Y: The Last Man Volume 1- Unmanned
By Brian K. Vaughan (W) and Pia Guerra (A)
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics. Cover price $12.99. Originally published as Y: The Last Man 1-5.
The Plot: Every mammal on Earth with a Y chromosome drops dead at the same moment, except for 20-something escape artist Yorick Brown and his helper monkey Ampersand.
The Positives: Unmanned sets up the entire storyline for the series Y: The Last Man in one fell swoop, and writer Brian K. Vaughan does a tremendous job at it. In a short five issues, Vaughan sets up enough to keep the series interesting for a long, long time. It seems as though the major storyline will feature Yorick, Agent 355 and Dr. Mann traveling to California to Dr. Mann’s contingency site in order to try to fins a way to keep the human race going. Hot on their heels are the Amazons, a radical group who think the world is better off without men (and happen to include Yorick’s sister Hero among their ranks) and Alter Tse’elon, de facto head of the Israeli army, who’s being influenced by an unknown third party. Back in Washington, Yorick’s mother and US Senator Jennifer Brown and Secretary-of-Agriculture-turned-President-of-the-United-States Margaret Valentine try to hold together a government that spontaneously lost the vast majority of its leaders. On the back-burner is the story of what’s happened to Yorick’s girlfriend Beth (the only woman Yorick would be willing to repopulate the planet with) who was in Australia when every man on Earth died. And of course there’s the story behind why every man is dead, and why Yorick isn’t, which probably has something to do with the Amulet of Helene Agent 355 was interested in at the start of the book.
The Negatives: I’m honestly having a hard time coming up with a negative aspect of this book. Everything I think of as a potential detriment to the story turns into an asset when I think about it for a little bit.
I was watching Castaway the other day. At the end of the movie, Tom Hanks doesn’t know what to do with his life since everything changed while he was stranded on an island for four years. The last shot of the film is Hanks looking at a road map at an intersection on a country road. I turned to my friend and sarcastically said, “I’m confused over the symbolism of him being at a crossroads.” It was just such an easy, uncreative ending that it ruined the movie for me a little bit. Unmanned ended the exact same way, with Yorick literally and metaphorically at a crossroads. Yet for some reason, the symbolism didn’t ring hollow, because of the simple choice to have the roads form a “Y.” It was almost like the teaser to a really good episode of Lost, then the screen cut to black and the Lost logo slowly came into focus.
The Grade: A. Y: The Last Man- Unmanned was the best set-up for a series I’ve ever read. I don’t know if the rest of the series will live up to the standards set by this trade, but with the talent and storyline possibilities involved, I can’t imagine it will drop much, if at all.