Y: The Last Man (Thoughts and Review)

I recently finished the undertaking that is Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s epic-length comic story, Y: The Last Man. After 60 issues (10 TPBs), which I devoured in about 10-12 days, there is so much that I want to say about this story. And yet, I’m left without words. Nothing that I write here could truly begin to unpack the complex ideas and musings that this story evoked in me. This saga (wink wink to all you Vaughan fans) is a critique of “normal” gender roles; it is a critique of the expectations we have of a specifically gendered body; it is a critique of community. But it is also a portrait of beautiful relationships (both platonic and non-platonic); it is a sprawling history of the individual psyche and the effects of trauma; it is a heartwarming and heart-wrenching tale of love, in all its forms. All in all, Vaughan and Guerra have produced a tale of the complexities contained within each of us, what we often call the human condition. And it is spectacular.
But one interesting fact still remains: in order to get to these real emotions and stories, Vaughan and Guerra had to first engineer a semi-apocolypse. Thus we get to the story itself. Y: The Last Man chronicles the adventures of Yorick Brown (pictured above) as the last surviving male on the planet. An unknown plague has killed every known living male on the planet (human and otherwise), and only Yorick and his pet Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, were saved. Why? (Thus the title, which echoes in the question “why?”, in the beginning of Yorick’s name, and within the Y chromosome, which the plague nearly exterminated). Yorick’s adventure leads him through many different continents and across the paths of many individuals, both for his good and his ill. Yet it is both the relationships that he builds with those around him and the hope of the love of his girlfriend Beth that keeps him going.

Anyone who loves dystopic fiction, adventure fiction, graphic novels, comic books, comedic writing, or even just beautiful art will no doubt enjoy this series. I give the entire series a 5/5, and unreservedly recommend you give it your time. It will return so much more to you.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW. Please do not continue with this post if you have not yet read Y: The Last Man.

Yet, for me, the whole story rides on that final image. That final page.

It is in this image that the entirety of this story hinges. The story introduces Yorick in a straightjacket and ends with the empty straightjacket, sixty years later. Yorick has lived, and his DNA will have eventually saved humankind. However, the love found and lost in 355, and the weight of tragedy, requires a freedom away from the view of the other characters or even the readers. Yorick’s conditions have led him to that final escape, but not before imparting words of advice and necessity to the new Yorick. Yorick has escaped the bounds of society, of gendered expectations, of relational expectations, and even of “savior-of-humankind” expectations in order to finish his life just being. Thus the tragedy, difficulty, melancholy, rebelliousness, beauty, and perfection of the human condition