Y: The Last Man is a comic book series written by Brian K. Vaughan (Swamp Thing) and published by Vertigo. The series has received considerable acclaim from a wide array of critics.
The series' art is handled primarily by Pia Guerra . Much has been made of the fact that Guerra is a woman, but Vaughan insists that that is incidental. He says that Guerra's work simply fit best with what he had in mind for the series.
Y: The Last Man is Vaughan's attempt to subvert the classic male fantasy of being the last man on earth. In the series, a mysterious plague simultaneously kills every mammal, sperm, or fetus possessing a y chromosome, with the exception of Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, their survivors' guilt, and the knowledge that humanity is doomed to extinction. Vaughan meticulously crafts the new society that emerges out of this chaos, from the conversion of the phallic Washington Monument to a monument to the dead men, to the genesis of the fanatical ultra-feminist Daughters of the Amazon, who believe that Mother Earth cleansed itself of the "abberation" of the Y chromosome, to male impersonators becoming valued romantically and professionally.
The series follows Yorick's grudging cross-country odyssey to a laboratory in California, under the protection of Agent 355 of the United States Government's mysterious Culper Ring , and accompanied by Doctor Allison Mann. Mann believes she may be responsible for the plague, since it happened the instant she gave birth to her clone. The lab in California is Dr. Mann's; her primary lab in Boston was burned to the ground. She believes that with access to both Yorick and her past research, she may be able to find the cause of the plague. Though the primary purpose of the journey is to understand the plague, and possibly save humanity into the bargain, Yorick is more concerned with finding his girlfriend Beth, on vacation in Australia, to whom he proposed marriage over the phone at the instant the plague hit. He lost contact with her before she gave an answer.
There is also the possibility that 355 was somehow responsible for the plague, as the moment the plague struck, she removed an artifact called the Amulet of Helene from the nation of Jordan. The amulet's deceased owner warned that if it was ever taken from its homeland, it would create a tragedy greater than the Trojan War.
Over the course of their journey, Yorick and his friends discover how society has coped in the aftermath of the plague. However, many of the women they encounter have ulterior motives with regards to Yorick. Early in the series he runs afoul of the Daughters of the Amazon, who want to kill him, and an Israeli commando unit, who want to use him to repopulate their country, and who see him as a strategic asset who can't be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy.
Yorick is also pursued by his older sister Hero, who has joined the Daughters of the Amazon, and been brainwashed by their charismatic leader, Victoria.
Though the subject matter of the series is entirely serious, Y: The Last Man is also noted for its humor. Yorick in particular is a source of one-liners, although the other characters have their moments as well.
Currently the series is being published monthly. Vaughan has stated that he has an ending in mind, and intends the series to run for sixty issues or so. The first twenty-three individual issues have been collected in four trade paperbacks:
Graphic Novels
1 - UNMANNED (reprints #1-5)
- A mysterious plague kills every mammal with a y-chromosome, with only two exceptions: slacker Yorick Brown and his mischievous monkey. Accompanied by the mysterious Agent 355, Yorick embarks on a transcontinental journey to find his girlfriend and discover why he is the last man on Earth. But with a gang of feminist extremists and the leader of the Israel Defense Forces hunting him, Yorick's future, as well as that of the human race, may be short-lived.
2 - CYCLES (reprints #6-10)
- As Yorick Brown, the last man on Earth, begins to make his way across the country to California, he and his companions are forced to make an unscheduled stop in Marrisville, Ohio, a small town with a big secret.
3 - ONE SMALL STEP (reprints #11-17)
- A Russian Soyuz capsule is coming down from the International Space Station carrying three passengers: one woman and two men. Could this be the end of Yorick's tenure as last living male?
4 - SAFEWORD (reprints #18-23)
- In the care of a fellow Culper Ring member, Yorick Brown is forced to confront his tremendous feelings of survivor guilt that lead him to constantly put his life in danger. Once on the road again, the group runs up against a literal roadblock in Arizona, where the female remains of the Sons of Arizona militia have cut the interstate to keep out any vestiges of the U.S. government.
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