Picked up volumes 1 through 4 of “Y: The Last Man” today at work and started leafing through them as a result of reading a review by Nick Hornby in his book “The Polysyllabic Spree” and several subsequent websites after curiosity got the better of me. Needful to say, I wasn’t really that impressed with what I was reading. In fact, I stayed after work (because I didn’t want to actually buy the books) to give the writer and artist as much time as possible to convince me that when people talk about the genius of these graphic novels and when two hours were up and four graphic novels I was no more impressed than when I sat down to begin reading the graphic stories.
Please note: These comics are for mature audiences only. The language is sometimes course and some of the images can be considered mature (though I don’t feel that they bordered on erotic).
Basically, the premise of “Y: The Last Man” is that a plague is somehow unleashed on the entire world killing off all of the men in a matter of minutes. The only living male left is Yorick, the son of one of the Democrat congressional representatives from the state of Ohio. He is liberal and alone and trying to find his mother and sister (the sisters name is Hero after Shakespeare’s character in the play “Much Ado About Nothing”). He finds his mother holding vigil in the White House trying to figure out how to rebuild the government after the catastrophic disaster. (Think about it, the “Y” chromosome is half of the genome. Without the male of the species the female of the species is only living to die.) When we say that all of the male population is dead this includes the animals populations as well; that is, except for Yorick’s pet monkey Ampersand.
Yorick has a BA degree in English and has very few marketable talents. He does magic tricks, is able to escape from handcuffs and other traps, and apparently, as the last man, has a death wish because… well, having an Adam complex doesn’t seem to work for him.
Yorick and Ampersand are put under the protection of 355, a secret agent for a top secret government organization who is told to protect him until they can find the worlds leading genetic engineer who has extensively studied cloning (and who believes that by cloning herself she has brought about the destruction of all the men). Upon seeing Yorick (and Ampersand) she reluctantly agrees to help to try and find a cure (remember, sperm+egg equals fetus).
Throughout the adventures of four volumes (and about two literal years of story-telling) we find that Yorick, 355, and the doctor have not made it to California where her backup lab is located (her lab in Boston was burned down by the Israeli army – and you kind of have to read it to understand). We discover that Hero is brainwashed by an evangelical man hater who believes that it is the gods who killed all the men for their abuse of women throughout history. And we find out that there are two astronauts in outer space who were not affected by the plague.
At the same time Yorick is madly in love with his girlfriend who is stuck in Australia where he is trying to go. He doesn’t sleep around, though women, when they find out about him, are constantly throwing themselves at him. At one point an ex-supermodel is seen driving a garbage truck and collecting dead bodies.
Throughout the process you don’t really go anywhere. The comic isn’t about finding a cure, at least not yet. And it’s not about finding the cause, again, at least not yet. There is a lot of political dogma and all of it seems to be anti-republican and anti-family values. Not that family values are counter to what is being written about, but at the same time the women who decided to stay at home, decided that there are morals that need to be upheld, are the butt of jokes and the victims.
After spending some time reading this series (???) I’m not certain I would suggest this to anyone to read, ever. This just didn’t do anything for me.