Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Y: The Last Man

I've been reading this comic series since it looked like a pretty funny ride. I mean the actual last man on earth lends itself to the image of a man being chased down by all sorts of sex-starved women, and the guy's sudden displeasure of getting so much readily availble sex which was probably once otherwise pre-Male wipe out. A sort of allegory of you don't want something if you could easily get it.

Well it couldn't be further from the truth.

Yorick Brown is the main character in this cruel earthly joke played upon him. A disease, magical force, Godly intervention, whatever (in the series they say it's a plague) came down and wiped half of the board clean...the male half. Every single living thing with a Y chromosome suddenly kicks the bucket and we learn one awful truth of the matter.

Women are fucking nuts.

Don't get me wrong. I'm about as PC as the other left-wing liberal in Canada. I think something would be more appropriate such as "humans are fucking nuts." I'm not saying that a lot of the things that transpire in Y: The Last Man wouldn't happen if it was X: The Last Woman. But it goes to show that there are some trying feminine issues that are addressed, male related or not. And really were you the last man on Earth, you would not want to be Yorick.

Despite the constant problems that arise involving females, most notably Amazons who are basically uber-femenists who kill, there is a lot to be said about human nature in this series. We imagine that all of us, men and women included, are rational people...that there are answers for most things in life. But when something unexplained arises and there isn't a universal or even a national guiding voice of reason to speak to our more rational sides; let alone someone to make the electricity run...well you better believe that rationality takes a holiday when survival takes precedent over watching the next episode of House...or in this more feminine situation: Desperate Housewives.

It's quite bleak in series when a lot of the scenes seems like something out of a bad Mad Max fan film. Women becoming warlords, people rationlizing why all the men died through God, through faith, through science, through Mother Earth, blaming themselves, blaming others, still blaming the men.

Yorick is far from the perfect man; in fact you come to learn that his use to mankind isn't his leadership skills for one of the fortune 500 companies, but that his mere existence alone warrants the company of secret agent 355 (pronouced three-fifty-five) as his bodyguard, and Dr. Mann as the scientist helping to figure out why the world went to hell. In fact I daresay he's probably an accurate representation of the male comic book reader. Weaker than usual, a person who has a talent that seems cool but sucks at it as well finanacially useless and a smartass to boot who doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

But it's that smartassery that really makes Yorick a great character. Even though the art slowly improved over time, this isn't a series that lends itself to be shown as a work of art in each panel, but as a dialogue on society and perceptions. It has wit, often expressed in pop-culture references, and a masterful grasp on the languge of swearing much like "Trailer Park Boys"

Overall it's a great series in which I recommend to everyone

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