“Good boy. All you have to do is make a fist. The bullet does the hitting for you.”
In the summer of 2002 a mysterious “plague” wiped out every last man, boy and unborn fetus with the Y chromosome within minutes, leaving a planet populated only by women and two male survivors: Yorick Brown and a monkey he was training called Ampersand.
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TITLE:
Y – THE LAST MAN: CYCLES
WRITER:
by Brian K. Vaughan
ARTISTS:
by Pia Guerra (penciller and co-creator)
and Jose Marzan, Jr. (inker)
SERIES:
Y — The Last Man #1
Collects Y — The Last Man comics #6-10
PUBLISHER:
DC Comics/Vertigo Imprint
CHARACTERS:
Yorick Brown, Last man and escape artist.
Ampersand, Male Capuchin monkey.
Agent 355, Agent of the Culper Ring.
Dr. Allison Mann, An Asian geneticist.
Beth Deville, Yorick’s girlfriend stranded in Australia.
Hero Brown, Yorick’s sister.
Natalya, Russian Soyuz follower.
Jennifer Brown, Congresswoman and Yorick’s mom.
Lieutenant-General Tse’Elon (aka Alter), A military woman on a mission.
MATURITY:
Contains violence, mature situations and language.
GENRE:
Graphic Novel (collection), Adventure, Fantasy
DESCRIPTORS:
End of the World, Disasters, Gender Roles, Discrimination, Hate Crimes, Monkeys, Quests, Survivor’s Guilt, Rebuilding Civilization, Feminism, War, Male/Female Relationships, Duty.
SUMMARY:
Faced with the fiery destruction of her Boston lab, Dr. Mann, Agent 355 and Yorick must make their way to California where her back-up research and samples reside. They get on a train — one of the few means of locomotion left — and soon after are attacked.
After a harrowing disembark, first Yorick, and the Dr. Mann and 355 find their way to the seemingly pleasant town of Marrisville, Ohio. But the women of Marrisville are hiding secrets of their own while they live in the only place with electricity, running water and other amenities of life.
To make matters worse, the Daughters of the Amazon, led by Victoria and her lover Hero Brown (Yorick’s sister), arrive to put a final end to the last man on Earth.
APPEAL:
Y — The Last Man is a story of ideas and debate punctuated by bits of seldom known history and decisive violence. It is a story with a beginning and an end — one which Brian projected would take five years to tell.
Vaughan and Guerra take their time with the pacing. Plot threads develop in a leisurely fashion. By the end of this collection, Yorick and Hero have become definite antagonists but we still don’t know about Lieutenant-General Tse’Elon’s agenda. Agent 355 and Dr. Mann are revealing their true natures slowly.
The pacing is breezy, but we do get to stop and see the devastation and the way the women adapt. But the author is careful not to let it slow down too much.
The characterization is intriguing. Yorick is a young man who hasn’t come to terms with responsibility yet, he can’t even get or hold down a job, but he is ready to marry his girlfriend who recently relocated to Australia. He is brash, tactless, head-strong but caring and moral. As the last man on Earth he could take advantage of the situation and the women but that’s not his thing. He is quick to pick a fight and equally quick to employ his “escape artist” skills to get out of trouble or pick a pocket. Hero is a paramedic before the plague and happy with a new boyfriend who seems to be treating her right. Three months later she has joined the Daughters of the Amazon, sliced off her left breast and is helping in the hunt to find and kill the last man, although she doesn’t know who that is. These are just two examples of the intriguing characterization that makes this collection a stand-out effort.
There are multiple storylines in this series. Yoricks is the most important and commands the lion’s share of the space. Hero’s is the second most important and then there are a few others. Some, like 355’s and Dr. Mann’s merge with Yorick’s by the end of the first collection, while others have a ways to go, such as Lieutenant-General Tse’Elon’s storyline.
This story is an end-of-the-world kind of story. Sure only half of the populations vanishes, but it is a significant half–all the men. Vaughan and Guerra get to show us a new world struggling to rise out of the aftermath of the demise of the old one. However, unless something can be done, this may be a short lived world.
NOTES:
Brian K. Vaughan grew up in the Greater Cleveland area before moving away.
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