Y: The Last Man Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores

(This is a review of the entire series!)
I was very excited about this graphic novel - a dystopian world in which all men but one mysteriously die? But I was hugely disappointed, as this isn't the feminist utopia I was looking for. It's anything but, and the fact that this title was written by a man should have warned me. It's very obviously a title written by men for men, as it's pretty much every man's fantasy to have a world of women at his disposal, isn't it?

Well, the comic cleverly tries to avoid such implications by making Yorick, the last man, a very sensitive, fairly unmasculine, English major. He doesn't take advantage of his situation at all, rather, he is on a 5-year quest around the world to find his girlfriend, who was in show more Australia when the men a died (while Yorick was in the US).

And that's where the comic started bothering me - we're presented with a post apocalyptic world in which society has broken down. No more phones, no more electricity, no more planes. I find it utterly unrealistic that a world full of women would be unable to maintain the basic functionalities of society. Of course there might be an adjustment phase, but after that, women would be perfectly capable of doing anything men can do. It just takes some organizational skills, which I daresay women are much better at than men.

The comic also displays it's dystopia full of gangs and criminality. Again, I find this very unrealistic. I don't think women would go quite as far as the ridiculous Daughters of the Amazon are going. The comic is full of similar fanatics, like the Israeli soldiers who want to claim the last man for the future of their country. Knowing what I know about Israel, I find this pretty unlikely.

The whole conclusion to why the wipeout happened was not very satisfying either, it was rather ridiculous. There would have been much better scenarios as to why all males suddenly died.

Allover, this title was a huge disappointment for me. Where is the feminist utopia in which women lead a better world? show less

I don't even know where to start. I'd love to just throw, no shovel, all kinds of praise on this! You know, like when The Academy gave Peter Jackson all those awards for The Return of the King, mostly neglecting the first two (sidebar: I hate those damn Hobbit movies).

Vaughan did everything right, I wouldn't change a damn thing. Part of me wants to do a whole spoiler-ific review but I refuse to neglect peeps who haven't read this, so I'll try and tag appropriately.

You know what, I'm not ashamed to admit it. It did get a little dusty in the room while reading this final volume. I did see Yorick and 355 eventually coming to terms with their feelings coming but was totally caught off guard with 355's death. I almost couldn't even take it! show more I love that Vaughan threw away the conventional ending and gave us something to think about.

The other thing I love is that despite what I had said in my book #9 review, we're still not totally clear on what caused the plague. This, I'm 110% okay with. I see no real reason to give us a definitive answer as I had noted before, it's pretty much irrelevant.

More people need to read this. Graphic novels and comics are a perfect medium for story telling and people who snub their noses at the format really need to look no further than this series. Granted, the series did lag a little in the middle volumes, it both started and finished strong.

While I'd love for this to become a TV series (there's no way you can fit this into a movie, or a trilogy no less), the graphic novels are perfect just the way they are and it's often pretty difficult to improve upon perfection. show less

Bam! This is it: the end of Y: The Last Man. In my previous reviews, I've tried to allude to general events without being specific, giving the sort of information I wouldn't mind getting ahead of time. (Actually, I rarely mind spoilers at all, so long as I get to choose them, and I very often do.) There's nothing really worth talking about in Whys and Wherefores, though, that doesn't involve given everything away, so SPOILER ALERT. Well, other than that it's nice to finally have a whole book of Pia Guerra art again.

Things That Happen And Opinions That I Have About Them:

1. Alter is back. Again? Even with the backstory filled in for her in the previous volume, she still comes across as unmotivated and uninteresting. She's gonna kill show more Yorick... because? And something. Also, I hate villains who gratuitously shoot their own subordinates. It makes them stupid. And Alter is really stupid.
2. Yorick finally finds Beth. (There is a lot of aimless wandering around Paris first, though.) Huzzah! This was a very nice moment, even though you knew it had to happen.
3. Beth was going to break up with Yorick the day the plague struck. I knew it! All the same, it was a hugely devastating moment. Poor guy. Poor her, too.
4. Yorick and Agent 355 are in love. I don't buy it. This volume works really hard to sell you on it, but never really succeeds. They act like good friends-- really good friends-- but never really lovers, I don't think. Yorick has this whole speech about how love changes you, and he's a better person for being with 355, who wouldn't have been a jerk to some kid at the lunch table or something? It doesn't convince. How did 355 make him into a better person in a way that any pair of friends who spent five years together wouldn't? I buy sexual tension-- he is literally 355's only option, after all-- but not romantic love.
5. Agent 355 dies. (I told you there were SPOILERS.) Damn damn damn damn. This was devastating. It really works though, even if you don't buy Yorick and 355 as in love, because of the massive amount of time you've spent with the character.
6. Yorick realizes that Alter just wants to die. Okay... She's still stupid.

The rest of these points come from the last issue, which jumps sixty years into the future, then fills in the past through flashbacks. There are lots of clones now, of Yorick and others, and the human race is shuffling forward much as it always has.
7. Other Beth's daughter (Other Other Beth?) is President of France. For some reason.
8. The Russian boy is tsar of all the Russians. Awesome! His adoptive mother was probably my favorite recurring character, anyway.
9. Yorick hangs out with a bunch of monkeys in a straitjacket. (He's in it, not the monkeys.) This feels a little too... weird movie-ish, and not real enough. I mean, is this really what you would do with someone?
10. Hero and Beth got together. This is actually a very nice ending for both of them, but especially our troubled Hero.
11. Doctor Mann dies some day. Well, of course she does.
12. When Yorick is an old man, Ampersand finally kicks it. My goodness, now this was sad. This was the moment I felt my eyes watering up. Poor little thing.
13. Yorick escapes one last time. Now the straitjacket thing is kinda dumb, but it's really just to set up this moment, which was awesome.

My only real problem with the ending as a whole is that I wish the unmanned society had stuck around. So much of the series has dwelt on how the women put society back together without men, that to end with the return of men is just a dull status quo revival. Couldn't Vaughan have found some way to keep men out of the picture for good without killing off the human race? Of course he could have; he's the writer.

The only overall flaw of Y: The Last Man is that the individual stories could be repetitive sometimes, and there was some aspects of the big story that were dumb (the Culper Ring and Alter). On the whole, Y: The Last Man was sf of the best sort, combining an intriguing scenario with good characters.

Y: The Last Man: « Previous in sequence show less

This phenomenal series concludes without slowing down. The events and revelations contained herein continue to be surprising--even shocking--yet seem appropriate and fitting, even in the many tragic moments. (If you finish with completely dry eyes, you may want to get your DNA sequenced, as you might not be human.) There are no perfect happy endings here, but life goes on, which in this epic tale was never a surety.

This review is really for the entire Y: Last Man series (as I didn't see the point of reviewing each book individually). I enjoyed the series immensely, particularly its humor and the concept of a world without men and with women in power. Though it might, at times, seem misogynistic (many of the women do terrible things), I thought it worked as a comment on how power can corrupt both women and men.

Despite how enjoyable the series was, however, I did have several problems with the story. First, when the event occurred that wiped out all of the men at the same time, it must have also killed off all the unattractive women. The drawing style of the artists seems to be confined to pretty, well-endowed young women who spend a lot of time at show more the gym. The explanation for the plague was also pretty weak, though admittedly not really crucial for me (I had to laugh when Yorrick later described the explanation as "vaguely unsatisfying"--the humor was always the saving grace). The ending and "epilogue" were likewise a weak and unsatisfying part of the story. Overall, though, a very thought-provoking and funny graphic series. show less

(NB: This review refers to the entire series.)

This is a fun and engrossing series with a lot of heart. Ironically, while Yorick is named after a jester, in Y: The Last Man he is the quintessential straight man. He may have guns routinely blaring in his direction and desperate women throwing themselves at him; but he handles the situation if not with good natured aplomb then at least with the frenetic, bumbling stumble of a boy abruptly promoted to manhood.

Alongside the adventure are numerous puns, wry asides, foreshadowings and story nods to the earlier chapters in the series. For instance, in the early parts of the series, Yorick wears a gas mask which is useless anyway as it will not protect him from the plague. However, at Alter's show more final assault, the gas mask proves its utility after all.

While the trajectory of Yorick's maturity is predictable, the final product at the end of the series is still entertaining to follow. The maturity of the characters at the end allows for genuinely affecting emotional depth. Particularly good are the eventual fates of Yorick, Agent 355 and Ampersand (really the core of Yorick's troupe) and how Amp helps Yorick escape one last time. show less

Summary: All of our main players converge on Paris, where Yorrick is at long last reunited with his girlfriend Beth, and after four long years, finally sees the woman he loves. But whether or not he'll get to live happily ever after is still an open question, as is whether or not the human race will find a way to survive past the current generation.

Review: As a whole, this series does a really excellent job of looking at gender issues from a fair and balanced position, and without any overt sexism. Still, every now and again, there's a moment where something one of the characters does or says makes you sit back and go "Wow, this was obviously written by a guy." This last volume in the series doesn't contain any more of these moments show more than previous volumes, necessarily, but the ones it does contain were jarring enough to really set me aback, and make me wonder if they were really necessary plot-wise.

While the plot of this volume is mostly wrapping up loose ends, there are some really excellent character moments. I've really enjoyed the series, but I didn't think it was something in which I was particularly emotionally involved, but this installment proved me wrong. The glimpse of the future we get at the end of the story was also totally fascinating, and well in keeping with the tone set by the rest of the series, although I will say that for someone as smart as she is, Dr. Mann is remarkably ill-informed about population genetics. Overall, very enjoyable, and a fitting if not 100% satisfactory end to a very interesting series. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I initially thought it was weird to solve all of your plot's mysteries in the penultimate volume, but there's enough story left over to make this volume feel complete, and a good end to a great series. show less