Y: The Last Man, The Deluxe Edition Book Two

One Small Step, Comedy & Tragedy, Safeword, and Widow's Pass
written by Brian K. Vaughan
pencils by Pia Guerra, Goran Parlov, and Paul Chadwick
inks by José Marzán, Jr.

The opening Deluxe collection of Y: The Last Man may have set the post-gender-apocalyptic stage, but its second installment has soundly launched Yorick and his companions on their own Odyssey.  It's a cross-country road trip from Boston to San Francisco filled with obstacles and episodic adventures prolonging their arrival and further complicating Yorick's reunion with his girlfriend/fiancée Beth.

For the first time since leaving Washington, an opportunity arises that takes equal precedence with Yorick, the imminent landing of two astronauts and a cosmonaut—two of which are living men—in rural Kansas in the Soyuz escape vessel from the International Space Station.  While their plans with Russian agent Natalya Zamyatin to retrieve them are complicated by Israeli warmonger Alter Tse´elon and her platoon, the promise of other men is enough to invigorate Yorick's hope as well as his wit.

"They'll be landing in your backyard soon, and two of them are men.  Before long, we'll have enough guys to reopen the He-Man Woman Haters Club."—Yorick Brown (Y: The Last Man, Deluxe Edition Book Two: 55 [13: 3])

While neither spaceman makes it out alive, thanks to dangerous engineering and an unadvisedly prolonged time in orbit, their lover escapes pregnant and arrives unharmed in the Kansas hot suite.  It's the first indication that hope for the survival of the human species doesn't entirely depend on Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann.  The second, though one with a much higher likelihood of impeding their own efforts, is the arrival of a Japanese ninja agent trying to steal Ampersand for a "Dr. M," by all indications (and considering the habit of constructing very small worlds in fiction) Allison Mann's bio-engineering Japanese father.

Y has also becoming increasingly self-referential in its humor.  Comedy & Tragedy is, if nothing else,
a kind of alternative meta-commentary on the very scenario Vaughan has concocted for his comic series, a move not unlike Renaissance drama's own play-within-the-play meta-theatrical convention used liberally by Shakespeare.

Edie:  "And seriously, is there any chance my character's name could be a little more...dramatic?  How about something Shakespearian?  Like Hamlet or...or Romeo!"

Cayce:  "If there's one thing I hate, it's crappy works of fiction that try to sound important by stealing names from the Bard."  (149 [17: 4])

It's certainly a nod to Garth Ennis's Vertigo title Preacher, another Odyssey of sorts, but Yorick's "Fuck Communism" lighter inspires 355's humorously ironic response:  "They can say 'fuck' in comic books?" (9 [11:3]).  It's not a particularly meaningful moment in its immediate context, but it is a symptom of Vaughan's ambitions for his series, an epic that acknowledges its predecessors in the medium but seeks to expand its potential as well.

By the end of Book Two, their journey has truly begun to take a toll on the trio.  Though continually under threat and coerced into keeping his identity a secret, Yorick had for most of the series remained morally uncompromised.  His trauma—even his near-rape and near-murder by ex-Culper agent 711—largely served to strengthen his character and reinforce, ultimately, his faith in humankind.  Yorick just has a way of bringing out the best in most of the women he meets.  But their encounter with the anti-government Arizona seditionists and his shooting of his new friend's murderer—a young, brainwashed fool with a weapon—and his decision to lie about it to 355 and Dr. Mann has for the first time truly put something between Yorick and his traveling companions.  They may be opening up to one another, but they're creating more, and perhaps darker, secrets as well.


Collects Y: The Last Man #11-23

ISBN: 978-1401222352