Y: The Last Man by Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra
This was recommended to me by my friend Dario Suarez many, many years ago. Something about the story of the last man on earth and, more specifically, his monkey gave me pause. A monkey? Riiight. I'll get right on that one. But the recommendation has stuck with me. Since I was going to delve into comics/graphic novels anyway, I thought I'd give it a try.
The first thing I saw was the blurb right on the cover: "The best graphic novel I've ever read." - Stephen King. Well, damn! Way to bury the lede, Dario! I would have read this a whole lot soon if I'd known that.
So for those of you unfamiliar with the story and perhaps as reluctant as I was to give this a try, here's the gist: Some as-yet-unknown event has caused every male on the planet to die. That's people, cows, giraffes, everything with a Y chromosome. We are given two relatively unlikely causal factors - a woman giving birth to a clone, and the removal of an amulet from Jordan. The only two male creatures to survive are Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. The women who remain seem to be falling into two camps: those who pine for the lost men in their lives (and who make the Washington Monument their shrine, naturally), and those who look on the plague as nature's way of correcting a mistake and righting the pendulum swing toward patriarchy. This last group has formed some vigilante gangs, the Amazons being the ones to which we are introduced here. In true Amazon fashion, they remove one of their breasts to enter the gang. Symbolism is a bitch, ain't it? One of these Amazons happens to be Yorick's sister, Hero, who goes on a hunt to find this last man and destroy him, unaware that it's her brother. Yorick and his government handler, known only as Agent 355, try to find the doctor who created the clone to see if she knows what's up, and eventually have to travel to California to where she stores backup DNA samples. Unfortunately their plans are (literally) derailed in Ohio, and that is where the plot of this first book ends.
The artwork is really nice, particularly the art dividing the novel into its 10 parts (since this is a collection of the first 10 original comics, I'm assuming). The story is timely despite being 14 years old by now. It's honestly not a stretch to imagine the various female reactions to this situation, even though the plot may require some suspension of disbelief. The ending makes it necessary to continue, throwing a little twist that you simply have to see how it plays out. And isn't that what a good story is supposed to do - compel the reader to continue? Mission accomplished. On to Book Two.
UPDATE: O. M. G. I loved this. About mid-way through book three the artwork and the storyline just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. And if you're one of those people that like to read stuff before it gets made into a movie/TV show, you need to get on this. The rights have reverted back to Vaughan and a lot of people want to make this happen.
The first thing I saw was the blurb right on the cover: "The best graphic novel I've ever read." - Stephen King. Well, damn! Way to bury the lede, Dario! I would have read this a whole lot soon if I'd known that.
So for those of you unfamiliar with the story and perhaps as reluctant as I was to give this a try, here's the gist: Some as-yet-unknown event has caused every male on the planet to die. That's people, cows, giraffes, everything with a Y chromosome. We are given two relatively unlikely causal factors - a woman giving birth to a clone, and the removal of an amulet from Jordan. The only two male creatures to survive are Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. The women who remain seem to be falling into two camps: those who pine for the lost men in their lives (and who make the Washington Monument their shrine, naturally), and those who look on the plague as nature's way of correcting a mistake and righting the pendulum swing toward patriarchy. This last group has formed some vigilante gangs, the Amazons being the ones to which we are introduced here. In true Amazon fashion, they remove one of their breasts to enter the gang. Symbolism is a bitch, ain't it? One of these Amazons happens to be Yorick's sister, Hero, who goes on a hunt to find this last man and destroy him, unaware that it's her brother. Yorick and his government handler, known only as Agent 355, try to find the doctor who created the clone to see if she knows what's up, and eventually have to travel to California to where she stores backup DNA samples. Unfortunately their plans are (literally) derailed in Ohio, and that is where the plot of this first book ends.
The artwork is really nice, particularly the art dividing the novel into its 10 parts (since this is a collection of the first 10 original comics, I'm assuming). The story is timely despite being 14 years old by now. It's honestly not a stretch to imagine the various female reactions to this situation, even though the plot may require some suspension of disbelief. The ending makes it necessary to continue, throwing a little twist that you simply have to see how it plays out. And isn't that what a good story is supposed to do - compel the reader to continue? Mission accomplished. On to Book Two.
UPDATE: O. M. G. I loved this. About mid-way through book three the artwork and the storyline just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. And if you're one of those people that like to read stuff before it gets made into a movie/TV show, you need to get on this. The rights have reverted back to Vaughan and a lot of people want to make this happen.
Comments
Post a Comment