Broken Frontier

As the life of the last man on Earth hangs in the balance, his troubled sister is hot on the trail…and a mysterious ninja assassin lurks in the shadows.

Hero Brown has shed herself of the Amazons (though she is still mentally haunted by them) to track her brother to San Francisco. Her timely arrival at a meeting between Agent 355 and a Culper Ring splinter group shows that she is in over her head. We get yet another amazing sequence showing just how much of a badass 355 is, and why this woman is the last person remaining alive to mess with, let alone kill her former partner. Meanwhile, Ampersand sheds light on why Yorick lies on his deathbed.

Brian K. Vaughan belly flopped onto my radar with the first issue of this series a couple years ago. Since then he has been near flawless in the way he delivers a story…any story. Even though Ex Machina is another fantastic title, Y: The Last Man remains my favorite of his. His dialogue is constantly "real" and often funny, not to mention interesting, what with all the little factoids he inserts. Each character is distinct and believable; each plot twist makes sense, as though we should have seen it coming. Clearly Vaughan loves to do research on things that would make his books more interesting (see above comment on factoids), but I have to bring up one little beef I have regarding Yorick’s…complication: it seems, right now, that this was brushed by too quickly, and the reader should accept it. I may be wrong, though, because this may be addressed in the future. Aside from that, this is the usual, great issue.

Pia Guerra is quite simply an amazing penciler. There is nothing flashy about the artwork, but she is able to convey every emotion from subtle to over-the-top, and the action is handled fluently. It is all very grounded, which makes the on-goings of this book seem real. Jose Marzan Jr. does nothing to get in the way, adding inks that allow images to stand out without distracting fluidity of the visual storytelling. The colors by Zylonol add an earthy texture to the pages that just seems as though it belongs in an apocalyptic piece such as this.

For almost two and a half years now, the mystery behind Yorick Brown’s (as well Ampersand’s) survival of the plague that wiped out every male on the planet has thrived without many hints as to why. Looking at the scope and theme of the overall story, this is the one thing that has had me stumped. We are roughly halfway through the story (Vaughan has stated Y will run about sixty issues), and gauging by the cliffhanger here, we might actually find out a speck of the truth as to why a simple escape artist (*wink-wink*) was able to survive what no other man did. Part of me can’t wait to find out, but most of me never wants to see this outstanding series end.

-Kert McAfee