Review written by: Dia Sales
Book Watch, Vol. 1, Issue 5
This is what you stumble upon when you check out what your students are reading during your class. Y: The Last Man is a comic book series published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes. The story builds around the only man to survive a mysterious plague, of sorts, that wipes out every mammal with a Y chromosome on earth—including embryos, fertilized eggs, and sperm. This fortunate chap, Yorick Brown, happens to be a struggling young escape artist who, with his Capuchin monkey Ampersand (another survivor), becomes a government treasure as he would be the clue to the mass destruction of the male population. Together with his bodyguard, Agent 355, he plows through the ruins of infrastructures and chaotic female survivors who have realized their inevitable extinction in the absence of the Y-chromosome bearers.
Although the theme is rather grave and the adventures gruesome, writers Vaughan and Guerra strike a balance with wit and humor through Yorick’s unforgettable one-liners. The series will soon be made into a movie by the end of 2008.
