-earned money of a gamble of sorts just to get a concept out there in the public eye? Is it for the money? The fame? Or are they paying off a debt to the Dark Lord in exchange for their artistic talents?

Frankly, there's no universal answer, as is the same for most things in life outside perhaps basic arithmetic. But I'm sure each creator with a story to tell has a reason he or she wants to tell it. And if anything, perhaps one of the more fundamental goals is to get that story out there and to have other people enjoy what you've created.

Of course reach tends to involve money and fame somewhere down the line, so those are certainly tangential bonuses. And when your story becomes a movie, I can only imagine the kind of fulfillment that gets you. This is but another part of what eventually became a movie with the same name this year, but it's pretty good all the way.

Image via WikipediaScott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the second volume in the Scott Pilgrim series of comic books. As created by Bryan Lee O'Malley, the comic was still released in a black and white comic digest format similar to the first.

We rejoin our heroes in a flashback about seven years before the events in the prior volume. Scott is still in Northern Ontario where he gets into a band together with Lisa Miller. Lacking a drummer, he eventually encounters Kim Pines in class and asks her to join the band. But before they all come together, Kim is kidnapped by a rival school and it's up to Scott to save her from their, thus honing his fighting skills. He succeeds and he and Kim date for a while until he up and leaves for Toronto.

Back in the present, there are still a few issues that need to be resolve. Scott still needs to break up with Knives Chau if he wants to continue seeing Ramona Flowers (as Wallace keeps stressing to him). Then there's the matter of Ramona's next evil ex, who is a pro skater named Lucas Lee, who also makes movies. Plus as we get to the end, we finally get Knives finding out about Ramona and the return of Scott's ex-girlfriend, Envy Adams.

The book maintains the same geeky feel as the first one. That means a lot of video game references in the form of dialog, posters in the background and of course meta-level panel overlays and such. Plus the fact that evil exes give you coins when they are defeated. And the comic is still firmly situated in Canada, again as my Canadian friends constantly remind me when I bring up the comic. It's a thing, I suppose.

This book was awesome for me for upping the ante in terms of the action plus making it somewhat more logical as to why Scott can kick some serious ex behind. True, the initial exposition by flashback wasn't quite as riveting as it could be and it sort of took away from the action, but it still worked over all.

Plus the book finally had Knives being smarter (and then dumber again). And who wouldn't enjoy that initial confrontation between Knives and Ramona - she's not called Knives for nothing after all. But of course Ramona isn't a pushover either - she is able to navigate dream space to save on time while delivering Amazon packages after all, hehe. So yeah, of course we go for the girl fight.

I wasn't overly impressed with the whole battle against Lucas Lee. In fact, I think the movie version of things turned out to be somewhat better than this one. Still, the end result was the same and it certainly helped things remain consistent and demonstrated Scott's other areas of strength.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is certainly another enjoyable installment of the story and a key piece to read if you want to make sense of the whole shebang. It gets 4 enormous weapons appearing almost out of thing air out of a possible 5.