Review:
The penultimate volume of the original set of TPBs collecting the landmark comic series Y: The Last Man hits another home run. With two solid standalone stories framing the Motherland story arc, every element comes together for another amazing, fun and moving volume. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra dazzle and enthrall us anew!
The titular tale and main story arc, Motherland, is moving and powerful. I wept multiple times at the beauty, the tragedy, and the layers of emotional complexity in these characters. The twists and revelations keep the reader on the edge of our seat, and the action scenes become the emotional tension relievers, a role often reserved for humor.
In this story, medical complications in Dr Mann, stemming from her own attempts to give birth to her own clone, brings our troupe into the care of her mother. But since she was last seen being abducted by the ninja-warrior Toyota, 355 must once again confront a nemesis who has already defeated and scarred her in the past.
But the big twist - spoiler alert! - is that Allison's father is still alive! Another male on the planet! All these years after the gendercide, here he is, not only alive but claiming responsibility for the elimination of all (other) males on the planet.
His reasoning, and other family secrets, produce lots of talky bits, and the pages become text-heavy in these passages. His work and the theory of why and how all the males died takes the reader a little effort to work through, but it is interspersed with well-paced and well-spaced moments of relational tension and the Toyota-355 conflict.
And in the end, it is the very power of these revelations and personal resolutions that carries and conveys the story's punch. By the end many of the loose plot threads of the previous 4 years' worth of stories are brought together at last, the characters we have grown to love must face some choices that are as gut-wrenching for us as for them, and the final showdown of Toyota and Agent 355 becomes a fitting climax of the battle between arrogance and grit, or confidence vs courage.
The standalone chapter The Obituarist follows the conclusion of the Motherland tale and gives us a moment to recover from its shocks and high drama. We return to the model-turned-body-collector from one of the very first issues. It's another brilliant choice of symbolism-laden counterpoints, that one who formerly had been admired and paid for her body over herself becomes a leader in the disposal of all the male bodies, emptied now of anything that made them their own selves. Lest the reader miss some of the nuance and pathos of this contrast, the chapter ends in a stunning final sequence! Visuals and text merge perfectly as, in progressive panels, we pull back from extreme close-ups to finally a full-page final image, encompassing an entire football stadium, one of the world's great temples to testosterone, now filled with charred male corpses. And in the midst stands a defiant woman, proclaiming that we are "more than just bodies." This is visual storytelling at its best!
Standing in the shadow of these gold-standard stories hides the final standalone tale in this volume. Entitled Tragicomic, it brings back the acting troupe we last saw en route to Kansas many volumes ago. These women continue to seek to enlighten society with their message, and have now moved to the Hollywood world of films. When that does not work out as planned, the leaders seek a new medium for their art, leading to the hilarious uber-meta conclusion of a "The Last Woman" comic in a comic.
There are not enough superlatives to shower on this volume, a solid 5 capes.
Read all 10 reviews of Y: The Last Man here: Volume 1 Unmanned; Volume 2 Cycles; Volume 3 One Small Step; Volume 4 Safeword; Volume 5 Ring of Truth; Volume 6 Girl on Girl; Volume 7 Paper Dolls; Volume 8 Kimono Dragons; Volume 9 Motherland; Volume 10 Whys and Wherefores.
Description:
Featured in THE NEW YORK TIMES and on NPR, Y: THE LAST MAN is the gripping saga of Yorick Brown, an unemployed and unmotivated slacker who discovers he is the only male left in the world after a plague of unknown origin instantly kills every mammal with a Y chromosome. Accompanied by his mischievous monkey, Ampersand, and the mysterious Agent 355, Yorick embarks on a transcontinental journey to find his long-lost girlfriend and discover why he is the last man on earth.
This volume of the critically acclaimed series features Yorick and Agent 355 preparing for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with his lost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wiped out half of humanity is revealed! Collects issues #49-54 of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's award-winning Vertigo series.
Collects: Y: The Last Man #49-54
Authors: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan
Published By: Vertigo
Published When: May 2 2007
Parental Rating: Mature
ISBN-13: 978-1401213510
Pages: 144 pages
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