Review: Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned

From Goodreads:

"Y" is none other than unemployed escape artist Yorick Brown (his father was a Shakespeare buff), and he's seemingly the only male human left alive after a mysterious plague kills all Y-chromosome carriers on earth. But why are he and his faithful companion, the often testy male monkey Ampersand, still alive? He sets out to find the answer (and his girlfriend), while running from angry female Republicans (now running the government), Amazon wannabes that include his own sister (seemingly brainwashed), and other threats. The Vertigo team of Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and Jose Marzan Jr. have given us a great read!

I've talked before about my newfound love for comics and my desire to get more of them into my life, so I requested Y: The Last Man, Vol 1: Unmanned from my public library and sat down with the intention to just read a few pages. Less than an hour later I was finished and eager for the second.

Y: The Last Man is refreshing in that it can be interpreted as post-apocalyptic (with half of the world's popular dead in a matter of minutes), dystopian (as society crumbles with the workforce halved), utopian (to the extremist militia groups who see an all-woman world as a blessing), and/ or inspiring (as the remaining society is forced to rebuild while facing imminent extinction of the human race) at the same time. Most books nowadays seem to only fit into one category, with authors not knowing how to juggle different themes without pigeonholing or spreading too thin. Nothing here felt campy or forced; emotions come off as genuine and true despite the otherworldly and at times unimaginable circumstances.

I'm only about knee-deep in the series at this point, but I can't wait to go completely under with the next nine books. Vaughan, with the help of the impressive artistic skills of Guerra and Marzán, is well into molding a world that is confusing and unknown with emotions and characters that feel all too real.

Goodreads, Amazon
Title: Y: The Last Man: Unmanned
Authors: Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrators: Pia Guerra and José Marzán, Jr.
Publisher: Vertigo
Publication Date: January 2nd, 2003
ISBN: 1-56389-980-9