Category: Y: The Last Man

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Y: The Last Man Vol 2: Cycles

Y: The Last Man Vol 2: Cycles 

Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & José Marzán (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-728-7

When a plague killed every male on Earth, only Yorick Brown and his pet monkey survived in a world utterly female. With a government agent and a geneticist escorting across the devastated American continent to a Californian bio-lab all the young man can think of is re-uniting with his girlfriend, trapped in Australia when the disaster struck.

The second volume picks up as the trio end up in a curiously stable community in the Midwest where the sight of a male hardly seems to ruffle the assembled feathers, and consequently presents Yorick with his first instance of genuine sexual temptation. Sadly, the idyll is short lived as the Amazons catch up to the wanderers there, with tragic results.

The ongoing soap-opera tone burgeons in this comparatively ill-paced and sluggish volume and a faint “cliff-hanger” air starts to descend over everything. Israeli commandos are hunting for the last sperm-donor on Earth. There’s lots of lip service paid to the type of society the world would be without most of its pilots, entrepreneurs, mechanics, labourers and violent felons but there’s precious little story progression.

The volume even ends with a classic shock cliff-hanger. That might be acceptable for a periodical (these stories first saw print in issues #6-10 of the monthly comic) but is quite unsatisfactory for a collected volume and somewhat defeats the purpose of using these collections to lure non-collectors back to the fold and create a new readership.

 © 2003 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.

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Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned

Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned 

Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & José Marzán (DC/ Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-708-2

An old, old science fiction concept gets a new and pithy updating in the Vertigo comic Y: The Last Man, as a mystery plague destroys every male mammal on Earth including all the sperm and the foetuses. If it had a Y chromosome it died, except, somehow, for amateur escapologist and slacker goof-ball Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. One night the guy goes to bed pining for his absent girlfriend (who’s an anthropology grad on a gig in Australia) and the next day he’s the last man alive.

His mother, part of the new – for which read Female-and-Still-Standing after a failed power-grab by the widows of Republican Congressmen – Presidential cabinet, is by default a Leader of the Free World until The New President can get to Washington and take office. Once Yorick makes his way to her through a devastated urban landscape – the plague hit during rush-hour on the East Coast and we all know that chicks just go to pieces in a crisis – he escapes from her half-hearted attempt to lock him a bunker and immediately announces he’s off Down Under.

Mum and Madam President then allow the world’s only known source of the next generation to undertake a cross-country trek rather than subjecting him to some more rational project… such as milking him for IVF resources. Off Yorick goes with a lethal and ambiguous secret agent known only as 355 to the secret West Coast laboratory of Dr Allison Mann. The good doctor is a geneticist who thinks she might be the cause of all the trouble, but even so… come on. His mom is a US politician, for Pete’s sake! Surely he would at least have a platoon of armed guards for the trip!

Also out to stake their claim and add to the tension are a crack squad of Israeli commandos with a hidden agenda and mysterious sponsor, plus post disaster cult The Daughters of the Amazon who want to make sure that there really are no more men. Throughout all this Yorick remains a contrary cuss. Defying every whim and Guy stereotype all he wants is to be reunited with his girl trapped in Oz.

Although this is mostly set-up the main are characters are engaging and work well to dispel the inevitable aura of familiarity and cliché this series can’t help but struggle against. This volume collects issues #1-5 of the monthly comic series for adults.

© 2002 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved

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Y The Last Man: Girl on Girl

Y The Last Man: Girl on Girl 

By Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka & José Marzán Jr.

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-179-0

I’m finally warming to these travails of Yorick Brown as he lives out the supposed daydream of every man, namely being the only guy on a planet full of chicks. Naturally, life is never so simple nor, luckily, quite so crass, and the horrors which this nondescript young hero has to endure are as much of his own making as the result of cosmic catastrophe.

When every male creature on Earth expired, Beth, Yorick’s true love, and dedicated anthropology student, was on a field trip in the Australian Outback, and all his previous adventures have been geared to reuniting with her, despite the collapse of civilisation, and ultimately all higher life on Earth. This volume, reprints issues #32-36, with Yorick aboard a ship bound for Japan.

He and his long time-retinue, bodyguard Agent 355 and biochemist Dr Allison Mann, who have been tasked by the surviving US government (coincidentally his mum) with the twin tasks of ensuring our boy’s survival and finding out why he’s still breathing, are all in pursuit of Ampersand, his pet monkey, the only other male alive, who has been ape-napped by a mysterious ninja. Apparently the monkey holds the secret to the mystery of the plague which killed all us mouth-breathing, unsanitary louts.

Whilst aboard ship, Yorick’s drag disguise yet again fails and his concomitant and somewhat unwilling liaison with the lusty ship’s Captain is only thwarted by a torpedo fired by the Australian Navy. It seems that the lad is going to Oz after all, despite the depredations of pirates, drug runners, ninja-assassins and the imminent return of old foe General Alter Tse’elon and her renegade cadre of Israeli commandos, but naturally life – and comic-books – ain’t that simple. Yorick might not be absolutely sure that Beth is actually alive, but we are, and the last chapter tells her story, and hints that when her man comes for her, she might not actually be there anymore…

By sticking with this overused premise but by carefully building strong, credible characters and situations, Vaughan has crafted an intellectually seductive fantasy soap-opera of memorable power, and the narrative thread has consistently advanced to the point that this less than avid original reader is actually keen to see where we go from here. The quality of writing and art have won this series many fans since it began and if I can become one, then so might you.

© 2005 Brian K.Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.