Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour - Starting with the End

Killing time at my local Barnes & Noble, I happened to spy a book called "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour" on a shelf. Now, for the last month or so I've been made aware of the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, but for some reason I never noticed the fact that all the trailers said that the movie was based on a book series. The movie looked very interesting (I mean, a League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends who all have bizarre video game-esque powers? That sounds like my cup of citrus-infused Game Fuel.) I looked on the shelves, but I couldn't find any other Scott Pilgrim books (only later did I learn that these books have been published one at a time over the course of roughly half a decade). A little concerned about jumping into what looked like the conclusion to the series, I picked up a copy and went to one of the complimentary comfy chairs and started reading.

I'm not a big Manga reader, but the obvious Manga-stylings suited the series well. This wasn't just artwork made to look like it came from Japan; this was artwork made to look like a Neo-Geo arcade gaming cabinet. (Also, was that supposed to be a Chao on Scott's shirt for the first half of the book? It looked a lot like a Chao from the Sonic Adventure/Nights games, but a part of me wonders if it's some other similar-looking gaming icon that I'm not as familiar with.)

I'm going to be a bit lenient with the plot here: this is clearly the last book in the series and I'm coming in at the end. Your audience isn't supposed to start at the end, so whenever something happened that made it feel a bit disjointed I just assumed that it was a reference to something else in a previous volume. Having said that, a part of me enjoyed not being entirely sure what people were talking about. I don't think it was intentional, but it made me nostalgic for the classic games of yore again. "It's a Secret to Everybody" indeed.

These moments of murkiness were few and far between, though, and I was able to follow the story pretty well (aided somewhat by my previously mentioned knowledge of the movie trailers.) Scott is looking for Ramona Flowers who's been "missing" for a time, and he's also gearing up to battle the seventh of the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends. Through it all, Scott contemplates his relationships with his friends and the other girls in his life. Scott has to deal with his inner demons a bit (why is he fighting all of these people for Ramona when she doesn't even seem to be around? Even if he does get to go out with Ramona, will it be better than his previous girlfriends?)

Ultimately, this book hit me as the latest in a growing trend of aesthetic sentimentality in pop culture that I don't have a name for. "Geek Romance" might be a decent description. Movies like Juno, TV shows like Scrubs, webcomics like XKCD and the music of Jonathan Coulton are other good examples (and note that I don't necessarily mean Romantic in the modern sense, I mean it in the classical sense. Though the modern sense also works well as a happy coincidence.) This is a good trend. I like it. I like it a lot.

One final word of warning about this book: if you're offended by things like Penny Arcade, Scrubs or Ranma 1/2, then you might want to steer clear of Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. It's a great book, but it's probably for an audience a shade older than the colorful 8-bit cover indicates. If you're old/young enough to remember/have taken sides in the Nintendo/Sega wars of the early 90s, then you're probably at just about the right target age.

Regardless, if you're looking for a fun, quick read, definitely pick this one up. It's probably better to read the first five...but I didn't, and I still enjoyed myself. Now I need to go dust off my Sega Genesis and play a few classics or do some shopping around to find the first volumes. Either one.