Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour/ Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley. graphic literature, comic violence, relationships, adventure? 248 pages

Well...I can chalk "finish a graphic novel series" off of my bucket list now, because I just completed Bryan Lee O'Malley's final Scott Pilgrim adventure- Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. I'm gonna go right ahead and say that even though this is a review of the final book, it's hard for me not to reflect on the series as a whole...and honestly, my opinion differs between the two.

Let's start with the plot. After the extremely depressing events of the 5th book, we find Scott freeloading off of his parents and living a sedentary lifestyle filled with video games and snacks. I kind of wanted O'Malley to go all 80's action film and have Scott training silently in a Buddhist temple on a mountain somewhere until he gets called in for one last battle, but that's just me. Needless to say, it is up to Scott's brilliant supporting cast (who have, as a whole been absolutely hilarious for the whole series) to get him out of his funk and back in the mental state to take down evil ex #7, the big kahuna himself, Gideon Graves (you can tell that O'Malley draws a lot of his inspiration for Graves from Jason Schwarzmann's portrayal of him in the movie). Without revealing too much else, this book does feature a lot of full page action sequences that look great and provide for interesting battles, but stray a little bit from the awesome narrative style and dialogue that made the last few books so great.

It's hard to explain my beef with the ending without revealing anything important, but let me just say that my biggest problem with the ending was that a lot of stuff was happening too fast and without proper buildup. You didn't have time to catch your breath and actually experience what was going on because by the time you wrapped your mind around some aspect of the epic-scale final battle, something new and completely different was already going on. I understand that it is always hard to end a series and leave every fan happy, because different fans want to see how different things fold out, but I found that the emotional ending that O'Malley seemed flat to me and I would have liked a little more going on after the final battle.

All opinions of the final book aside, I have definitely enjoyed reading Scott Pilgrim. It seems strange that less than two weeks ago, I hadn't even picked one of these books up. O'Malley really does draw you in to a world that seems both familiar and totally out-of-this-world at the same time. I have learned not to judge a book by its cover (or genre as the case may be) and I think that Scott Pilgrim was an excellent gateway into the world of graphic literature. A whole new broad range of adventures have become open to me and I plan on enjoying each and everyone of them in time.