A review of Scott Pilgrim #4 By Neil Shyminsky (neil) November 18, 2007 Rating: 7.3 / 10

Writer and Artist: Brian Lee O'Malley

"Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together"

The latest Scott Pilgrim book - number 4 of 6 - is easily the most melodramatic of the four books, which doesn't immediately strike me as a good thing. The pleasure of these books is affected in their heavily stylized art, esoteric allusions to comics and 80s video game culture, and densely ironic tone, each of which works to construct a comfortable distance for the readers from the characters - like, say, GOB Bluth, Pilgrim is at his best when we're able to laugh at him unselfconsciously. And when we can't, as happens in the process of this book, it can get downright uncomfortable.

As with all the Scott Pilgrim books, this one has a kind of magic realism - as opposed to superhero stories which, while featuring fantastical elements, are nonetheless typically aimed at approximating realism - that borders on the absurd but never totally disrupts our sense that these could be people a friend of a friend knows and we enjoy hearing described to us in hilarious detail. To his credit, O'Malley has also gotten better at synthesizing his magically real video game world - with subspace doors, Ninja Gaiden backyard battles, and part-time jobs that yield Experience Points - with the mundane, a combination that was not quite so cleanly managed early in the series and earned him some criticism.

In fact, O'Malley seems to have made a habit of delivering more of everything with each new volume, and this one takes a misstep by, of all things, turning up teen angst. The decision is particularly bothersome, for me at least, because these characters are very nearly my age: there are painful, OC-type discussions about the 'L-word', the introduction of new-old love interests just for the sake of complicating and confusing things, misunderstandings that could easily be cleared up if the characters weren't sometimes idiots... in short, it feels like more like a by-the-numbers story of characters having obstacles thrown at them and having to overcome them than any of the previous issues. (Which is an odd complaint to make, I'm sure, when the entire series is premised on Scott overcoming an Evil Ex in each issue. Though the difference, it seems, is that I never noticed/cared before.)

Perhaps worst of all, I suddenly realized that Ramona is entirely out of Scott's league and I have no idea what she would see in him. The consequence of all this melodrama and giving your characters real emotional problems (or at least a TV-like simulacrum of real problems) is that we begin to regard them as real people and question their decisions accordingly. And there's no question in my mind that their relationship makes no sense. A recurring exchange perhaps illustrates this best of all - Scott makes repeated mentions of how Ramona's age is "unknown", as if she's some sort of villainous 80s wrestler. And despite this being a cute quirk of the book's style and totally consistent within its magic realist format, O'Malley turns it into some sign of their communication problems before finally revealing her age at the book's end as a way of patching things up. (Spoiler: She's 24.)

One final, scattered recollection before I finish: that Scott's dreamworld resembles a Legend of Zelda game, complete with an annoying "forest elf", is priceless and speaks to everything this comic does right. It's a wonderful escapist moment in a book that, despite its previous successes in eliding flirtations with the mundaneness of too much realism, seems aimed at demystifying precisely what's made it so much fun.

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