A long, long time ago, I started prematurely annotating the Scott Pilgrim series, providing references and "what was he thinking"-type information.

Last summer I printed up Volume 1 and 2 annotations and sold a pile of them at TCAF (with another small run at Chapel Hill Comics late last year, if I recall correctly).

NOW: Filled with dread, nervous to annotate Volume 3, I have yet to even post the end of Volume 2's annotations online.

So I'm doing that today.

If you've read the printed edition from last year, you've read most of this - it's just cleaned up and a few sentences added here and there. (And please note that I won't be reprinting that version, but hopefully will put it all together in a new format after finishing volume 3 and maybe 4.)

Previous installments are here.

VOLUME 2: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

PART 3



Nothing’s Ever Over (chapter 10)
This is probably my favourite single chapter in volumes 1-3. I try to give the chapter titles at least two meanings. “Nothing’s ever over” refers to Knives returning with a vengeance, but at the end it flips around as Scott’s ex, Envy Adams, returns to haunt him.

I am a big dork who loves libraries. The Toronto Reference Library is pretty awesome. It has this ridiculous 70’s-futurism architecture and I knew I wanted to put it in the book. The image of made-over badass Knives Chau on the roof in those three consecutive panels was stuck in my head, along with the ominous chapter title.

We see Julie at the Second Cup, and it’s the last time we see her without glasses. What happened is that I completely blanked out during the final scene and put her in glasses, and then I kind of revised her character design in Vol. 3 and kept the glasses. This caused a lot of confusion, I think, because the character Lynette looks way too similar. In the first two, Julie is like Stills’s hot bitchy girlfriend, and later she’s… his hot bitchy girlfriend who wears glasses? In this Second Cup scene, I also forgot to put the grey tones on her hair, and I forgot to put a caption explaining who she is. Oooooooops.

Anyway, drawing the Reference Library, and then a big fight scene in there, was my challenge-to-self in Volume 2. I think I at least captured the spirit of it.

Meanwhile, Scott’s at home waiting for the phone to ring. It rings and it’s not who he expects and that’s funny – and then it rings a second time, and it’s not who he expects, and it’s shocking and devastating. I had various ideas for the “Envy calls” scene, and eventually did this weird-cropping 9-panel grid experiment because I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. It ended up being strangely effective – laziness wins again.

At the end of the chapter, Wallace says a 4-letter-word: this is supposed to indicate that Envy’s presence breaks the rules of Scott’s world (one of which is “no swearing”).

Things Keep Happening (chapter 11)
This final chapter rides the wave of tension all the way to the cliffhanger at the end. Pacing-wise, chapters 10 and 11 are probably the crowning achievement of the series so far. (The title “things keep happening” also appears on the back of Volume 3, and may crop up again later. It’s so dumb, it’s deep.)

Scott’s story about his last job (the Nouveau-Mexican restaurant) is something I wrote really early on and then struggled to incorporate in such a way that it didn’t seem idiotic. Having Ramona highlight the stupidity of the story turned out to be the key. I love Scott’s mournful country song about losing his job [note: the song has been recorded by a fan, available on scottpilgrim.com], and how he looks in the Nudie suit.

Lee’s Palace is a real club, where I’ve danced many times and seen many of my favourite bands. I even played a show there with Honey Dear (a band I was in). The show went very poorly. The sound guy was a jerk, we were all off our game, I only ate crap food all day, it was in January, there was no heat, and I ended up sick in bed for a week afterwards. At least I got some good reference photos.

The Clash at Demonhead are just teased at here: their name is a half-baked semi-clever combination of The Clash (seminal 70s/80s punk band) and the first Nintendo game I ever owned, Clash At Demonhead (pictured).

In Envy Adams, I wanted to try and explore a character who walked a fine line between wanting to turn you on, and wanting you to know you’re an asshole for being turned on. She ended up evolving into something more complicated, as we’ll see in Volume 3.