Y the Last Man #60
February 26th, 2008 by SusieWhen I read the last issue of Y the Last Man, I had this feeling of deja vu. I felt to me like the last chapter of Lord of the Rings. Both are basically a really long epilogue. All the plot threads have been tied up and the story is pretty much over. They serve to tell us what happened to the heroes once the adventure has finished and both give a bittersweet view of what happens to heroes once the adventure is over. The issue begins sixty years after the previous issue ended. The human race has tentatively recovered from the plague that killed all creatures with a Y Chromosome, back in issue one. A vaccine has been developed to prevent the plague, and cloning has advanced to the point that the population is on the rise. Whether the old fashioned way of making babies will make much of a come back is uncertain. As for Yorick Brown, the only survivor of the plague (along with his helper monkey Ampersand), he is an old man. He had become an important symbol of hope to what had remained of humanity. His daughter now in her sixties is the president of France and seeing him grow bitter and suicidal in his old age, fears the affect should his condition become public. He is locked up in straight jacket and kept company by several, far too well behaved, clones of Ampersand. The only possible way to bring him out of his funk, she believes, is to have him spend time with one of his many clones. Through a series of flashbacks ( that to the reader are still flash forwards) we see what became of the supporting cast, and it is indeed bittersweet. Each one eventually dying . He is once again the lone survivor, this time of his makeshift family instead of his gender. The young Yorick clone is twenty-two and the spitting image of Yorick from issue one. But this man is as much a cheap imitation as the helpful Ampersands copies. It is clear that what formed Yorick into the man we have grown so fond of over the last fifty-nine issues, is the journey he took and the relationships he formed during those fifty-nine issues. It is telling, and fitting, that the one flashback we get to happier times, takes place amid rotting corpses and eminent danger. The last page hits just the right note. Leaving you to decide if Yorick is Frodo going at last to the the Grey Havens, or Sam returning to his family sad but content. Maybe both. So while I hate to see this series end, I can’t wait to find out what Brian K. Vaughn will do next