Y The Last Man written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated mostly by Pia Guerra.
What starts out sounding like a storyline made specifically for a porn film, some kind of plague kills everything on Earth that has a Y-chromosome (in lay mans terms that's every man on Earth is killed in a matter of minutes by some unknown plague) except for one male and his pet male monkey. But this story is in the Oh! so brilliant hands of Brian K. Vaughan, who slowly turns it into something much more than just a last man alive on Earth story. Essentially this is a post apocalyptic story but one done with a twist, that twist being only one man alive in a world of all women. Vaughan brings so much to table here, as he comments on all sorts of things ranging from the sociological to the military aspects of a world without men. But never, once, does he lose the focus of the story or the characters involved in the story. I would venture to say this is one of the 10 best comic series ever written. I've read it twice and it was as good the second time as it was the first time I read it. There was just a lot to take in the first round as Vaughan foreshadows all kinds of things in every story, setting up the ending and other stories that lay ahead. It has one of the most gut wrenching endings I've read, not just for comic but for a novel as well. But it's an ending that's faithful to the story he was telling. It's also a story that leaves no balls up in the air and little, to no, loose ends untied when the final page is turned. How many stories can boast that? Vaughan is in total control of everything from the panel layouts to the splash page, which are few and far between, but when they show up they mean something. This isn't so much a comic as it is a well written story that I would put against any novel ever written, it is that good.
Two things make this story work exceptionally well. One is the characters and two is the realism brought to the story.
Characters: this story has some of best three dimensional characters that I've read for a any story, and yes, I would put most of the characters in this book up against the Game of Thrones characters any day of the week. They are that in depth. Vaughan goes into the back histories of about every main character in this story, by doing this he gives the reader a lot of context to judge those characters with when they make decisions. Also his characters change as the stories goes on. They start out thinking and acting one way and then something impacts their life and they actually change. So the next time we meet that character he/she acts differently than they did before. You know just like it is in real life and not the fake universe of Star Trek where nothing seems to change anyone from day-to-day no matter what happens to people. I just don't see such detail and care given to characters now-a-days that Vaughan gave to these characters. Especially for a comic, where motivation and continuity are more four letter words and only needed if there's some implausible storyline that "needs" to move forward. I've always said you create good characters and they can move a story line forward no matter far fetched or crazy it is. But if you give a good story great characters and you've got something super special and that's what we have here with Y the Last Man, something super special.
Realism: the realism of this story just amazed me as it takes the characters months and years to get to places, which makes sense when the world has lost a lot of things that help travel along because it would be this way. Vaughan doesn't cheat anything to make sure the realism stays near the forefront. When people in here get injured, they stay injured and it takes a long time for them to heal, which is normally where Vaughan will time jump between issues. Another thing that helps with the realism of this story is how the characters relate to each other as they comment on things they've been through whether written about or not. By doing this Vaughan lets the reader be intimate with the characters because some of the scenarios they comment on were things that happened in previous issues. It might be just a little comment but it lets the reader have a connection with the conversation and thus a connection with the characters. It also helps to makes the characters more realistic as people in real life are always bringing things up like that in conversations.
One of my favorite things about this Y the Last Man is I've always liked the logo that was created for it. It really helps to give it an iconic visual touch that helps to make it stand out all the more because when you see that Y with the abstract man standing it, you automatically know what it is. And it immediately catches your attention because something is at once familiar and yet a little off. Everything about the design of it just jumps out and demands to be looked at and taken seriously. It's a bold design for a logo and one of my all time favorites, as is this entire series. It needs to be read by a lot of people.
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