Y: The Last Man Vol. 01: Unmanned

Y: The Last Man sounds like it would be exactly my thing - all of the men in the world spontaneously die except one (and a male monkey). The women need to rebuild the country, while figuring out what happened to all the males of the world. The general story is interesting and the art is fine.

However, the execution is terrible. This is a story in which all the men are dead except one, and it does not pass the Bechdel test. All of the women are obsessed with talking about the men who have died, or with the one remaining man, and very very few of them are at all concerned with the fact that all life on the planet is fucking doomed. The villains of this volume are the Feminists (why?) who go around destroying the legacy of and monuments to show more men (why?) until they learn that one man survived and then they try to find him so they can kill him (why?). While it's nice to see hundreds of women in a comic book, none of them are fully-developed characters, and the whole thing reads like some dude's fantasy about living in a world filled with only women who have to worship him.

The world-building is very inconsistent as well. If half the population of the world dropped dead it would definitely be crippling, but I don't know if I believe that there would be no electricity and travelers would have to WALK from DC to Boston and sleep on the streets instead of in a hotel.

For a story that is fundamentally about gender, it really misses the mark. show less

Summary: The premise of Y: The Last Man is simple... what would happen in a world without men? In this case, every man (and every Y-chromosome-bearing male mammal) on the planet was simultaneously and instantly killed by a mysterious plague. Every man, that is, except one: Yorrick Brown. (And his pet capuchin monkey Ampersand.) After the disaster, all he wants to do is travel to Australia to find his girlfriend, but instead he must travel from Washington D.C. to Boston, avoiding gangs of violent women eager to destroy any trace of the patriarchy, and attempt to find a doctor who might hold the key to why Yorrick is the only male to have survived the plague.

Review: Y: The Last Man is I think one of the modern classics of the graphic show more novel format. It's probably the first graphic novel series I remember hearing about in the days before I started reading them for myself, and now that I'm finally getting around to it, I'm pleased to report that at least the first volume totally lives up to the hype.

I do love me a well-thought-out post-apocalyptic world, and the world of Y: The Last Man is incredibly intriguing. I love thinking through the ramifications of the premise - what *would* happen if all of the men died tomorrow? - and I especially love when the writers come up with angles that never would have occurred to me (i.e. the majority of the remaining U.S. politicians would be Democrats.) There's also a fair amount of science behind this science fiction, and since sex determination is an area of particular interest to me, I've also been having fun trying to think through the virology/epidemiology/endocrinology/genetics of the plague. (Why only mammalian males? What about fish or frogs with an X chromosome? What about XY-but-androgen-insensitive women? What would the world look like if, within a generation, all of the mammals really did die out for lack of males?)

It's still a little bit of the early stages to have formed much of an opinion on the characters yet, but the plot is interesting enough, and going in enough different directions that I've been thoroughly sucked in. Neither the artwork or the panelling is particularly unique or phenomenally noteworthy, although the style *is* right up my alley - slightly simplified, with strong, un-sketchy lines. (The style is actually visually pretty similar to Fables.) Squeamish readers, though, be warned: there is a fair bit of extremely graphic violence and some strong and sexually-charged language. Not enough to put me off, but definitely more than I was expecting. There are also a few characters I can't always tell apart yet, but again: early days. I'm definitely going to keep reading, since I'm dying to see where the story goes from here. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Fans of apocalyptic or dystopian sci-fi should definitely read this, if they haven't already. Also good for biology nerds, readers of Anne Rice's The Queen of the Damned who think Akasha should have just gotten her way, and anyone who's ever uttered (or heard) the phrase "Not if you were the last man on Earth." show less

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 show more 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. show less

I originally read this in the form of individual comic books as they came out, back in the day. I had access to them through someone I knew who purchased each issue as it was published, but I didn't get through the entire series, which is now available as a ten volume compilation in graphic novel format. This is the first volume, and the story is even better than I remember it. Far from being fodder for man-hating lesbians (or bisexuals, such as myself), the creators truly attempt to realistically imagine what it would be like for the last man on Earth. The characters are dynamic, the dialogue is interesting, the plot is complex, and who doesn't like a protagonist with a pet monkey named Ampersand?

I originally read this in the form of individual comic books as they came out, back in the day. I had access to them through someone I knew who purchased each issue as it was published, but I didn't get through the entire series, which is now available as a ten volume compilation in graphic novel format. This is the first volume, and the story is even better than I remember it. Far from being fodder for man-hating lesbians (or bisexuals, such as myself), the creators truly attempt to realistically imagine what it would be like for the last man on Earth. The characters are dynamic, the dialogue is interesting, the plot is complex, and who doesn't like a protagonist with a pet monkey named Ampersand?

I originally read this in the form of individual comic books as they came out, back in the day. I had access to them through someone I knew who purchased each issue as it was published, but I didn't get through the entire series, which is now available as a ten volume compilation in graphic novel format. This is the first volume, and the story is even better than I remember it. Far from being fodder for man-hating lesbians (or bisexuals, such as myself), the creators truly attempt to realistically imagine what it would be like for the last man on Earth. The characters are dynamic, the dialogue is interesting, the plot is complex, and who doesn't like a protagonist with a pet monkey named Ampersand?

Okay, I haven't quite finished Y: The Last Man yet, but that's only because the final volume (contaning the last six issues of the comic) has not yet been published. I'm gonna credit myself with having read the whole book now and then impatiently bide my time until I know how the story turns out.

Written by Brian K. Vaughan and pencilled (mostly) by Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man is the story of Yorick Brown, a young slacker and escapologist who finds himself literally the only male alive after a plague spontaenously strikes the earth. What caused the gendercide? Why did Yorick survive it? How will the world survive after such a trauma?

Yorick soon finds himself teamed with a tough-talking government secret agent known only as 355 (a real show more badass lady) and a scientist named Allison Mann. It's hoped that if 355 can get Yorick safely to a genetics lab in California, Dr. Mann will be able to study him and perhaps clone some more males. Meanwhile, Yorick is obsessed with finding the woman he loves -- only she's in Australia...

Vaughan has really thought about what might happen to the world if all the men suddenly fell out of it. The story spreads out until it encompasses much of the globe and the passage of several years, so the reader really gets a chance to know Vaughan's dystopia. And though he manages a wide cast of characters with skill, he never loses focus on the Yorick/Mann/355 triptych. All very impressive. It alll reminds me of a cross between Lost and I Am Legend (if the latter had, in any of its many incarnations, been any good).

People who still don't believe that comics can be art should be shown Y: The Last Man. Oh, and did I mention that Yorick's best friend is a monkey named Ampersand? Everything goes better with monkeys. show less