Broken Frontier

Fans of Y: The Last Man have come to expect the unexpected from this series, and issue #50 provides some of the most unexpected twists the title has seen.

Long ago it was discovered that monkey excrement was more or less responsible for Yorick’s and Ampersand’s survival of the plague that claimed the lives of every other organism of the male persuasion on the planet. This still left readers with a lot of questions: who and what caused it? Why (if there was a motive)? And, of course, how did this plague manage to kill every male on the planet simultaneously? The "who caused it" question gets answered this issue, and it’s a pretty safe bet that very few saw this coming.

The reasons this title has remained among my absolute favorites since its debut over four years ago are many. For one, it is a conglomeration of so many great story genres--part horror, part adventure, part comedy, part thriller and part romance. At its absolute core, though, is one gigantic mystery that keeps us guessing all along the way without belaboring itself. So much of this comes from Vaughan’s continual injection of humor and interesting factoids that move the pace of many different storylines along briskly. And then, just as you start to get comfortable with the direction of the story--WHAM!!!--Vaughan slaps you back to reality with his notorious cliffhangers that make you love and hate him at the same time.

Hate to say it, but with the final issue of Y fast approaching, it’s time to campaign for Pia Guerra’s future. After this it is hard for me to see her working on something with tights and capes. The way she brings her characters to the page in such a realistic way makes one believe that they could really exist. Marzan Jr. and Zylonol also have much to be proud of for making it this far, as they have (as far I can recall) been involved in every single issue of this book from the start--an accomplishment in its own right.

So the "who" part of this great mystery has been answered. Within the confines of only ten issues (which is what remains for this stellar series), that leaves a lot of questions to go. I would not expect Y: The Last Man to get any better than it already has, but Vaughan has yet to let me down and I also don’t expect him to start now.