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Period. Vaughan and Guerra have crafted an American masterpiece that shouldn't get slighted because is a comic book.
The story, five years in the making, is simply the best graphic novel ever written. I want every adult I know to read this, whether they like comics or not.
Its hard to believe that this could be as good as it actually is. It was heartbreaking, thrilling, hilarious, and poingnant.
Its that good. The ending, which I couldn't imagine a decent way to do, was amazing.
This is amazing literature. Amazing.
With the release of Volume 10, Whys and Wherefores, we finally reach the conclusion, and yes, we get answers, whether we want them or not. Yorick, meanwhile, is only interested in finding his girlfriend, Beth, whom he was in the middle of proposing to (over the phone) when the plague struck. Instead, he kept his series true to its original spirit all along. I give all credit to writer Brian K. (One of the most interesting, the Amazon cult, views the plague as nature's plan, the wiping out of an unnecessary organism).Yorick's mother, a politician, is enlisted to help the new president, the former Secretary of Agriculture.
He didn't take them. Some of them are painful, some charmingly lovely, some poetic, and some just mundane--fitting for the kind of series this was.Y: The Last Man began as a remarkably well envisioned story and it remained so until the end. Vaughan for remaining true to his story, rather than taking the easy route, throughout all ten volumes of this series. That's not to say that his story isn't focused on solving this mystery; it is and it does indeed get solved. Originally published as a comic-book series, the story has been collected into 10 trade paperback graphic novels, an easier way to read the epic in sizable chunks (without having to wait for the next issue to be published).
Beth is in the Australian Outback, cut off from all communication.And there we have the beginnings of the classic pilgrimage story: A young man who will do anything to find the woman he loves, even while the world is falling apart around him. When she learns that her son is still alive, she puts him under the protection of Agent 355, a fierce fighter and member of the elite and secretive Culper Ring. In the aftermath of it all, with society left in shambles--no phones working, governments around the world scrambling to cope, roads and bridges left cluttered with remains--alternative conspiratorial and political factions arise. There were easier ways to resolve this story.
I admire the integrity.If you're new to this series, start with volume 1, Unmanned, which begins with the bizarre and unexplainable deaths of every single male on the planet. Mann on their journey than anything else. It's been five years since the strange trip that is Y: The Last Man began. The two set out to find a woman named Dr. Mann, who may be humanity's last hope for survival, if she is able to perfect the science of cloning. Their quest takes place over years, in the same amount of time that the series was being published, and we readers make the journey with them every step of the way, no matter how violent, sad, terrible, unexpected, funny, or shocking it is.The truth is, why the men were wiped out was never all that essential to the series, as Vaughan wisely makes clear almost from the beginning. How they survived "the plague"--as it comes to be called--is anyone's guess. Vaughan's witty dialogue, in the face of his interesting take on a man-less society, lets us get to know these characters, as well as a broad supporting cast, little by little, like friends we are growing to like more and more.
I won't discuss the ending (no spoilers here), but I will say that it is the first graphic novel that ever made me cry. Saying goodbye to these friends after all the time you've spent with them will be difficult. From human beings to beetles, birds to whales, every single Y chromosome has, in an instant, been wiped off the face of the earth, except for a 22-year-old man named Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand, which he has just acquired. More accurately, it's everyone's guess; all the women left in the world struggle to come up with some theory, some explanation for losing their sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends in one fell swoop. But not far into Y: The Last Man, we realize we're far more interested in following Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. But Vaughan ensures it will have the ring of truth to it.-- John Hogan
Don't get me wrong, Y was a great overall classic series, but over the last couple of volumes, the plot started to unravel with cheesy plot twists that had me reading these volumes with a deadpan face. There are some great points to this last volume, but it's sad that the Y series couldn't have ended with a more coherent end and a better plot.
In the end, we weren't reading Y: The Last Man for all these years because it was about the last man on earth, we were reading it because it was about a group of really compelling characters. I just finished the last book of Y: The Last Man and I found it really emotional. I think that Vaughn very wisely realizes that the true focus of an ending should be characters, not plot. The wonderful thing about how the series ends is that Vaughn finds a way to bring closure to the many interpersonal storylines - and he does so in ways that are often unexpected and yet still very compelling and satisfying. The last issue, in particular, was an emotional read and was, in my opinion, an ending that met all my expectations and then some.
I really recommend reading the series twice. What an amazing ending to this story. No, it doesn't have the pirates and space shuttle crashes of earlier volumes, but the creators keep the suspense and the tension running high, all the way to the last page. Loved it the first time, understood it the second. Beautiful.
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