Apostrophe S

As for comic books, I usually don’t enjoy the ones about costumed superheroes battling costumed supervillains. You would pretty much think that I therefore don’t really like comic books. That’s not the case. I love comic books. The Hellboy series is one of my favorites, and there are a couple of costumed superheroes in those books. But anyway, back to Y: The Last Man.

Because I could give a crap about the new X-Men or Spider-man books, I don’t read Wizard or any of those other industry mags. I have to hear about things through word-of-mouth. Which is how I heard about Y: The Last Man. And I must say, I’m impressed. The first volume truly made me want to seek out the other 6 or so books in the series, and they’ve been added to my wishlist already. The story is this: A mysterious plague has suddenly and nastily wiped out every creature on the face of the Earth who has a Y chromosome, except for our protagonist Yorick and his companion monkey, Ampersand. So woman has inherited the Earth. The Secretary of Agriculture is the new President of the United States, since everyone else in the line of succession was, of course, male. Not that the government is exerting much control; An angry gang of women who call themselves the Amazons has received word that a man yet lives, and they decide to finish the job that Mother Nature started. These women are hard core. The burn off one of their breasts. Something about being better able to use a bow and arrow. Anyway…

Yorick is going along with the government’s wishes to assist some scientist with research that will help save the human race. But all Yorick really wants to do is find his girlfriend, who was vacationing in the Australian outback when the plague struck.

My one complaint about this book was that it was way too short. I finished it in a couple of hours and I feel like I’ve traveled only a few degrees up the story arch. But that’s OK. That’s what good serialized fiction is supposed to do.

UPDATE: I’ve also acquired and read the rest of the series up to issue #41, and I just bought #42. So this will hopefully be an ongoing read for me.

Next book, “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

[This article is part of the 26 Books project I’m doing this year.]