Broken Frontier

The comic industry can be very fickle and unpredictable. It can often be difficult to get fans to buy a new book and then hold their interest in the title. So it is certainly an accomplishment when a creator owned book, without super heroes in it last for 60 issues. That is exactly what Y: The Last Man creators Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra have done. Y: The Last man fits nicely next to other significant Vertigo works such as Sandman, Preacher and Transmetropolitan.

I remember the hype surrounding the book when it first came out. I rushed to my comic shop the day it came out for fear it would sell out. And it did. I was immediately drawn into the book. The premise of the ultimate male fantasy gone horrible wrong appealed to me.

This is how Brian K. Vaughan described the series in a recent interview on CNN.com: "A plague of mysterious origin destroys every male mammal, human being and animal on the planet, except for one boy and his monkey. And wackiness ensues." That’s putting it mild. Readers following Yorick, Dr. Alison Mann and Agent 355 as the toured the globe in search of Yorick’s girlfriend and the reason all of the males suddenly died. There are of course many obstacles the group must overcome before reaching the final issue. It’s certainly not a trip around the world where the protagonist has sex with as many women as he can like you might expect. Vaughan shows what the world would be like without the men around. All of the women in the series do just fine without the presence of men and learn to adapt just to their new world.

For those that haven’t read the final issue yet, I won’t give away any secrets. Leading up to the issue I had no clue how Vaughan was planning to end it. Within the first three pages of issue 60 I was blown away. It is such a brilliant way to end the book. In his mailing list Warren Ellis said about the series, "There aren't many of us in the five-year club, after all.  Wrestling an original creator-owned book to sixty issues is tough enough, ending it well is even tougher." And he couldn’t be more right. In the latest Entertainment Weekly they made the final issue their pick of the week and gave it an A. The went on to say, "Y’s finale proves that Big Ideas were always the tattered-chintz window dressing for this dystopia’s relationships and moments of self-discovery."

While everyone’s going around patting Brian K. Vaughan on the back for the brilliant book, I would like to once again remind you all of the outstanding art that Pia Guerra had contributed to the series. There is no doubt that without her contributions the book would not have been half as successful as it was.

Then there is of course the Y: The Last Man film that Brian K. Vaughan is working on. Not much has been revealed about the movie or exactly when we can expect it to hit theaters. But one thing is for sure, it’s going to be huge. And once again people at work will see it’s based on a comic and demand I tell them all about it

To commemorate the ending of the series MySpace Comics and the CBLDF held a celebration in Los Angeles on Febrary 8th. The guests of honor of course being Vaughan and Guerra. And the keynote speaker was Joss Whedon. It’s times like this that I wish I lived in LA. Getting to be at a party to celebrate such an amazing achievement for two creators, and benefit the CBLDF at the same time much have been quite an event for all involved.

I am going to miss this book terribly. Even though there were points in the run where things got a bit slow, it was a consistently good read and always found its way to the top of my weekly stack. My Y: The Last Man trades are still my most often lent trades, giving them to people who are already into comics, and to those who have never walked into a comic shop. I grew to love Yorick and his ilk, and as Vaughan told CNN, "It'll be a drag not to get to spend more time with these characters." Hats of to Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra.