2946 ( )

This review is for the entire run of Y: The Last Man, not any single installment.

In an instant all the men, in fact every mammal with a Y chromosome, all around the world are wiped out. Except for one man and his monkey (and yes, the inevitable Beatles joke does eventually get made). That man, Yorick Brown, and his helper capuchin in training, Ampersand, are taken under the protection of a spy/assassin member of a secret organization answerable only to the President of the USA and sent to meet an expert in (human) cloning to try and discover why Yorick survived and how to continue the human species. And incidentally for Yorick to re-unite with his fiancée, last known to be in Australia.

Of course most of the story is about the troubles of being the only remaining man alive in a world that just lost half its population while trying to travel from New York to Boston to California and eventually most of the rest of the world. How would women react? What sorts of communities would they re-build? The short answer is well and badly, communities of hate and communities of inclusion, all with very recognizable human motivations. There are neo-amazons who set out to destroy any vestige of maleness in the world. There are the ex-cons that were let out of prison (what if the female guards hadn't freed them?) who form a community based around shared pasts and a belief in reform, responsibility and independence. Fanatic nationalists, drug smugglers, post-male feminist activist acting troupes.

Throughout the entire run a variety of possible causes ranging from disease, to curses, to divine retribution, to gaia/evolution re-setting a balance are proposed. The thing they all have in common, aside from never being definitively set as "the" cause, is that every single one of them revolves around the incredible hubris that the actions of a single person caused this to happen. Right along side the obvious parallel of the hubris that a single man could "save" the entire human species.

The story is well told, beautifully illustrated, and plays with a whole range of human emotions and motivations in a fairly believable fashion. If it skims past a lot of the practical details and problems, it at least acknowledges them in passing. My biggest problem is that while any given installment contains some time references like "New York, 10 minutes ago" and "Washington D.C., now" the actual timeline of the entire series of chapters (issues? installments?) is not clearly laid out. And it doesn't help that two chapters might take place in immediate succession, or weeks or months apart. That probably worked fine for anyone reading each installment as it came out each month but if you're reading them in collected and straight through it becomes slightly annoying and distracting. ( )

The plague that killed the males on earth didn't reach to space and there are two males in the International Space Station who could relieve Yorick from the yoke of being the last man on earth, but it's soon clear that Yorick's responsibilies are not over and the group head out for Dr. Mann's California lab. I was a bit wary of this since I have read something else by the author that I didn't care for at all, but with recommendations coming at me from all directions, I thought I should at least give one a try and I wasn't disappointed at all. There is, of course, a multitude of things to be said about an all-women society depicted by a male author, but I'm going to leave that to those more interested in gender issues than me. The dystopian angle is what I really liked, particularly the issues of day-to-day living. There are a couple of things that irked me slightly, but it's absolutely a series I plan to continue. The "Deluxe" versions of these books include two of the collected volumes as well as the script for one of the issues. ( )

Book Two of Y: The Last Man has more stories of shorter length than Book One: there are four instead of two. I'll try not to talk about them in turn, but rather talk about what worked for me as a whole-- and what didn't.

Let's start with what didn't, to be nice. By the fourth story, "Widow's Pass," things are starting to get a little repetitive. Yorick and company get to a place, Yorick flirts with local women, conflict emerges, everything ends in a big battle sequence. Now, there are constantly new things happening with the characters, but the main structure of each plot gets boring. I suppose only two of the four stories in this volume use that structure, but it also happened a couple times in Book One, too, so it begins to get dull.

Also, there's a tendency for dramatic reveals at odd times. Yorick, for example, has been chased by Israeli soldiers since the middle of Book One, but their marching orders have been coming from someone mysterious. But this mysterious superior is revealed to us before any of the characters-- why? When she's revealed to them, the revelation lacks heft, as we don't share in their shock. Plus, I don't even buy her motivations for what she does. (I like that this is a book where I can say "she" without narrowing down the cast of suspects one tiny bit.)

There's also a story, "Safeword," where a member of the Culper Ring, the world's weirdest spy organization, uses dominatrix techniques to force Yorick to reveal secrets about himself. Though I like where the story goes in terms of his character-- adding some needed complexity-- it feels forced as a method. And I kept going "What!?" Does she really need to do all these things to get what she wants to know. It does satisfactorily answer the question of why Yorick isn't sexing his way across America, though.

I've ended up talking about things I liked, so I'll stick with that the rest of the way through. The story about astronauts has a good premise-- what about those men in space? And the Russian sharpshooter character who wants an answer to that question, too, is just plain fun. And there's continuing development of all the characters here: Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. Mann make a great trio. Also: lots of jokes.

Pia Guerra's art is good, too. It's pretty straightforward stuff, with no weird stylistic motifs, not too cartoonish, no manga influences, no bizarre shading. But she's just good. Everything looks exactly right. She's a good story teller, too; rarely do you get lost. And her work in the weird sequences in "Safeword" can't be impugned. (I also like the use of the time/place captions in this story to communicate other information. After umpteen issues of this convention, breaking it is incredibly surreal.)

As in the first volume, my favorite parts are those that give us that neat glimpse into the post-male culture. There's a whole story, "Comedy & Tragedy," about an acting troupe that springs up fill the gap left behind. They want to perform the high culture classics-- but the mayor of the town they visit wants to know if they could perform some resolutions to soap opera plots instead. Of course, like any dramatic presentation within a larger story, it gets all meta, but it's fun, and it also acknowledges the series' roots, with a nice reference to Mary Shelley's The Last Man.

My favorite of these bits, though, is a tiny little one. Yorick, despite being the last man alive, can travel in the open with a beard. Why? Because there's a whole group of prostitutes who apply fake facial hair so that heterosexual women can feel like they're experiencing what they've lost. What a neat little detail.

Y: The Last Man: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »