It began, quite literally, with a bang. In a mere 32 pages,
the first issue of Y: The Last Man introduced us to a world
that’s exactly like ours, except for one thing: All the men are
dead.
It isn’t pretty: With neither warning nor explanation, every
mammalian male on Earth starts choking and wheezing, with blood
spurting from their eyes and mouths before they collapse. Instantly,
the floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange is littered with bodies. Alarms
sound at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. Planes hurtle from skies,
freeways screech to a standstill, and the West Bank falls silent.
Suddenly, women everywhere find themselves alone. “All of the men are
dead,” one woman notes, in calm contrast to the gun she’s holding to
her temple.
They’re all dead, that is, except for one dude. Twentysomething
Yorick Brown is the kind of guy who has a useless English degree,
action figures littering his apartment, and a rebellious pet monkey
named Ampersand. Yorick’s hobby is magic, his diet largely consists of
ramen, and, bewilderingly, he and Ampersand are the world’s only
surviving mammals with Y chromosomes.
More than five years later, the story of Yorick, his
testosterone-deprived world, and the women who have inherited it is
coming to an end. On Wednesday, January 30, the 60th and final issue of
Y: The Last Man will go on sale in comic book shops everywhere,
bringing a poignant, bittersweet conclusion to one of the most
important and enjoyable comics in recent history.
GOOD RIDDANCE
“There have definitely been moments where it’s been really sad. I
like these characters so much, and it’s been such a privilege to get to
enter their world. But there’ve also been times where I’ve thought,
‘Holy shit, I cannot wait to get rid of these people,'”
Y‘s award-winning writer, Brian K. Vaughan, says when I ask him
what it’s like to have finished Y. Vaughan is affable, open, and
self-deprecating—talking to him, you’d never guess he’s one of
the biggest names in comics, or that he moonlights as a writer on
Lost. “It’s just been so hard. I mean, it’s not hard like
working in a coalmine—it’s an easy job to write comics—but
every month, no matter what, having to [put out the book] can be
frustrating sometimes. So right now, it’s still a tie between relief
and deep melancholy.”
Fair enough. With Y, Vaughan has balanced an ambitious story,
a diverse cast of characters, and solid doses of pop adventure and
smarty-pants philosophy. It’s hard to imagine anyone not welcoming a
chance to catch their breath after Yorick’s journey.
Luckily, Yorick’s had a few companions to keep him
company—most notably Agent 355, a badass government agent, and
Allison Mann, a doctor determined to learn why the naïve Yorick
and his shit-flinging monkey are—talk about insult to
injury—Earth’s only males. In 60 issues, Vaughan’s characters
have found their way around the world, discovering the expected and
unexpected: The Washington Monument is turned into an ad hoc mass
tombstone; fanatical feminists destroy sperm banks to ensure the
gendercide is total; a remorseless ninja monkey-naps Ampersand. Also:
astronauts, S&M, crazed Israeli soldiers, survivor guilt, romance
(of both the homo and hetero varieties), heroin-smugglin’ pirates, and
sure, why not, a robotic gigolo. Somehow, all of it has
worked—and not only for comic book fanboys.
IT’S LIKE IF HERPES WAS A BOOK!
“We really wanted it to be a book that you could give to your
significant other,” Vaughn says, remembering what he and Y‘s
co-creator, artist Pia Guerra, set out to create. “I knew it was
working at the first convention, when guys would drag their girlfriends
along and say, ‘Thank you. This is the first book I’ve been able to
give my girlfriend.’ But then we knew it really worked a couple years
after that, when women would come up with their boyfriends and say,
‘This is the first comic I’ve been able to give him!’ I always quote
Neil Gaiman, who said that Sandman traveled like a venereal
disease through relationships: that guys would give it to their
girlfriends, they would break up, the girlfriend would give it to the
next guy… we wanted to do something similar.”
Which is, frankly, exactly what happens with the book: I got
Y via my ex, and I’ve since passed it on to pretty much everyone
I know, sometimes subtly (“Sure, you can borrow it, if you want…”),
sometimes less so (“I don’t give a shit if you ‘don’t read comics.’
Here.”). Despite its far-reaching appeal, Y has its share
of hot-button issues, from major religions’ misogyny to discordant
American politics to the ethics of cloning.
“It’s always worth doing stuff that most people will hate, if even a
couple people love it,” Vaughan says when I ask about fans’ varying
reactions to the subjects of Y. “I have only ever tried to do
the book that Pia and I have wanted to do. I think people want to see
our visions. Your job is not to give the audience what they
want—it’s to give them what they never knew they wanted.”
Vaughan’s voice gets a bit quieter, here, but he doesn’t back down:
“Which just sounds presumptuous and stupid. But I guess I believe
it.”
OF NINJAS AND PIRATES
Chances are Y‘s audience never knew they wanted a
genre-defying book that’d somehow blend Star Trek references
with socio-sexual politics. Y‘s disparate but graceful mix is
echoed in another of Vaughan’s books, Ex Machina, about a
superhero mayor of New York. “Ex Machina was probably born out
of watching the political debates and thinking, ‘This would be so much
better if someone just had a jetpack!'” Vaughan says. “I guess I have
always [balanced] being intellectually curious and just a dumb kid who
just wants to see ray guns and ninjas and pirates. It’s never been
like, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to sneak in something really smart if I hide it
behind pirates and these other trappings!’ That’s just who I am. I like
that balance of both the profound and the profoundly ridiculous.”
Now that Y‘s over, Vaughan has plenty of other gigs lined up:
He’ll be finishing up Ex Machina, releasing a Wolverine story
for Marvel Comics, and working on more graphic novels, following up on
the success of Pride of Baghdad, his lauded graphic novel about
three lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the US invasion.
Once the writers’ strike ends, Vaughan plans to return to Lost and continue overseeing prospective film adaptations of Y and
Ex Machina. In the meantime, he’s not too picky when I ask him
how he’d like people to remember Y in the years to come.
“I guess I don’t care as long as they are thinking about it,” he
answers. “I have always loved the people who hated the book just as
much, if not more, than the people who loved it. You would have very
well-intentioned liberal males writing about how the book was deeply
misogynistic, because the men died [and] the women are unable to even
get the electricity up and going. And that same month, Ms. magazine would say that we’re a feminist masterpiece. I like that.
People’s interpretations are so much more interesting than my intent.
So yeah, I don’t care what they think—as long as they are
thinking about it, years from now. That would be shocking to me. And
thrilling.”
