Reflections on Y: The Last Man

Yesterday I finally finished reading Y: The Last Man (I Know, I'm behind the times). While I enjoyed the entirety of the series, I was especially impressed with the epilogue. The choice to go with bittersweet was a good one, and raised, in my mind, the literary value of the series significantly. In fact, I was so impressed with the last pages of Yorick's story that it made some of the larger problems with the series that much more transparent.

Since I started reading the Y trades months ago and began discussing them with my upstairs neighbor (and hopefully future DorkCollective blogging partner) one of my points of contention has been the art. It suffices, and is certainly better than other books I've read in recent memory. I can't help but find it a bit dishonest, however, that almost every woman in the series is portrayed as a 30-year-old model (Super Model, in some cases). Passage of time be damned, the only thing that really changes on the characters in these books is the length of their hair.

While the art is one of my main contentions, I think it's important to spread the blame evenly across writer and artist. Specificities in the writing, including nuance in spoken language, could have forced the artist to consider the fact that a woman's age reflects in more than the color of her hair. I can only recall a small handful of women who were instantly recognizable as being older than most, but even those occasionally fell into using the same pop-culture references as Yorick (who is in his 20s).

Even the Daughters of the Amazon who disfigure themselves have nary a flaw. Perhaps Vaughan and Guerra were drawing inspiration from 1950s pulp sci-fi comics and film wherein the plot almost always devolved into male fantasy. That may explain the large number of lesbian acts depicted and discussed. It doesn't dismiss the fact that every woman shown had the same face shape to coincide with their plucked eyebrows.

I know. I know. It's a comic book. The presupposed demographic of readers is apparently drawn in by that sort of thing. I can't help but feel, however, that ten years down the road when I pick up an issue of Y: The Last Man I may be troubled by the gratuitous shots of heaving bosoms on tiny muscular women.

Fortunately, the story significantly outweighs the art in Y: The Last Man. The last issue in particular shows Guerra's true skill. When forced to draw characters as older, the choices in their appearance were much more interesting. The Abercrombie catalog physique was dismissed, and replaced with a mentally and physically weathered Yorick and Ampersand. A beautiful way to end such an epic tale.