Review: Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6

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

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour / 9781934964385

This is the final volume of the Scott Pilgrim series, so if you've been following the series up until now, you pretty much HAVE to read it. The good news is that it's incredibly thrilling and well-drawn and the plot is nicely summed-up; the bad news is that I kind of wish there was MORE of it.

After Ramona disappeared into the ether in "Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe", Scott has been moping around and generally not dealing with the issues that jumped him in Volume 5. The first half of the volume reads like a Who's Who of Scott's exes as he half-heartedly tries to get back together with each of them and they explain to him that it's utterly over, and that he needs to actually *deal* with the issues that caused their relationships to fail in the first place. Plot-wise, it's well done and really drives home the narrative that you can't deal with problems by just running away from them and hoping things will be different next time; the similarities between Scott and Ramona develop nicely and I like the narrative symmetry.

Once Scott finally decides to deal with his issues in a meaningful, it's time for a massive showdown with Gideon. This is flashy and meaningful and incredibly well-realized, but there's a LOT of fodder that gets kind of tossed out there tantalizingly and then never really developed -- including Gideon's collector nature and his very brief assertion that he's tampered with Scott's memories, which ties majorly back in to the problems that Scott fundamentally remembers his past relationships very different from how *they* do. I definitely liked these details and thought they added a lot to the story, but I was disappointed at the brevity; I think there's more discussion on these topics on the TV Tropes page than in the volume itself.

Once again, the artwork here is quite lovely and has come a long way from the first volume. The lines are sharper, the details are better, and the occasional anime-esque panel is very amusing and works well towards the overall video game theme.

If you've liked the Scott Pilgrim series up to this point, it's hard to imagine you'll be disappointed with this fun, flashy, and nevertheless extremely thoughtful finale.

~ Ana Mardoll

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