I was a relative newcomer to the Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra masterpiece Y THE LAST MAN, and didn’t get around to reading it til they published the series in the collected graphic novel format. But once I got through the door, I was all in, hook, line and sinker!
The story and artwork really invoked (to me) the best works of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon in both HELLBLAZER and PREACHER to me, and since I was a HUGE fan of both comics, I INSTANTLY fell in love with Y The Last Man, diving in headfirst and full throttle through the entire run! I guess it didn’t hurt that I didn’t have to wait issue-by-issue, either!
And GIRLS! Man, for a guy who spends his time fawning over his favorite super-heroines every day, a comic about a world populated solely by WOMEN was like Heaven on Earth! Obviously the strip was crammed to the hilt full of cool and sexy female characters, but there were four or five that really had impact on me while reading the strip, and those are the ones who I’ve decided to gush a little about here today…
First we have HERO, Yorick’s cool, collected and WAY pretty sister, one of the first characters you get to see just as the Apocalypse hits. As her partner and lover dies in front of her eyes, you immediately have sympathetic attachment to her, and want to stick around to find out what happens to her plight.
Hero is the female character that I think changed the most not just through the crisis, but throughout her whole life, from her rebellious childhood to her resentful teenage years, we see her falls and ascensions from heroic emergency medic to ruthless killer outlaw, and yet we always saw the tender side of her, and when she finally makes peace with herself in the end, that’s when you really feel in your heart that the story has come to its conclusion.
Hero Brown
Y The Last Man
By
Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
