Y: The Last Man... Hero [NOW WITH UP-TO-DATE SPOILERS] (Brian K Vaughan)

Just finished vol 10. Unexpectedly heart-wrenching, and the epilogue was kind of beautiful. I like how the world sixty years after the plague was quite hazily sketched, and how Vaughan didn't give a hundred percent definitive answer to the cause of the plague, thus retaining some of the intrigue that made the series so enjoyable. Top marks, I think I'll start again from the beginning some time soon.

Comics Journal interview in two months.

I got volume I for xmas, then ordered 2-10 all in a batch and just finished the entire mess. Which is what it is. You have all the set-up for a nice extended rendition of a Children of Men scenario and then they proceed to drop the ball repeatedly. Easily one of the most disappointing final acts (and possibly even more disappointing epilogues) in any long-form comic I've read to the end, with the obvious Dave Sim exception (and Vaughan doesn't have the clearly-lost-his-mind excuse, does he?)

I'm trying to think of any really significant moral choices or anything else that stands out in the entire storyline and I keep coming up blank

It is balls, but Vaughan does a good job keeping them in the air and revolving, so a page turner. Soap opera mechanics + sub-Morisson "occult" detailing that never quite pans out into anything interesting + teen crush angst = comics junk food. Disappointing, esp. with ludicrous plot developments and way too many characters who make no damn sense.

y'know, I really liked it for all that.

It was mostly a reminder why I don't really read color comics anymore. Page turner, absolutely, but so are most bestselling novels that have no other redeeming value whatsoever. Plus, nothing in any of it actually looks cool, the art seemed throwaway to me.

not that i'm reading many comics now anyway, but i wouldn't judge everything by Y. it fell off in a pretty huge way imo.

I think Y stayed consistent as an entertaining and intelligent (if not massively deep) SF-adventure story. The art was never beautiful, no, but always more than adequate to tell the story, which is sometimes all that's required.

I thought it was a mercifully shorter and engaging Preacher without quite so much dick waving.

Disagree. I thought Preacher had some [aesthetically] interesting things to say about America and American culture, and was in a lot of ways a flawed masterpiece. Y, by contrast, really is a subpar sci-fi epic -- and it's not surprising when compared to Vaughn's other projects. The guy just doesn't have that much to say. (By contrast to Ennis who has a LOT to say, but generally says a lot of it poorly.)

i was never as bored and detached reading preacher as i was during the last third or so of Y.

Maybe it's because I read it through the trades, but I had absolutely no problems with the story, and thought it was pretty consistently gripping throughout.

gripping is not a complement. Dean Koontz and Dan Brown can be gripping.

you know what was really fucking laughable was the whole SIXTY YEARS FROM NOW title pane and then the next page has FLYING CAR OF THE FUTURE (as seen in popular science magazine) on it, like, this whole story has been about the future, but we had absolutely no ideas about the future, so we stole the oldest bullshit sci-fi idea there is, and drew it badly.

GUYS HE ESCAPED
HE'S AN ESCAPE ARTIST
THE EIGHTY SEVEN YEAR OLD GUY JUST POOF! OUT THE WINDOW AND GONE
THE END

fuck you

Well, that's delightful. I still like it. I haven't re-read it or anything, but it was one of my favourites while it was coming out, and I do miss its absence. And the last issue - dead monkey! Oh so sad.

Yeah, this is odd in that I've never really felt any urge to fill in the gaps and finish it: even Cerebus is compelling, though when he's explaining the Torah to Woody Allen it's not the same sort of compelling it's meant to be, maybe -- I think my indifference never recovered from the bondage therapy arc, though I did like one random issue someone showed me where Yorick is reading a comic about XX THE LAST WOMAN or something ...

Apparently the film rights revert back to Vaughn at the end of February.

I tried tried, but I bailed out somewhere in the middle of book 3 last night.

Don't feel bad, the ending is terrible.

https://news.avclub.com/against-all-odds-the-y-the-last-man-show-has-finally-1845512663

As far as having the source material complete to follow (or deviate from), that's cool.

First reaction though was not having enough energy/interest to commit to multiple seasons of Yorick wandering and meeting the various post-apocalyptic groups. The Walking Dead broke something in my brain that I associate with this series - maybe following them at the same time, somewhat similar structures, maybe the disappointing ends of 355 and Glen.

Still waiting on resolution to the last Saga trade, too. Guessing/hoping that was a fake-out. :\

well it's here now.

Is it... any good? I liked the comic, not sure I'm motivated to watch this over 2,000 other things. If they made a Saga TV show, on the other hand...

And Paper Girls by the Halt & Catch Fire team, obviously

will watch soon

Enjoyed it. They’ve expanded the world it’s set in interestingly enough.

Yeah, first two episodes aren’t bad. They made the good choice - and I hope they maintain it - of decentralizing yorick from the narrative and turning him into more of a doofy macguffin..