Ranking Every Volume of Scott Pilgrim (when I haven't read them in 5 years)
I recently watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with my boyfriend. It’s my favorite movie, but he’d never seen it before, and it ended up being a really sweet bonding experience. There’s something truly special about sharing something you love with someone you love, and it was fun watching him get invested and see where I’d stolen certain aspects of my sense of humor — and, let’s be real, my entire personality — from (when the bass battle started he turned to me and asked “Wait, is this why you played bass?”).
Watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World always makes me want to revisit the comics they’re based off of anyway, but viewing the film through fresh eyes only increased that desire, reminding me of all the moments from the comics the film changed or skipped over (I managed to limit myself to explaining only a few, but still, my boyfriend has the patience of a saint, at least when it comes to me). Scott Pilgrim may be my favorite movie, a film I’ve literally recited in my sleep before, but the comics are somehow an even more foundational part of my early twenties — for several years I kept the volumes stacked on my desk, and barely a day went by where I didn’t at least flip through one and chuckle at a few choice panels.
Also — let’s be frank — as much as I like the movie, the comics are the better, richer version of the story. Yet, it’s much easier to rewatch a two hour movie than it is to reread a six volume comic book series, so somehow it’s now been at least five years since I’ve reread the Scott Pilgrim series from start to finish.
I hope to rectify that soon, but first, I thought it would be fun to test my memory. So, today I’m going to rank all six volumes of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comic book series from my least favorite to my favorite, based solely on my memories of obsessively reading them in my twenties. Then, once I reread the series in the near future, we can revisit and see whether I still feel the same.
What are you waiting for? Let’s do this!
#6: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Volume 5)
Let me just start off by saying that I do not think this is the worst volume of Scott Pilgrim; if anything, it may actually be the best written. As the shortest installment in the series, O’Malley leans into only the most essential aspects of the story, telling a mature, harrowing, focused tale about Scott and Ramona’s fracturing relationship and the personal demons driving them apart, and adding layers and layers to the characters of Scott, Ramona, and Kim. It also marks a stark evolution in O’Malley’s art style, giving every page a sleeker, cleaner sheen. Universe is a vital low point in Scott’s story, and the grand finale wouldn’t work even half as well without it.
That said, a short, sad, dark volume isn’t a lot of fun to revisit, and Universe is simply the volume I casually flipped through the least over the years; I usually had to steel myself up to crack it open. The length and focus on only a few key characters relegated most of the beloved supporting cast to the sidelines of the story (and there were a few subplots previous volumes had been building up to that were resolved rather anti-climatically in Universe, with O’Malley admitting that their originally intended endings got left on the cutting room floor). While they at least get to speak (unlike in the movie), Kyle and Ken are still the least interesting of Ramona’s Evil Exes, and the more grounded feel of the volume either pushes the action off-screen or sucks all the fun out of it.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe is the arthouse installment of the franchise. It’s an impressive evolution in O’Malley’s storytelling and a vital part of Scott’s evolution as a character, but it’s missing a lot of the elements that made me fall in love with the comic in the first place.
#5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Volume 2)
On the other hand, World probably is the actual worst volume of the six, despite being the one I tended to aimlessly flip through the most — and for good reason, as many of the franchise’s most iconic moments come from this volume. The high school flashback! Ramona vs. Knives! The introduction of Joseph! The Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos! Scott and his friends teaching the readers a recipe for vegan Shepherd’s Pie! Knives’ declaration of love! The first glimpses of Kim’s interior life! Hell, this is the volume that graced the world with “Bread makes you fat?!”
Yet, somehow, those many great moments never cohere into an actual over-arcing narrative. World is essentially a series of vignettes. The first forty or so pages are a flashback, and its final act isn’t a climax, but rather an extended prologue to the clash with Envy and Todd in Volume 3. World is the only volume not to end on the defeat of an Evil Ex, disposing of Lucas Lee somewhat dismissively around the book’s halfway point (the movie really buffed up his part, which is what Chris Evans deserved).
Frankly, I adore World’s rather aimless look into the everyday life of these characters, but for all of this volume’s strengths, it’s hard to overlook the weaknesses in its structure, and that’s ultimately what pushes it down this far in the rankings.
#4: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Volume 1)
Aside from some rough art, Precious Little Life is a practically perfect introduction to the world of Scott Pilgrim. O’Malley doles his story out slowly, sucking the reader in with a charming slice of life story and only letting the surreal poke in at the edges; then, suddenly, you reach the climax, Matthew Patel breaks through the ceiling and attacks Scott, and you understand what this series is really about. I still vividly remember the first time I read this volume, and how the climax broke my brain a bit, rapidly altering my understanding of this story and what it had the capability of being. It’s just terrific writing; there’s a reason the movie adapts Precious Little Life almost page for page in its first act. Not even Edgar Wright could improve on it.
Unfortunately (and due to no fault of its own), that’s also this volume’s greatest weakness. While the movie would truncate or downright alter each successive volume more and more, a good 95% of Precious Little Life ended up on the big screen, which means I feel like I’ve read this volume many more times than I actually have. It’s actually been a hindrance to my rereading the comics; I never want to start with Volume One when I feel like I just watched it!
Precious Little Life also suffers from a bit of an origin story syndrome. It has the burden of establishing this world and its characters, and while it does that perfectly, future volumes are able to use the groundwork it laid to reach higher highs and louder laughs. We thank you for your service, Precious Little Life. You bear your burden well.
#3: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (Volume 6)
Likewise, O’Malley just nails this series’ ending. Those final pages, with Scott and Ramona holding hands as they leap through the Subspace Door, growing further and fainter with every passing page, is a legitimately beautiful piece of art that also packs a tremendous emotional wallop (it’s on the very exclusive shortlist for my potential first tattoo). Scott’s growth as a character feels so hard earned and well deserved, as does his and Ramona’s second chance. Unlike the movie, which essentially turns Ramona into an object during the final battle, Finest Hour remembers that Gideon is her greatest enemy as well, and allows Scott and Ramona to defeat him together, in tandem, a small yet absolutely essential component of this conclusion’s success. There’s so much that could have gone wrong in this final volume, but O’Malley avoids all the pitfalls.
This is most obvious with the big twist at the end of the second act involving Nega Scott and Scott’s high school memories. This had the potential to break the entire series; hell, on my first readthrough, I was terrified that O’Malley was going to reveal that all the fighting and video game elements had just been in Scott’s head all along, which would have destroyed me. Yet O’Malley walks the narrative tightrope perfectly, creating a moment of shock and catharsis for Scott that reveals something truly new and unexpected about the character but that also builds upon everything that came before. You could say the same about Final Hour as a whole; it builds upon Universe’s newfound maturity while also servicing all the beloved elements of this series that Universe often neglected.
Honestly, my issues with this volume are all minor. Thanks to his hiring two assistants, O’Malley’s art is at its peak in Finest Hour, but it’s almost too sleek and shiny for the lo-fi punk world of Scott Pilgrim, and a few of the artistic flourishes introduced this volume, like Scott’s new spiky hairstyle or the blood spatters, rub me the wrong way. Julie’s appearances feel obligatory. I wish Stephen Stills’ sexuality would have been explored more, rather than dropped on us at the very end. A good 60% of this volume is all climax, set in one location, and it can sometimes feel like a bit much. And, let’s be real, whatever metaphor O’Malley is trying to build with “The Glow?” It just doesn’t work.
But like I said, those are all incredibly minor quibbles in the grand scheme of things. Finest Hour is the rare conclusion that lived up to my expectations, and I love it wholeheartedly. But as we get into the top half of these rankings, they’re going to get more and more competitive. Them’s the breaks.
#2: Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness (Volume 3)
Infinite Sadness would rank this high for the sequence in Honest Ed’s alone (of all the moments that didn’t make it into the movie, this is the omission that devastated me the most), but thankfully, everything else is almost just as good. It moves from killer setpiece to killer setpiece to killer setpiece — the first Clash at Demonhead show, Honest Ed’s, the final battle — practically effortlessly. The sporadic college flashbacks do wonders to flesh all these characters out and to really make us feel the pain and confusion Scott feels from losing Envy. The three members of the Clash at Demonhead are the first villains to feel like fully fleshed out characters, and are a joy to spend an entire volume with.
This really is Scott Pilgrim firing on all cylinders; as the first major climax of the franchise, you can feel O’Malley giving his entry everything he has, just going for broke. Every aspect is at the top of its game — the humor, the action, the character work and world building, even the call-backs to previous volumes (it’s a shame we never saw Crash and the Boys a third time, right?). And, again, it’s just chock full to the brim with iconic sequences, especially and most notably Todd punching the highlights out of Knives’ hair. And the Vegan Police! It’s just hard to beat what Infinite Sadness has to offer.
If I had to choose something about this volume that bothers me, it would be that Scott basically just lucks into his victory over Todd (the movie makes the wise choice of having Scott trick Todd into breaking vegan edge instead), but that’s so minor a quibble that I barely even remembered it. This is just peak Scott Pilgrim. Or, at least, it would be if it wasn’t for…
#1: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together (Volume 4)
Gets It Together is my platonic idea of what a Scott Pilgrim story should be. Set over an entire summer, this volume has the space to dive into lower stakes, more slice of life stories for every one of the series’ beloved characters, yet (unlike World) it also tells an over-arcing, standalone story. It tells several, in fact — Scott starts to grow up and gets a job, Scott and Ramona’s relationship reaches the next level, Scott defeats Roxy, Lisa Miller comes and goes — and not only do all those stories work on their own, but they work together to create something better than the sum of their parts (and Scott’s arc of personal growth throughout this volume was certainly the one I related to the most in my early twenties).
This volume features many of my favorite minor gags: the pitiful contents of Scott’s pockets, the bird hatching in Scott’s head when he realizes Ramona and Roxy dated, Scott hating beer, Scott spending an entire page staring down his job before working up the gumption to walk in (just the fact that I remember all these off the top of my head years later says a lot). It also features my favorite art in the entire series, with O’Malley having grown past his awkward phase and landing on some really fun, stylized designs and dynamic layouts, but not having yet lost his lo-fi DIY charm as the final two volumes sometimes do. And way back when the series was in black and white, those opening color pages found only in this volume were a welcome treat that helped open the story on an extra note of fun that lasted its entire page count.
Also, Roxy Richter is almost definitely my favorite of the Seven Evil Exes (in the comics, at least). Her insecurity over only being “half” ninja is such a fun character quirk that drives everything she does, and not only does she have this really fun, hateful back and forth dynamic with Scott, but she’s the only Evil Ex (besides Gideon) who feels like she actually has any sort of relationship or connection to Ramona, and their shared scenes are a lot of fun and grounded in a real sense of history and familiarity between the two. In fact, I love the way Gets It Together low-key explores Ramona’s bisexuality as something very basic about her, even if she’s still coming to terms with it (while the movie dismisses it entirely as a phase).
If there were ever an episodic Scott Pilgrim series, I would model it after the kinds of stories Gets It Together is telling. If I had to live in a Scott Pilgrim story, it would be this one. It’s just my favorite, and that’s all there is to it.
CHECK OUT
Back in 2020 I wrote a piece about how Scott Pilgrim captured the zeitgeist of the late 2000s and early webcomic culture and how I saw so much of myself and my friends in the world it depicted (and I also settle the great comics vs. movie debate). I still think it’s one of the best entries I’ve ever written for this newsletter, so if you liked today’s piece, you should definitely do yourself a favor and check it out.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
I've never read the comics but I am really interested now. My exposure to Scott previously had only been the movie and while not perfect, it was definitely something unique and interesting at the time. I'm not sure, but it also might've been the first Edgar Wright movie I actually saw.