Oh, hello blog! How are you? Yea, I know it’s been a while, but I wasn’t trying to neglect you. Really! Let’s just get back into the swing of things, ok? OK…
Oh, sorry about that. It’s Wednesday, and I haven’t posted in over a month. For shame! This also complicates today’s post because I wondered what I should talk about. I read several great comics or series in this time span afterall.
For one, Brightest Day and the Flash are both coming along quite nicely. I also read Final Crisis… what an astonishing disappointment that was. But the book I ultimately decided to talk about today was the phenominal series, Y: The Last Man.
I’ve been reading Y for several months now. My good friend and comic’s connoisseur, Mike, suggested it to me a few years back and once I started, I was hooked.
Y tells the story of a man named Yorick Brown, who is left the only surviving male human being after a freak apocalypse of sorts kills everything on the planet earth with the Y chromosome. He is accompanied by his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, who is also male and mysteriously also survived. Thus begins a quest spanning years and continents to find his loved ones such as his sister, mother, and ultimately his fiancée, Beth. And as well to try and solve the glaring mystery of what killed all the males on Earth.
Yorick makes many friends and enemies on his journey. On the good side people like Agent 355 of the Culper Ring who acts as his constant bodyguard and Doctor Allison Mann whose expertise is needed to try to cure the plague. Most prominently on the bad side is the Daughters of the Amazon and members of the Israeli Army. In between is a cast of characters as wide and diverse as possible which really made the many adventures of the last man on Earth a pleasure to experience.
The premise of being the last man in a world now ruled by women is interesting enough. But the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, masterfully avoids the immediate things that come to mind in this situation. Instead of going crazy trying to get with every woman he meets, Yorick actually wants to stay faithful to his girlfriend Beth and often has to go to extreme lengths to keep it that way.
The character of Yorick is interesting as well because he is not your typical hero. Most heroes in comics either wear spandex and do amazing things beyond mortal men, or are people as plain as can be. Yorick is an interesting point in between. He is an escape artist and uses his skills throughout the story to help in various situations. He also has an undeniable ability to run headfirst into the worst of situations and manage to survive. All the while quoting from a vast knowledge of pop culture references. This in particular is always funny because it is in such stark contrast to Agent 355 who is as stoic as they come.
Like most post-apocalyptic stories the world which we once knew is forever gone and lying in rubble. Highways are clogged with the hundreds of cars of dead businessmen who were commuting to work when everyone was wiped out. Most of those cars still contain their deceased owners. Planes came crashing down, power plants went offline and governments literally crumbled.
The interesting angle this story gives you is also an introspective look at the imbalance that even now still exists between men and women. For centuries men have ruled over women in our societies. In more recent centuries women have improved their place in the world. But even now there are more male doctors than females, more politicians, more engineers. The book really examines what happens when this chunk of society is suddenly removed, what the landscape would look like after.
The women of course begin to adapt and rebuild. One time super models now act as caretakers of the dead, piling the bodies of deceased men into a garbage truck and burning the remains in a football stadium, which of course with no female football players is no longer used by anyone. On the flip side, others desperately seek to unlock the secrets of human cloning, so that our race can survive beyond the current generation.
I could go on in length about the interesting perspectives this book offers, but honestly the best thing I can write in this whole blog is this: go out, get and read Y The Last Man. It’s really that good. And compiled into trade paperback graphic novels it’s easy to gather all the material.
The book is drawn nicely, simple but beautiful at the same time. Often hints and easter eggs are laced into the panels of the pages and you can really appreciate the level of work that went into it. And the story is always masterful right through the shocking, twisting end.
The book deals with many mature themes and is therefore laced with scenes dealing with such. Violence and sex permeate a lot of the story, so I don’t suggest it for young readers. But above all else, Y: The Last Man is a prime example of how the comics medium has really evolved into something that is prime for adults to enjoy.
Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!
Tags: Comics, Wednesday Comics Picks
Loading...
