What would the
world be like without men? Comic book writer Brian Vaughan
posed the question in his soon-to-end comic book series,
Y: The Last Man, and tells us why it would
be better than living without women
Imagine that the
only chance the human race has of surviving is a
wise-cracking escape artist, his pet monkey, a lesbian
geneticist with relationship issues, and a black
double agent deadlier than Bond. All this in a world
where the entire population of men—save for Yorick
Brown, the last man on Earth—have died from a
mysterious plague.
Throw in some
religious fanatics, plenty of humor, pathos, a love story
worthy of a chick flick, killer cliffhangers, and you have
what comic book writer/creator Brian K. Vaughan calls
a “feel-good postapocalyptic series.”
That comic series, Y: The Last Man, will be
ending its five-year run on January 2 with issue number 60.
Call it hip.
Chic. Social commentary. Sci-fi. Women's-lib lit. A comedic
tragedy. At its most frenetic and challenging, Vaughan's
monthly comic book is a little of all these things.
Born from a sci-fi staple sprinkled gingerly with
post-9/11 angst, Vaughan, with artist and cocreator Pia
Guerra, has realized a unique vision of the ultimate
“what if?” tale. Over the past five
years, our hero, Yorick, has grown from boy to man in
a world run entirely by women. Some people think he’s
a myth; others want him dead. But if the scenario was
reversed (one woman in a world of men), Vaughan
doesn’t believe existence could have lasted as long
as it has in Y.
“If all
the women had died, I don't think there would be a society
one year later,” Vaughan says. “I think
pretty quickly the bombs would start flying as people
made accusations about who caused it. Yes, the world
would be much worse off.”
Vaughan had just
started writing Y when from the roof of his
apartment he watched the Twin Towers fall. “That day
had a profound effect on the tone of the series. I
think the way that we dealt with our fear, anger, and
frustration was humor,” says Vaughan.
“You can't have horror without humor. There's always
that balance.”
Vaughan hopes to
end the series it as explosively as he started. He’s
currently writing the film adaptation of the comic for New
Line Cinema.
"It's difficult.
There are days when I'm certainly excited. It's been
this five-year journey, and part of me wants to desperately
reach the finish line. And there are other days where
it's kind of heartbreaking to think that it really is
going to have this definitive ending and these
characters that I've spent nearly every day with for years
are going to be gone.”
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