Y: Because It’s Awesome

I came to Brian K. Vaughan’s work through friends – You have to read Ex Machina! I did, and loved it. Pride of Baghdad was next, and I thought that was just about the most beautiful book ever. I came to Y: The Last Man while working on a story of my own that dealt with women in power on a global scale. Y’s premise intrigued me – and it was written by a man, no less! However, the series was co-created by its artist, Pia Guerra. Does she keep Vaughan’s y-chromosome in check? Perhaps.

There are certain works that transcend medium – be it film, music, literature, or sculpture, some things aren’t just “a good song” or “a good book.” Some things are just damn good art. Y: The Last Man is damn good art.

Issue #56 has just come out, and the series is set to end at #60. This column, “Y: Because It’s Awesome”, is designed to catch people up to the world of Y so that we can all share in le petit mort that will be issue #60. Periodically, will see an issue summary (I’m aiming to go at the pace of a volume a week), and now and again there’ll be a mini-essay picking apart themes of interest, like gender, race, family, sexual orientation…

I look forward to you all joining me in the amazing, high-octane world of Y: The Last Man .

BOOK ONE – “UNMANNED” (Issues 1-5)

Wherein everything on Earth with a Y chromosome, save one guy and his pet monkey, drops dead, and the females begin to pick up the pieces.

 

Countdown to “Gendercide”: ISSUE ONEThe series hits the ground running in present-day Brooklyn as two women, a cop and a blood-splattered mother, meet on the street. The mother comes to the cop frantic for help. Her two sons have begun “throwing up blood.” The cop, however, is resigned to disaster. She pulls a gun on herself and sets the tone for the rest of the issue, saying “All the men are dead.”Then, using a countdown device designed to make one’s heart race, Vaughan and Guerra give us snapshots of all the main characters in the series wherever they were in the half hour before the mysterious plague: T-Minus 29 minutes…Yorick Brown, a twenty-something magician and escape artist in NYC is on the phone with his girlfriend, Beth Deville, who is away in the Australian outback. He is trying to be philosophical about his less-than-adequate job situation, and Beth remains optimistic.

T-Minus 24 minutes…Representative Jennifer Brown, Yorick’s mother, speaks with Yorick (interrupting his conversation with Beth) as she leaves the Capitol Building with her assistant and gets into an argument with a senator over an abortion bill. Meanwhile, Yorick tells Beth about Ampersand, the new Capuchin monkey he applied to help train as a “helper animal.”

T-Minus 18 minutes…Israel. We meet “Alter” Tse’elon, a female colonel in the Israeli armed forces, as she contends with Palestinian boys throwing rocks and a news crew from the US. We discover both that she doesn’t know her own real first name, and that she rejects the traditional idea of what a woman should be. “Those girls could be paratroopers or naval commanders…but men have taught them to be content behind a typewriter…not me.”

T-Minus 13 minutes…

Jordan. We meet Agent 355, an African-American woman belonging to the covert US government organization, The Culper Ring. She has broken into the apartment of a Dr. Frozan Hamad, a women’s rights activist. Agent 355 attempts to retrieve both the doctor and the Amulet of Helene around her neck, but the doctor is killed by assassins. Agent 355 kills the assassins. Meanwhile, Yorick summons the courage to ask Beth to marry him.

T-Minus 7 minutes…

Boston. Dr. Allison Mann, a Chinese/Japanese-American scientist and college professor, wheels into a hospital maternity ward very pregnant and very worried, claiming that she is the father of her own child. She is giving birth to her own clone.

T-Minus 4 minutes…

Boston. Hero Brown, Yorick’s older sister and an EMT, is about to have sex in the back of an ambulance with her firefighter boyfriend, but is interrupted by a phone call from her mother, and her boyfriend being called into action.

In the five seconds before the plague, Yorick asks Beth to marry him, Jennifer hears that her husband will be late to his birthday party, Alter hears shelling, 355 sits in a plane with the recovered amulet, and Allison is in stirrups giving birth.

GENDERCIDE. We see the simultaneous male deaths happening all over the world, from the US to Kenya – in human beings, and in animals – causing train derailments and explosions. 355 tries to fly the plane herself. Jennifer tries to revive her assistant. Hero clutches her boyfriend. Allison cries, claiming this is “all [her] fault.” Alter notices that only the men are falling…

…and Yorick, with Ampersand on his shoulder, distracted by the gunshot fired by the female cop from the first page, stops his conversation with Beth.

MINI-REVIEW: This issue immediately drew me into the series. Between the skillfully crafted characters and the pacing of the countdown-driven story, I didn’t know what to gush about first. What I found most interesting was that gender stereotypes were examined from the get-go, with each female character challenging ideas of “womanhood” in one way or other.

TERESA JUSINO entered the world kicking and screaming in 1979 and hasn’t stopped screaming since. An actress, writer, producer, Teresa’s work has been seen in several venues and mediums. As an actress, she has appeared at several venues in NYC and regional theater. As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. As a producer, she is currently producing two new theater pieces – Emergency Contraception!: The Musical, and Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here (2008), as well as the short film, Hassan/Ali. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. Also, she has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan. Yes, she knows he’s married.

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