Conceptually, Y: The Last Man looks like the heir to an erotic fantasy about an ordinary man becoming a prisoner in a female society. However, screenwriter Brian K. Vaughn doesn’t follow the plots of works like “The Sex Commission,” but does the opposite. “Y: The Last Man” is not erotica by genre, but a survival-themed adventure thriller. Its protagonist, the magician Yorick Brown, is devoted with all his heart to his fiancée. In the new world, he does not set out to inseminate the female population of the planet, but only tries to find his beloved, who lives on the other side of the world.
Despite the original plot, as a post-apocalyptic, “Y: The Last Man” looks mediocre. It is a traditional wander through a half-destroyed world that can go on indefinitely until the author gets tired. The plot of the first volume is built from genre clichés: the protagonist goes from one place to another, finds companions and enemies, witnesses human cruelty… We’ve seen this many times before.
After Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” with its psychology and moral dilemmas, “Y: The Last Man” may seem like naive teen fiction with cartoon characters. This is especially true of radical groups and superagents with poorly spelled out motivations. What saves the situation is the dynamics of the plot – it is constantly moving somewhere, the characters are doing something, the scenery is updated, and one becomes addicted to the story. For an entertaining work, this is already pretty good.
Well, the main merit of “Y” was the artwork. If the cover artist J.J. Jones aimed to please the male audience and added in the illustrations the obvious sexual connotations, the artist of the comic book Pia Guerra, on the contrary, promoted the author’s idea – she drew the realistic post-apocalyptic without excessive eroticism. Her heroines look like ordinary women and don’t look like lustful porn actresses.
At the same time the comic book graphics can’t be called gloomy and boring – illustrations look very bright and nice, they don’t reek of apocalyptic depression. It sets “Y” apart from other genre works, where the constant gray sky casts an artificial gloom. Most importantly, with a quality approach to drawing, Guerra was able to maintain a high production pace. The first volume of 264 pages is only a fifth of the entire story!