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A review by fishbelly
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan

2.0

Having heard very good things about Y: The Last Man, and being on such a graphic novel kick, I decided to give volume 1 a look-see.

Not sure I should've bothered. Perhaps it's unfair to read this after having read the first four volumes of The Sandman, but Vaughan's Y just doesn't measure up. Not even close.

Y details the adventures of Yorick,literally the last man on Earth. A mysterious plague suddenly kills every mammal with a y-chromosome, other than Yorick and his monkey Ampersand.

My problem with the series is it just tries too damn hard. Most of the dialog is cheeky and sarcastic. A lot. It's like when you talk to a teenager who's discovered sarcasm--the conversations become exercises in tedium as the kid tries to continuously one-up you with the funny. 'Least it's funny to them.

It just grows old.

In addition, while I enjoyed some of Vaughan's depictions of the world post-men, a lot of it is heavy-handed and proselytising. You don't have to beat me over the head with your point for me to accept your point of view most of the time, I can accept an author's focus, but if you do it again and again I'm going to get annoyed.

Vaughan tries to balance points of view--pro and anti-feminist--but it comes off as cartoony and amateurish. It doesn't help that the artist depicts so many of the woman with scanty tops and loads of cleavage--it's feminism for the teenage boys reading the book.

In the end, I don't think Y is for me. If I was 13, I would've loved it. But I think I'm just a bit too old for this series.