We’ve all had women tell us “I wouldn’t sleep with you even if you were the last man on earth” a thousands times (or was it just me hearing it?). Well, what if you really were the last man on earth (I think there is some smarties commercial out right now using that situation). “Y: The Last Man” is a serious (and sometimes funny) look at the world when a sudden plague strikes the world and suddenly all males die. Not just human males… ALL MALES… everything on earth with a Y chromosome. Everything except one guy and his monkey.
Although I’m a comic fan, I’m not an comic expert… but when I first heard about the “Children of Men” movie, I initially thought it might have been a screen version of “Y: The Last Man” since the themes were a little similar on the surface.
Wikipedia describes it like this:
Y: The Last Man is Vaughan’s attempt to subvert the classic male fantasy of being the last man on earth. In the series, something (speculated to be a plague) simultaneously kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome – including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm with the exception of Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, their survivors’ guilt, and the knowledge that humanity is doomed to extinction. Vaughan meticulously crafts the new society that emerges out of this chaos, from the conversion of the phallic Washington Monument to a monument to the dead men, to the genesis of the fanatical ultra-feminist Daughters of the Amazon, who believe that Mother Earth cleansed itself of the “aberration” of the Y chromosome, to male impersonators becoming valued romantically and professionally.
I’ve read a couple of issues, and it really is fantastic stuff. Apparently the writer/director team behind “Disturbia” have been given the nod to develop it into a movie. If done right, this thing could be twice as good as Children of Men (in my opinion). Have any of you guys read The Last Man before? What are your thoughts on it?
