COMIC BOOK REVIEW: Y: THE LAST MAN
Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 3:11PM | Mitchell Tully
Comic Book Series Overview: Y: The Last Man
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
Genre: Science-Fiction, Action, Comedy
I have been rereading Y: The Last Man and I felt like sharing some of my ideas about the series in a little overview. I call this article an overview because I do not feel a single piece of writing can capsulate the enormous story and messages that the series contains.
Y: The Last Man is a comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan, that chronicles the outbreak of a gender specific plague that causes the death of all living creatures that possess a Y chromosome, except one man named Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. The series was originally released as sixty issues by Vertigo, but it has been collected into a series of 10 paperback volumes as well as the hard cover deluxe editions.
The series is not a simple adventure story, but is filled with a tremendous amount of intelligence and insight into the human condition, such as what forms us as individuals and as a society. The obvious themes that are present within the series are the subject of equal representation and feminism. When the plague first hits the world the author goes through a series of statistics about the unbalanced work force with men being favored over women. The author also describes how women are primarily in a support role (nurses, flight attendants etc) in their various fields and men in a leadership capacity (such as doctors, captains, pilots) and because of this unbalance all forms of transportation as well as other services became utterly destroyed during the initial period after the plague.
While the series does cover a large amount of intense themes, the series is still able to possess a great sense of humor. This humor is usually generated by Yorick’s expansive knowledge of pop culture, where he can go from referencing Monty Python’s "Bring out your dead" from Holy Grail to quoting Jules Winnfield, Mary Shelley and David Lynch. While some of his references can be from obscure works, I found it a lot of fun trying to discover the works he discusses.
In one instance Yorick is visiting the Washington Monument that has been turned into the monument for all the men (can you guess why….). He begins a conversation with a women about all the deceased musicians such as, "The rest of The Beatles, Bowie, Dylan. All of the Eels". I feel this is an interesting character study because it is human for us to mourn for people that we have never met, but feel had a very significant influence upon our lives. The concept of celebrity connection is echoed throughout the series, such as when Yorick feels that there ought to be hundreds of more deserving men to survive the plague instead of him, like “Stephen Hawking, Clint Eastwood or Chuck Palanhiuk”. I find it rather interesting that Yorick clings onto celebrity hood even during apocalyptic times although it could simply be that Yorick only knows about these men and not people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson (and I do recognize the irony that I choose to use Tyson as my example, because I learned of him through "The Daily Show").
Overall I feel that this series is a must read for all comic fans, and the beautiful aspect of this series is that the writing/visual style does not exclude people that do not generally read comic books. In the end I hope this brief overview has sparked some interest into the series and would encourage some of our readers to pick up the books, there is a lot to discover.
Sharp Objex Rating: 4 out of 4
Reader Comments (9)
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