Graphic Novel Review: 'Y: The Last Man, Book 1: Unmanned'

My wife rocks.

What wife do you know who buys her husband two graphic novels for Valentine’s Day just because she remembered that he once said he’d like to get into that genre?

The problem was, I had no idea where to start. There are so many comics out there, so many stories and characters. I love Batman, but where do you start? I saw movies like V for Vendetta and Sin City, heard they were created from graphic novels and had no idea that kind of storytelling existed outside of superheroes and Charlie Brown.

I was pretty much a graphic novel noob. And still am. But I’m learning. My education has begun.

My wife found a pretty awesome series of articles by Whitney Matheson who does the Pop Candy blog on USAToday.com. She’s a comic/graphic novel fanatic, so she started a four-part tutorial called the Comic Crash Course on how to get into reading graphic novels. With that list in mind, my wife purchased two for me from Whitney’s Top 25 list: The Last Man, Book 1: Unmanned and The Dark Knight Returns.

I’m obviously done with the first, but have quite a ways to go on the second. And I have to say, I’m pretty excited about getting into these kinds of stories. I know one of my readers, The Cap’n, will probably be ecstatic to see this blog post and hear about my newfound desire to discover this world of picture books.

My problem in writing this first review on The Last Man (buy it on Amazon) is that I honestly have no real experience as to how to grade it. Without having read 5, or 10 or more, can I really be that great of a judge on the merits of a graphic novel?

Well, it doesn’t matter, because you are getting my thoughts anyways. The thing that I discovered pretty quickly about my first foray, is that these books are definitely more serious that a normal comic, and usually have more serious, adult themes. Which I find perfect.

The Last Man is the story of a man named Yorick Brown. A worldwide incident occurs early in the story that simultaneously wipes out every mammal with a Y-chromosome, including embryos, eggs and even sperm. 48% of the world’s population gone in a wink, or 2.9 billion men.

Except Yorick. And his monkey. Yorick is the last man.

There are a few side stories as well, like with his mother, his sister and various other characters. The results of the incident are a study in how the world might be if only women remained. There is the group called the Daughters of the Amazon that have surgically removed one of their breasts in an initiation ritual and would kill any man they might see alive. They felt the incident was a “purge” from God to cleanse the world.

Yeah, adult themes alright.

The story is marked by its seriousness in the wake of the disaster, but also its humor. Yorick himself has a lot of one-liners that invoked a few laughs from me while reading. He’s also on a quest to find his girlfriend who was in Australia at the time of the event and her whereabouts are unknown.

Book 1: Unmanned is the first in a 10-volume series. I have a long ways to go to finish this up. The good thing is, Unmanned was relatively short compared to The Dark Knight which I’m reading now.

Overall, I liked it. I want to find out if there is more to the story about why this happened and how he’s the only one alive. My wife told me how good it was supposed to be, but I did kind of find myself asking “why?” a few times. Some of the one-liner jokes just seemed out of place in the dark world Yorick finds himself.

But it was an interesting read nonetheless. The art is pretty great and there are quite a few scenes of violence and bloodshed, which I actually found pretty cool considering the last real comic I read was Calvin and Hobbes.

And there are quite a few tidbits that go along with this book. It was written by Brian K. Vaughan, who is also a writer on Lost, and even did the Confirmed Dead episode from this season.

Along with that, a movie is in the works according to Wikipedia. New Line Cinema has the rights to the filming and rumors suggest Shia LeBeouf could star as Yorick. The script should be done this summer and filming could begin in late 2008.

I will be finishing up The Dark Knight soon enough, but I plan on either reading Book 2 of The Last Man, or starting on Watchmen, another one of Whitney’s Top 25.

So with that being said, my rating is below and it’s getting what it gets because what do I know really?

Rating from 1-5 popcorns: