Y: The Last Man, The Deluxe Edition Book One

Unmanned and Cycles
written by Brian K. Vaughan
pencils by Pia Guerra
inks by José Marzán, Jr.


It's a fine sci-fi premise, if one that would seem to lean toward the sensational:  all men on Earth, save one, drop dead simultaneously.  Fortunately for us, that one is Yorick Brown, one of the most infectiously likable protagonists in comics, who along with his service-capuchin-in-training Ampersand survive the male mammalian apocalypse.

Vaughan has established a compelling central mystery:  what caused this devastating phenomenon?  An ancient amulet recovered in Jordan?  A plague sent to punish Dr. Mann's cloning experiments?  A virus?  Divine justice?  And he assembles an equally compelling cast of characters poised to investigate:  Yorick himself; his mother, Representative Jennifer Brown; Agent 355 of the Culper Ring; Dr. Alison Mann, leading researcher in asexual reproduction; and a Russian agent from Moscow trying to recover the men in the International Space Station.  But thanks to the re-shuffled world power dynamic and the proliferation of fanatical sects of religious and political ilks, there are also a number of characters set to threaten Yorick and his supporters:  Israeli militarist Alter Tse´elon; Daughters of the Amazon, gangs of women convinced the men deserved their fate and bullying other women out of their food; Victoria, their leader; Yorick's sister Hero, who's taken up with the Amazons; boxcar pirates; and communes of former convicts.

However, it's in the practical and social ramifications of the event that Vaughan's survival epic excels so strongly in early episodes.  His willingness to employ significant time jumps, giving the inevitable complications caused by the event time to take their effect, and the realization of the consequences of losing the entire male population to sink in.  Overwhelming percentages of workers in vital occupations, religious leaders, rock stars, soldiers—thanks to wildly disparate military policies in different nations—and disproportionate losses in political parties for elected officials are all swept aside in one swift catastrophe.  In that wake, women have responded in ways both realistically bleak and refreshingly noble.  If Victoria—a pompous megalomaniac who preaches against the oppression of the patriarchy so righteously snubbed out but who has assumed the despotic rule of a manipulative cult leader—is the embodiment of the worst kind of hypocrisy, the women of Marrisville, Ohio—convicts who receive Yorick with gossipy hubbub but allow him to leave in peace and without trouble—are pleasantly humane.

Pia Guerra's artwork is a fine fit for Vaughan's story.  Her lines are clean and neat, her figures beautiful, and her facial caricatures consistent and easily distinguishable, which in Y's world of diverse female characters is of prime importance for its reader.  The page layouts are confident but risk little, and the panel designs are usually more functional than bold, but ultimately they serve well in telling the story, for which a flashier style would be out of place.


Collects Y: The Last Man #1-10

ISBN:  978-1401219215