Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra ::
by William the Bloody
All the men are dead. Something mysterious and out of the blue has suddenly and unexpectedly wiped out every creature on Earth with a Y chromosome, so, in the blink of an eye, every species of every creature on the planet is down to females only.. except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. No one, not even Yorick himself knows why he and his male monkey have alone managed to survive whatever plague ravaged the planet, but he sure as hell wants to find out! As the last man on Earth, Yorick has to be careful to cover his appearance lest it become known to the general public of his existence, and who knows what sort of trouble that could lead to for our hero, anything from rape, to being sold like property, to experiments, or even just being shot down. Lucky for Yorick, his mother is a United States congresswoman, and she knows a good geneticist who was on the forefront of cloning technology, but when the men died it left cars cluttering the highways, no phone or electricity service, so just getting from one place to another is hard enough, never mind the roaming bands of uber feminists known as the "Amazons" who claim that the world is better off without male oppressors and have now made it their mission to see to it that the world remains men-free, no matter what the costs.
The Good: Many comic book discussions with various comic reading peoples have brought up the current ditch that super hero comics have found themselves in lately, and they all agree that Y: the Last Man is a breath of fresh air among the tired and repetitiveness of the mainstream market. Y is giving us what we ALL crave: something NEW to the comic book world. It's a whole new universe unto itself and there's nary a super hero or villain in sight. This comic is about regular people trying to cope with an extraordinary circumstance. The lead character of Yorick Brown is well written and an interesting person. In the first five issues contained in the first trade paperback volume, we learn quite a lot about him personally; we know his college major, his hobbies, what his parents do, that he loves his girlfriend, what sort of person he is, etc. I'd like to give them props also for Yorick's hobby, while I'm mentioning it, because he's an escape artist and I just think that's cool. Um. Moving on... The art is also quite good. It's not super amazing, but it's clean and each character is well done.
The Bad: Yorick seemed to make too many pop culture references. Don't get me wrong, pop culture refs can be great, but it just came across as too many and trying too hard to be funny. I felt that they should have waited and made this trade longer than five issues. Basically, all we get here is a lot of set up and exposition, and character motive, which is all good, but it left me wanting more actual STORY and advancement. Basically, they're blackmailing me into buying MORE... bastards....
Overall, this has got to be one of the BEST comics on the shelf today. It's overflowing with fresh ideas and interesting characters. Why did Yorick AND his monkey survive the male killing plague? Read on and maybe we'll find out...
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