Y: The Last Man Omnibus

Y: The Last Man
Written by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra
Art by:
Pia Guerra
Goran Sudžuka
Paul Chadwick
Jose Marzan Jr.

(Amazon's link to all things YTLMS)

'Whew'

Most of these reviews are for a snappy little comic book story that takes maybe 20 to 45 minutes to read through. Clocking in around 20-30 pages or so.

But then I take on this behemoth:

A mere 1,424 pages. Yes, ALL 60 issues of the excellent Y: The Last Man. A story with more overtones in this Covid-19 era than we care to admit. I'm breaking down this review into 4 parts to get through it.

A quick plot synopsis:

A young man named Yorick and his capuchin monkey is spared a plague that kills every male mammal on planet earth in 2002. They just simply drop dead. Since a lot of machinery and things were in operation the second the plague hit (as in to the exact second) planes crashed, cars crashed, the world was left a real mess.

Not surprisingly Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra take the cheater's tactic of narrowing the focus on the story to a handful of characters who all relate to each other. This is no 1,000 cast ensemble world-wide apocalypse tale like Max Brooks' World War Z.

YTLM is more in line with Kirkham's The Walking Dead where he kept the story close to Rick and company going from Atlanta to Virginia. A smart move.

Story-wise, I was surprised to find how easy it was to keep track of things. I fully expected a convoluted snake pit of mixed motives and dead ends. Not so, they keep with Yorick and his adventures fairly on point. There's a few really cool turns of the phrase, like using a cliched line like 'easy' when having a gun held to your head. The assailant says to that 'Precisely. It is SO easy to kill someone.' Simple, but effective.

Art-wise (and I'm talking just the first 225 pages I've read so far) I think it's ok, but just that. Serviceable. Which is strange because here and there I'm reading a very seamy, dark, dirty wretched story of the end of the world (no males means no more reproduction, no more meat for food either). Best case scenario all the surviving women get to live out their lives and never see a new life brought into the world again. This is it for them. There's a dark and desperate undertone which goes by completely unused in this Archie-style Betty and Veronica way of depicting people and places. YTLM could have worked better with a seedier, dirtier gritty look to bring home the idea of a whole alien different world than the one we're living in now (I mean before the Covid-19 thing).

Lastly, I liked some of the philosophical points of view in a post-male world brought up; namely how most violence and harm has been at the hands of the male side of our species. Unsurprisingly a huge number of women see this as a new paradise, a rebirth where they can say goodbye to men forever.

A lot of praise has been heaped upon this series, winning Eisner awards, etc. It's got very good writing (a bit jokey at times, but good) and the artwork is serviceable. It's there that I would put the brakes on saying this is the greatest comic book series ever. The artwork seems to hold back what could be a very harsh world.

Happy Holidays! Will have more on this next week!