Comic Info
Comic Name: Y: The Last Man
Publisher: DC Comics/Vertigo
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Pia Guerra
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2003
Y: The Last Man #6
Reprints Y: The Last Man #6-10 (February 2003-June 2003). Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. Mann must head to California to recover Mann’s back-up files in the hopes of solving the plague that killed everything with a Y Chromosome on Earth…except Yorick and his monkey Ampersand. When an unexpected stop lands Yorick and his friends in a small Ohio town called Marrisville, Yorick, Dr. Mann, and Agent 355 finds Marrisville is hiding a secret that the townspeople don’t want out…and a showdown with the Amazons brings Yorick face-to-face with his sister Hero.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man Volume 2: Cycles is the follow-up to Y: The Last Man Volume 1: Unmanned. The second outing of the acclaimed series was also collected with volume 1 in the Y: The Last Man Book 1 Deluxe Edition.
Y: The Last Man was one of those comic titles that just took off. I think it was already in the second volume when I picked up volume 1 and started reading…which allowed for a double dose of Yorick which was nice since the collections are relatively short. Y: The Last Man 2: Cycles follows the first volume’s fun, but it doesn’t quite have that hit in the gut feeling of the first volume (but don’t take that as a harsh criticism).
Y: The Last Man #8
The first volume of Y was a shocker and brought up all these question: what will a world without men do, how will it survive, and of course why did the men die? Don’t expect answers to these questions for a while, and Cycles simply carries on the how will it survive and what will it do questions. The book goes for a morality question involving the former prisoners of Marrisville and whether prisons are worthwhile in what is essential a post-apocalyptic world…should the pre-crisis crimes and sentences be upheld?
This debate is tempered with the arrival of the Amazons who are real criminals and essentially the villains of the series. It does lead to a good showdown between Yorick and his brainwashed sister Hero. I enjoyed Hero in this series and this volume is much heavier into her broken mental state.
Pia Guerra’s art does grow a bit on me in this volume, but I still find it pretty mundane. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it allows you to focus on the story without the distraction of crazy art that is trying to impress. I don’t think it is bad art and in fact is quite solid…it however is pretty standard comic book art.
Y: The Last Man 2: Cycles shows how this comic is a comic with unlimited direction. The big shocker at the end of the collection leaves you scrambling for the next volume and thankfully since the series is concluded, you can literally keep pouring through it. Y: The Last Man 2: Cycles was followed by Y: The Last Man 3: One Small Step.
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