Y The Last Man - Review

What would happen if every single species that has the Y-chromosome dies at the same moment. Chaos would ensue. With half of the population gone, the other half is bound to go through all kinds of chaotic stages. There would also be the impending question of the future of humanity. None of the species can reproduce naturally without both the male and female counterpart.

Can you imagine being the only surviving man in a world like this. Well, some might think that it won’t be that bad. But, this series tries to answer this very question. The answer might not be very pleasant or even predictable.

We get to see this nightmarish world through the eyes of our protagonist, Yorick Brown.

On July 17, 2002, all the male species of the world dies at once. No one knows the reason why they died or who might have caused this epidemic.

At the beginning, we get to meet our protagonist Yorick and get to know a little bit about his life. He is a struggling escape artist with a girlfriend named Beth Deville. Beth is an anthropologist who was assigned in Australia while the plague hit. We also get to see Yorick adopting a capuchin monkey who is the second male survivor of the plague.

The first part introduces us to the major characters and gives us a view of the plague, when all the males started dying. The second part shows us what happened a few weeks later, when all the women realized what happened to the men, and how they started coping with that information.

We get to see the two side of the coin.

There are women who have gone a little nutty in the head. They act like an extremist group whose primary belief is that men were actually the roots of all evil that was polluting the earth. They think that the plague actually got rid of a dangerous virus that was men. They do all kinds of atrocious things, like burning down and destroying all the sperm banks to make sure men can never be born again. When they found out that Yorick was a surviving male of the epidemic, they chased him with ill intent like, hurting, or even killing him.

On the other hand, there are women like Yorick’s mother and Agent 355 and Dr. Allison Mann. They represent the good side of humanity. People like Yorick’s mother tried to keep the balance and harmony in a world filled with chaos. Agent 355 works as a love interest for the protagonist who is in charge of protecting him. Dr. Mann is an adept geneticist, who tries to figure out the reason of the and how Yorick and Ampersand has managed to survive. She also wants to make clones of Yorick for the future generations to continue.

Most of the story consists of Yoricks journey to Australia in order to find his fiancee Beth. There are a lot of pit stops in this journey in various places. The different places are a good way to show the readers the different reactions and various kinds ofpeople and how they are coping or might be coping in this kind of situation. There are all kinds of people described in this whole journey. There are people who want to kill the last living man, there are people who would do anything to save him, and there are even people who don’t care about him and thinks his safety is of no importance to them.

The author tries to speculate a similar situation and succedes in in quite a lot of ways. this series is bound to make the readers think about the way they might react in a similar situation.

The art of the series is quite brilliant in its own way. The story consisting characters who are grounded to earth rather than powerfull superheroes, the art matches the tone of the story. The brilliance of the art shows when we get to see some changes in the art style.

Overall, this story is one of the masterpieces that are available out there. The story consists of all kinds of spectrum of human emotion. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes serious, and sometimes it is really sad.

I personally think that the ending of this series is quite brilliant and everyone who reads the story is bound to remember the story for quite a long time.

This series has 60 issues, which are divided into ten collected editions. The series won the prestigious eisner award in 2008 for the best continuing series.

There have been talks about a movie based on the story, but it was cancelled afterwards. afterwards, in 2015, we came to know that there might be a TV series based on the series. I think the TV series will be a better way to portray the amazing story and narrative to the visual medium.