Creator: Bryan Lee O'Malley
	Published: 02.04.2009
	Pages: 184
	GENRE: Comedy/Action/Romance
	http://www.scottpilgrim.com

The fifth volume of Scott Pilgrim is quite possibly the worst in the series, but that’s a relative comparison.  It stands heads above much of the comics out there, but within the confines of the six volume Scott Pilgrim epic, though, not so much.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe was more difficult to read than its predecessors.  In this penultimate tome, we see a number of things shift and change direction.  Sex Bob-omb has quietly broken-up during the recording of their first album, Wallace has moved into a new place with his boyfriend, Knives has reverted to her jealous ways, Scott and Kim are spending more time together, and something is happening with Ramona and her head.  This is all very dramatic stuff, and so this book has also taken a very dramatic turn.

The main draw and overwhelming joy of reading the Scott Pilgrim series is O’Malley’s ability to inject humor and charm into each page through his art, dialogue, manga storytelling, and video game logic.  Each book always felt vibrant and full of life, full of the excitement and wonder of youth and their possibilities for the future.  The characters talked and acted a little differently than real people, but within their universe it all made sense, and it was always fun.  Even when the dramatic happened — the return of Scott’s ex-girlfriend in vol. 3 and the growing pains in vol. 4 — O’Malley always found a way to make it fun.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe feels tired and cynical.

As life goes on, certainly things change.  Scott and Ramona seem to be growing apart.  Mostly Ramona is growing tired of Scott’s shenanigans and is now having doubts about his fidelity.  They fight more, and they’ve lost some chemistry.  But unlike the last two books, it doesn’t feel fun.  The joy of reading Scott Pilgrim is starting to slip away as things get more serious.  One gets the feeling that O’Malley is getting tired of doing Scott Pilgrim.  He’s been working on this almost nonstop for the past six to seven years, so a little fatigue is understandable.  Unfortunately, that fatigue is playing itself on these pages as even the fifth and sixth evil ex-boyfriends, who are twins, seem like an afterthought.  In fact, most of Scott’s fights with the twins (which in itself should be ripe with backstory but gets nary a flashback) are with their robots (which feels ho-hum), and they happen off panel.  It’s just another weird fight for Scott Pilgrim, and no one really cares anymore.  When the final battle occurs, there doesn’t even seem to be any tension.  Is O’Malley really going to let Scott fail right before the big finale?  As Kim has said so often throughout this book, c’mon, he’s Scott Pilgrim.  It feels like O’Malley was going through the motions, throwing in a few classic Pilgrim tropes to reassure the reader we are still in the same universe.

Yet at the same time, it feels like O’Malley is building up to something.  The next volume will be the last as Scott finally faces off with Gideon for, supposedly, Ramona’s heart.  There is a definite air that he knows where this is going, but along with that comes the apparent grudge work.  Hopefully, O’Malley will regain the creative juices that made the previous volumes so exciting, vibrant, and fun to make the finale truly spectacular.