Y: The Last Man
Encyclopedia
Y: The Last Man is a comic book
series
by Brian K. Vaughan
and Pia Guerra
published by Vertigo beginning in 2002. The series is about the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal (barring the same man's pet monkey) on Earth. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes (and later a series of five hardcover "Deluxe" volumes). The series' covers were primarily by J. G. Jones and Massimo Carnevale. The series received five Eisner Award
s.
) simultaneously kills every living mammal possessing a Y chromosome
— including embryos, fertilized eggs
, and even sperm
. The only exceptions appear to be New York residents Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his male Capuchin monkey
, Ampersand. Many women are killed from disasters caused by the men's deaths.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, their survivor guilt
, and the knowledge that - barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary happening - humanity is doomed to extinction
.
Yorick leaves New York City for DC to reunite with his mother, a member of Congress. In the process, he meets the new president of the United States, the former Secretary of Agriculture (since everyone above in the chain of command
had died). The mysterious Agent 355 is commissioned by the president to help and protect Yorick and get him to Boston to meet with brilliant geneticist and cloning expert Dr. Allison Mann, despite Yorick's determination to find his girlfriend Beth, who was in Australia when the plague struck. However, Congresswoman Brown's distrust for 355 and 355's agency leads her to reveal Yorick's existence to an Israeli commando nicknamed Alter. Alter, however, has different plans for Yorick, hoping to use his existence as leverage against any and all of Israel's enemies, which in the new state of the world seems to be every other country.
Cross-country travel is incredibly hard going, fuel and food are becoming rarer by the day, railways and roads are often blocked and broken and patrolled by armed gangs. Air travel is all but impossible. Yorick spends much of his time disguised as a woman, wearing a gas mask to avoid detection.
In Boston, Yorick and Agent 355 meet up with Dr. Mann, but in the process her lab is burnt down by Alter and her team. Dr. Mann has a backup laboratory in California which Agent 355 and Yorick agree to journey to, with the aim of using Yorick to find answers to the plague (including the mystery of his and Ampersand's sole survival) as well as possibly produce more male humans.
The group spends approximately two years traveling across America to reach Dr. Mann's second lab. During their journey they experience several adventures which are revealed as short stories or incomplete vignettes. The dialogue alludes to many encounters which happen off-page, explaining that the reader is only being shown the most important incidents of a much longer story.
While traveling through the Midwest, Yorick's group encounters Natalya, a Russian soldier who accompanies them to a "hot suite" where biologists maintain a sterile environment. It is revealed that three astronauts are alive aboard the International Space Station
, two of whom are male. These astronauts attempt to land near the sterile room so that they can be quarantined from the plague. However, the Soyuz capsule they use to land has degraded from lack of maintenance. In the end, the vessel explodes and the two male astronauts are killed. The surviving astronaut, Ciba, explains that she is carrying the child of one of the astronauts, and she is quarantined until the child, who is male, is born. At the same time, the site is attacked by Israeli commandos led by Alter, who briefly capture Yorick before being driven off.
Yorick continues to travel with his comrades, and has a brief affair with another girl named Beth, who shares many traits in common with his fiancée. They make love in a church graveyard before Yorick proceeds. Much later, it is revealed that Yorick impregnated the second "Beth". "Beth Number Two" and her child, who is female, later join Yorick's sister in searching for him.
Yorick's group eventually arrive at Dr. Mann's second laboratory. Dr. Mann studies Yorick and Ampersand, and finds that Ampersand has an unspecified immunity to the "plague" which he passed on to Yorick by throwing feces at him. However, before her work can proceed Dr. Mann's laboratory is destroyed and Ampersand captured by Toyota, a female ninja whose purposes are not revealed for some time.
Toyota takes Ampersand to Japan, and Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann follow by sea. Their journey is interrupted by a battle between opium smugglers and the Australian navy, during which their group is infiltrated by an Australian spy named Rose. Rose enters a romantic relationship with Dr. Mann, and follows Yorick's group on the remainder of their journey to Japan. In Japan, Dr. Mann is reunited with her mother, a brilliant biologist. After some minor misadventures, Yorick is reunited with Ampersand. Rose gives up serving the Australian military, so that she can have an honest relationship with Allison Mann. Later, Yorick and 355 are captured by Toyota, but 355 kills Toyota in a rooftop duel.
Allison Mann's father, Dr. Matsumori is found to have survived the plague, and provides a number of explanations.
First, Allison Mann competed with her father to create the world's first human clone. Dr. Matsumori hired Toyota to poison Allison so that her cloned fetus would die. Allison nearly dies of uterine tumors and is saved by her mother's surgical skill, but it is not clear whether this was a side effect of Allison's clone research or Toyota's poison. Regardless, Dr. Matsumori reveals that he has created multiple clones of Allison.
Dr. Matsumori's second revelation is that he believes he was responsible for Ampersand's immunity to the "plague". He had tried to turn Ampersand into a biological weapon that would kill the clone his daughter was gestating, but the monkey was mis-delivered to Yorick by happenstance. Dr. Matsumori believes that when he perfected the human cloning process he rendered males obsolete, after which the Earth killed all males (a theory discussed in greater detail below). Dr. Matsumori intends to kill Yorick and himself, thereby removing the last two males from the planet (or at least, the last two he knows of). Allison Mann interrupts her father and they have an altercation, resulting in her killing him.
Yorick and 355 end up journeying to Paris to meet Yorick's fiancée, Beth. Yorick's sister, Hero, "Beth Number Two," Ciba, and Natalya all meet them in Paris. After being reunited with Beth, Yorick comes to realize he does not want to marry her. It is alluded to that 355 is the only person Yorick loves and respects. However, the Israeli soldier Alter kills 355 with a sniper rifle. The Israeli commando attempts to capture Yorick once again, but 355 has taught Yorick to fight and given him the courage to oppose her. Yorick defeats Alter but, realizing that she wants him to kill her, knocks her out, letting her live and the Israelis surrender and depart.
The story then provides an epilogue with several vignettes that take place over the next sixty years. Yorick marries "Beth Number Two" and they raise their daughter, who eventually becomes President of France. Beth and Hero enter a lesbian relationship. Ampersand grows old, and Yorick eventually euthanizes him. Allison Mann dies of illness, but her clones carry on her work. Society eventually stabilizes and human cloning becomes commonplace. At least seventeen Yorick clones are produced, although geneticists are eventually able to produce clones of other males. Yorick, now 85 years old, has been institutionalized in a building in France. Yorick is introduced to a younger clone of himself (Yorick Brown, the Seventeenth), and he imparts some advice regarding the breadth of life's experiences to his clone before escaping when the clone turns away.
except Yorick Brown, Ampersand
and Doctor Matsumori is never fully explained. A number of possible explanations are provided throughout the course of the series, but a definitive answer is left for the reader to decide. Discussing the cause of the plague, Vaughan is quoted as saying:
The theory that is described in the most detail is Dr. Matsumori's:
As described in the "Motherland" story arc, the Y-chromosome had been "rationally self-destructing for hundreds of millions of years" and thus the birth of Dr. Matsumori's first successful human clone "triggered a time-bomb that had been ticking for a millennia," in other words the moment the Y-chromosome became obsolete "nature righted its course." Moreover, Doctor Matsumori had also discovered a "chemical compound that had an adverse effect on the genome of cloned mammals" which he injected into a capuchin monkey
(Ampersand) in an attempt to kill his daughter's unborn clone fetus. Yet, as fate would have it, Ampersand was misdelivered to Yorick and when the plague struck, the compound ended up having the opposite effect on non-cloned mammals, shielding all three of them from "god's wrath."
Other explanations put-forth in the book include:
(a sister company
to Vertigo), and as of July 24, 2007 screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director D. J. Caruso
, the team behind Disturbia
, were attached to the project with David S. Goyer
as a producer
.
Caruso intended on finishing the script in the summer and filming during the fall of 2008. The script would be a rewrite of the original draft written by Vaughan himself.
A draft of Vaughan's screenplay has been posted online.
Caruso maintained that the source material was too much to be told in one film and his team decided to concentrate on the best first film they could, which would end somewhere around issue 14 of the comic series. The entire comic series as a whole would be plotted into three films. Actor Shia LaBeouf
, who has worked with these writers for the films Disturbia
and Eagle Eye
, has previously stated that he is unwilling to play the role of Yorick. According to LaBeouf, the role is far too similar to the character Sam Witwicky, which he portrays in the Transformers series. In an interview conducted by collider.com, LaBeouf stated that there is still a chance that he would be starring. Caruso planned to use a real monkey, and not a CGI
construct, to play Ampersand. Caruso also said he would like to have Alicia Keys
for the part of Agent 355. Zachary Levi
, who plays the lead in the TV series Chuck
, has expressed interest in playing Yorick as he is a fan of the comic book series, even going as far as having his character Chuck Bartowski
read the Y: The Last Man graphic novel
in an episode in Season 3.
As of November 2010, the film version is still on hold. Caruso remained "loosely attached" to the project, but New Line refused to budge on its development as a stand-alone movie as opposed to the trilogy Caruso (who has since moved on to direct the science fiction film I Am Number Four) preferred. Caruso, maintaining "I didn't think that you could take Yorick's story and put it in to a two-hour movie and do it justice... I just feel like it's too much for one screenplay," ultimately walked away from the project.
French director Louis Leterrier
has also expressed interest in adapting the series for television.
.
After the finale, the series was re-released, in parts, as oversized hardcovers with alternative cover art.
.
In 2008, Y: The Last Man won the Eisner Award
for Best Continuing Series.
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series
Ongoing series
The term "ongoing series" is used in contrast to limited series , a one shot , a graphic novel, or a trade paperback...
by Brian K. Vaughan
Brian K. Vaughan
Brian Keller Vaughan is an American comic book and television writer. He is best known for the comic book series Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, and Pride of Baghdad, and was one of the principal writers of the television series Lost, during seasons three through five...
and Pia Guerra
Pia Guerra
Pia Guerra is an award-winning Canadian comic book artist best known for her work as co-creator and lead penciller on the Vertigo title Y: The Last Man.-Career:...
published by Vertigo beginning in 2002. The series is about the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal (barring the same man's pet monkey) on Earth. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes (and later a series of five hardcover "Deluxe" volumes). The series' covers were primarily by J. G. Jones and Massimo Carnevale. The series received five Eisner Award
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
s.
Plot summary
On July 17, 2002, something (referred to as a plaguePandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
) simultaneously kills every living mammal possessing a Y chromosome
Y chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...
— including embryos, fertilized eggs
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
, and even sperm
Sperm
The term sperm is derived from the Greek word sperma and refers to the male reproductive cells. In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the "male" or sperm cell...
. The only exceptions appear to be New York residents Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his male Capuchin monkey
Capuchin monkey
The capuchins are New World monkeys of the genus Cebus. The range of capuchin monkeys includes Central America and South America as far south as northern Argentina...
, Ampersand. Many women are killed from disasters caused by the men's deaths.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, their survivor guilt
Survivor guilt
Survivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives themselves to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not...
, and the knowledge that - barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary happening - humanity is doomed to extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
.
Yorick leaves New York City for DC to reunite with his mother, a member of Congress. In the process, he meets the new president of the United States, the former Secretary of Agriculture (since everyone above in the chain of command
United States presidential line of succession
The United States presidential line of succession defines who may become or act as President of the United States upon the incapacity, death, resignation, or removal from office of a sitting president or a president-elect.- Current order :This is a list of the current presidential line of...
had died). The mysterious Agent 355 is commissioned by the president to help and protect Yorick and get him to Boston to meet with brilliant geneticist and cloning expert Dr. Allison Mann, despite Yorick's determination to find his girlfriend Beth, who was in Australia when the plague struck. However, Congresswoman Brown's distrust for 355 and 355's agency leads her to reveal Yorick's existence to an Israeli commando nicknamed Alter. Alter, however, has different plans for Yorick, hoping to use his existence as leverage against any and all of Israel's enemies, which in the new state of the world seems to be every other country.
Cross-country travel is incredibly hard going, fuel and food are becoming rarer by the day, railways and roads are often blocked and broken and patrolled by armed gangs. Air travel is all but impossible. Yorick spends much of his time disguised as a woman, wearing a gas mask to avoid detection.
In Boston, Yorick and Agent 355 meet up with Dr. Mann, but in the process her lab is burnt down by Alter and her team. Dr. Mann has a backup laboratory in California which Agent 355 and Yorick agree to journey to, with the aim of using Yorick to find answers to the plague (including the mystery of his and Ampersand's sole survival) as well as possibly produce more male humans.
The group spends approximately two years traveling across America to reach Dr. Mann's second lab. During their journey they experience several adventures which are revealed as short stories or incomplete vignettes. The dialogue alludes to many encounters which happen off-page, explaining that the reader is only being shown the most important incidents of a much longer story.
While traveling through the Midwest, Yorick's group encounters Natalya, a Russian soldier who accompanies them to a "hot suite" where biologists maintain a sterile environment. It is revealed that three astronauts are alive aboard the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
, two of whom are male. These astronauts attempt to land near the sterile room so that they can be quarantined from the plague. However, the Soyuz capsule they use to land has degraded from lack of maintenance. In the end, the vessel explodes and the two male astronauts are killed. The surviving astronaut, Ciba, explains that she is carrying the child of one of the astronauts, and she is quarantined until the child, who is male, is born. At the same time, the site is attacked by Israeli commandos led by Alter, who briefly capture Yorick before being driven off.
Yorick continues to travel with his comrades, and has a brief affair with another girl named Beth, who shares many traits in common with his fiancée. They make love in a church graveyard before Yorick proceeds. Much later, it is revealed that Yorick impregnated the second "Beth". "Beth Number Two" and her child, who is female, later join Yorick's sister in searching for him.
Yorick's group eventually arrive at Dr. Mann's second laboratory. Dr. Mann studies Yorick and Ampersand, and finds that Ampersand has an unspecified immunity to the "plague" which he passed on to Yorick by throwing feces at him. However, before her work can proceed Dr. Mann's laboratory is destroyed and Ampersand captured by Toyota, a female ninja whose purposes are not revealed for some time.
Toyota takes Ampersand to Japan, and Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann follow by sea. Their journey is interrupted by a battle between opium smugglers and the Australian navy, during which their group is infiltrated by an Australian spy named Rose. Rose enters a romantic relationship with Dr. Mann, and follows Yorick's group on the remainder of their journey to Japan. In Japan, Dr. Mann is reunited with her mother, a brilliant biologist. After some minor misadventures, Yorick is reunited with Ampersand. Rose gives up serving the Australian military, so that she can have an honest relationship with Allison Mann. Later, Yorick and 355 are captured by Toyota, but 355 kills Toyota in a rooftop duel.
Allison Mann's father, Dr. Matsumori is found to have survived the plague, and provides a number of explanations.
First, Allison Mann competed with her father to create the world's first human clone. Dr. Matsumori hired Toyota to poison Allison so that her cloned fetus would die. Allison nearly dies of uterine tumors and is saved by her mother's surgical skill, but it is not clear whether this was a side effect of Allison's clone research or Toyota's poison. Regardless, Dr. Matsumori reveals that he has created multiple clones of Allison.
Dr. Matsumori's second revelation is that he believes he was responsible for Ampersand's immunity to the "plague". He had tried to turn Ampersand into a biological weapon that would kill the clone his daughter was gestating, but the monkey was mis-delivered to Yorick by happenstance. Dr. Matsumori believes that when he perfected the human cloning process he rendered males obsolete, after which the Earth killed all males (a theory discussed in greater detail below). Dr. Matsumori intends to kill Yorick and himself, thereby removing the last two males from the planet (or at least, the last two he knows of). Allison Mann interrupts her father and they have an altercation, resulting in her killing him.
Yorick and 355 end up journeying to Paris to meet Yorick's fiancée, Beth. Yorick's sister, Hero, "Beth Number Two," Ciba, and Natalya all meet them in Paris. After being reunited with Beth, Yorick comes to realize he does not want to marry her. It is alluded to that 355 is the only person Yorick loves and respects. However, the Israeli soldier Alter kills 355 with a sniper rifle. The Israeli commando attempts to capture Yorick once again, but 355 has taught Yorick to fight and given him the courage to oppose her. Yorick defeats Alter but, realizing that she wants him to kill her, knocks her out, letting her live and the Israelis surrender and depart.
The story then provides an epilogue with several vignettes that take place over the next sixty years. Yorick marries "Beth Number Two" and they raise their daughter, who eventually becomes President of France. Beth and Hero enter a lesbian relationship. Ampersand grows old, and Yorick eventually euthanizes him. Allison Mann dies of illness, but her clones carry on her work. Society eventually stabilizes and human cloning becomes commonplace. At least seventeen Yorick clones are produced, although geneticists are eventually able to produce clones of other males. Yorick, now 85 years old, has been institutionalized in a building in France. Yorick is introduced to a younger clone of himself (Yorick Brown, the Seventeenth), and he imparts some advice regarding the breadth of life's experiences to his clone before escaping when the clone turns away.
Main characters
- Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, who is believed to be the last human male on Earth.
- Agent 355, Yorick's bodyguard who works for a mysterious US government agency.
- Doctor Allison Mann, an expert geneticist, seeking to discover the cause of the plague and why Yorick survived.
- Ampersand, Yorick's Capuchin monkey and the only other male mammal to survive the plague.
- Beth Deville, Yorick's girlfriend. When the plague hit, she was engaged in anthropologicalAnthropologyAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
work in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. - Hero Brown, Yorick's older sister, who joined the Daughters of the Amazon after the plague.
- Rose Copen, a spy and demolitions expert for the Australian navy, and Allison Mann's lover.
- Alter Tse'elon, the new chief of the general staff for Israel. Considered one of the main antagonists.
The Plague / Gendercide / Manslaughter / Le Grand Départ
The source of the plague that wiped out every living mammal with a Y chromosomeY chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...
except Yorick Brown, Ampersand
Ampersand
An ampersand is a logogram representing the conjunction word "and". The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and".-Etymology:...
and Doctor Matsumori is never fully explained. A number of possible explanations are provided throughout the course of the series, but a definitive answer is left for the reader to decide. Discussing the cause of the plague, Vaughan is quoted as saying:
The theory that is described in the most detail is Dr. Matsumori's:
As described in the "Motherland" story arc, the Y-chromosome had been "rationally self-destructing for hundreds of millions of years" and thus the birth of Dr. Matsumori's first successful human clone "triggered a time-bomb that had been ticking for a millennia," in other words the moment the Y-chromosome became obsolete "nature righted its course." Moreover, Doctor Matsumori had also discovered a "chemical compound that had an adverse effect on the genome of cloned mammals" which he injected into a capuchin monkey
Capuchin monkey
The capuchins are New World monkeys of the genus Cebus. The range of capuchin monkeys includes Central America and South America as far south as northern Argentina...
(Ampersand) in an attempt to kill his daughter's unborn clone fetus. Yet, as fate would have it, Ampersand was misdelivered to Yorick and when the plague struck, the compound ended up having the opposite effect on non-cloned mammals, shielding all three of them from "god's wrath."
Other explanations put-forth in the book include:
- The Israeli agent Alter claims that the Culper Ring created a chemical agent designed to prevent women from conceiving male children. This agent was introduced into ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
to cripple their economy, however, something went wrong, and the chemical agent instead killed males of all ages. - According to an agent of the Setauket Ring, the plague struck the moment Agent 355 removed the sacred Amulet of Helene from the nation of JordanJordanJordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
. The amulet carried a warning that if it was ever taken from its homeland, it would create a tragedy greater than the Trojan War. It is also suggested that the wedding ring Yorick bought for Beth may have protected him and Ampersand from the effect of this curse. - The Earth cleansing herself of the Y chromosome, as believed by the Amazons.
- Before Hero's boyfriend Joe died he was going to put out a chemical fire at a plant, it's possible that the fire released toxic fumes into the air.
- The RaptureRaptureThe rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
taking all men and leaving women as a punishment for original sinOriginal sinOriginal sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
, as believed by an air traffic controller. - The remaining (female) members of Sons of Arizona were convinced that the government was responsible for the plague, and the top government leaders were lying in wait to take over the country.
- Changes in the DreamtimeDreamtimeIn the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...
impacting normal reality, as believed by some Australian aboriginals and Beth. - One member of the "Fish & Bicycle" traveling theater troupe advanced the theory the plague was a direct response to the exclusion of women from true parity in the performing arts, thereby upsetting the natural order. In support of this theory, it was speculated the total exclusion of women from the stage in Shakespeare's day had resulted in pandemic outbreaks of the Bubonic PlagueBubonic plaguePlague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
. - At one point, the characters discuss the possibility that the release of the film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya SisterhoodDivine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (film)Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a 2002 American comedy-drama film starring Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd, directed and written by Callie Khouri...
shortly before the plague may have caused a massive "death-by-chick-flick."
Themes
Among others important ideas, the story deals extensively with gender issues and technological and scientific advancement taking the place of the so-called "natural order of things." Furthermore, the overall story tries to be as realistic as possible and has often been called by reviews as "thought-provoking" and a "society critique."Film adaptation
The film rights to the series have been acquired by New Line CinemaNew Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
(a sister company
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
to Vertigo), and as of July 24, 2007 screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director D. J. Caruso
D. J. Caruso
Daniel John "D.J." Caruso is an American director and producer. Caruso has directed the films Disturbia, Two for the Money, Taking Lives, The Salton Sea, Eagle Eye and I Am Number Four. He has also directed television episodes for shows such as The Shield, Over There, Smallville, and Dark Angel...
, the team behind Disturbia
Disturbia (film)
Disturbia is a 2007 American thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and executive produced by Ivan Reitman. It is an updated version of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window...
, were attached to the project with David S. Goyer
David S. Goyer
David Samuel Goyer is an American screenwriter, film director and comic book writer.-Early life:Goyer was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He attended Hebrew school and has described himself as "half Jewish"...
as a producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
.
Caruso intended on finishing the script in the summer and filming during the fall of 2008. The script would be a rewrite of the original draft written by Vaughan himself.
A draft of Vaughan's screenplay has been posted online.
Caruso maintained that the source material was too much to be told in one film and his team decided to concentrate on the best first film they could, which would end somewhere around issue 14 of the comic series. The entire comic series as a whole would be plotted into three films. Actor Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf
Shia Saide LaBeouf is an American actor who became known among younger audiences for his part in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens and made his film debut in Holes . In 2007, he starred as the leads in Disturbia and Transformers...
, who has worked with these writers for the films Disturbia
Disturbia (film)
Disturbia is a 2007 American thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and executive produced by Ivan Reitman. It is an updated version of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window...
and Eagle Eye
Eagle Eye
Eagle Eye is a 2008 thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. The two portray a young man and a single mother who are brought together and coerced by an anonymous caller into carrying out a plan by a possible terrorist organization...
, has previously stated that he is unwilling to play the role of Yorick. According to LaBeouf, the role is far too similar to the character Sam Witwicky, which he portrays in the Transformers series. In an interview conducted by collider.com, LaBeouf stated that there is still a chance that he would be starring. Caruso planned to use a real monkey, and not a CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
construct, to play Ampersand. Caruso also said he would like to have Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook , better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano...
for the part of Agent 355. Zachary Levi
Zachary Levi
Zachary Levi Pugh , better known by his stage name Zachary Levi , is an American television actor, director, and singer known for the roles of Kipp Steadman in Less than Perfect, Chuck Bartowski in Chuck, and Flynn Rider in Tangled.- Early life :Zachary Levi Pugh was born in Lake Charles,...
, who plays the lead in the TV series Chuck
Chuck (TV series)
Chuck is an action-comedy/spy-drama television program from the United States created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The series is about an "average computer-whiz-next-door" named Chuck, played by Zachary Levi, who receives an encoded e-mail from an old college friend now working for the Central...
, has expressed interest in playing Yorick as he is a fan of the comic book series, even going as far as having his character Chuck Bartowski
Chuck Bartowski
Charles Irving "Chuck" Bartowski is the main and titular character of the American fiction television show Chuck on NBC. He is portrayed by Zachary Levi.-Character profile:...
read the Y: The Last Man graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
in an episode in Season 3.
As of November 2010, the film version is still on hold. Caruso remained "loosely attached" to the project, but New Line refused to budge on its development as a stand-alone movie as opposed to the trilogy Caruso (who has since moved on to direct the science fiction film I Am Number Four) preferred. Caruso, maintaining "I didn't think that you could take Yorick's story and put it in to a two-hour movie and do it justice... I just feel like it's too much for one screenplay," ultimately walked away from the project.
French director Louis Leterrier
Louis Leterrier
Louis Leterrier is a French film director whose notable films include the first two Transporter movies, Unleashed , The Incredible Hulk , and Clash of the Titans .-Life and career:...
has also expressed interest in adapting the series for television.
Collected editions
The series is being collected in trade paperbacksTrade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
.
| # | Title | ISBN | Release date | Collected material |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unmanned | ISBN 1-56389-980-9 | January 2, 2003 | Y: The Last Man #1–5 |
| 2 | Cycles | ISBN 1-4012-0076-1 | September 1, 2003 | Y: The Last Man #6–10 |
| 3 | One Small Step | ISBN 1-4012-0201-2 | April 1, 2004 | Y: The Last Man #11–17 |
| 4 | Safeword | ISBN 1-4012-0232-2 | December 1, 2004 | Y: The Last Man #18–23 |
| 5 | Ring of Truth | ISBN 1-4012-0487-2 | July 13, 2005 | Y: The Last Man #24–31 |
| 6 | Girl on Girl | ISBN 1-4012-0501-1 | November 23, 2005 | Y: The Last Man #32–36 |
| 7 | Paper Dolls | ISBN 1-4012-1009-0 | May 1, 2006 | Y: The Last Man #37–42 |
| 8 | Kimono Dragons | ISBN 1-4012-1010-4 | November 22, 2006 | Y: The Last Man #43–48 |
| 9 | Motherland | ISBN 1-4012-1351-0 | May 9, 2007 | Y: The Last Man #49–54 |
| 10 | Whys and Wherefores | ISBN 1-4012-1813-X | July 1, 2008 | Y: The Last Man #55–60 |
After the finale, the series was re-released, in parts, as oversized hardcovers with alternative cover art.
| # | Title | ISBN | Release date | Collected material |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deluxe Book One | ISBN 1-4012-1921-7 | October 28, 2008 | Y: The Last Man #1–10 |
| 2 | Deluxe Book Two | ISBN 1-4012-2235-8 | May 6, 2009 | Y: The Last Man #11–23 |
| 3 | Deluxe Book Three | ISBN 1-4012-2578-0 | April 13, 2010 | Y: The Last Man #24–36 |
| 4 | Deluxe Book Four | ISBN 1-4012-2888-7 | October 12, 2010 | Y: The Last Man #37–48 |
| 5 | Deluxe Book Five | ISBN 1-4012-3051-2 | May 3, 2011 | Y: The Last Man #49–60 |
Awards and honors
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores was nominated for the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic StoryHugo Award for Best Graphic Story
The Hugo Awards are presented every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
.
In 2008, Y: The Last Man won the Eisner Award
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
for Best Continuing Series.
See also
- Mary ShelleyMary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's novel, The Last ManThe Last ManThe Last Man is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1826. The book tells of a future world that has been ravaged by a plague. The novel was harshly reviewed at the time, and was virtually unknown until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s... - Juliusz MachulskiJuliusz MachulskiJuliusz Machulski is a Polish film director and screenplay writer. Son of noted actor Jan Machulski, Juliusz became notable for his comedies ridiculing the life in communist-ruled Poland of 1970s and 1980s....
's film, SexmissionSexmissionSexmission is a 1984 cult Polish comedy science fiction action film. It also contains a hidden political satire layer specific to the time and place of its production.-Plot:... - Frank HerbertFrank HerbertFranklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...
's novel, The White PlagueThe White PlagueThe White Plague is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert.-Plot:When an IRA bomb goes off, the wife and children of molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill are killed on May 20, 1996. Driven halfway insane by loss, his mind fragments into several personalities that carry out his plan for him. He... - Pat Frank's novel, Mr. AdamMr. AdamMr. Adam is the first novel written by Pat Frank dealing with the effects of a nuclear mishap causing worldwide male infertility. The work was initially published by J. B. Lippincott Company, but was reprinted once in 1959 by Pocket Books under the title Mr...
- P. D. JamesP. D. JamesPhyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
's novel, The Children of MenThe Children of MenThe Children of Men is a dystopian novel by P. D. James that was published in 1992. Set in England in 2021, it centres on the results of mass infertility... - James Tiptree, Jr.'s short story, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" is a novella by James Tiptree, Jr. . It won a Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1976 and a Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1977....
- Charlotte Perkins GilmanCharlotte Perkins GilmanCharlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...
's novel, HerlandHerland (novel)Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis . The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination... - 1999 film: The Last Man on Planet EarthThe Last Man on Planet EarthThe Last Man on Planet Earth was a 1999 TV movie about a female-dominated society.-Plot:During a war with Afghanistan, an incurable biological weapon called the "Y-bomb", which targets only the male Y-chromosome, is used and results in the eventual deaths of 97% of the world's men...
External links
- Y: The Last Man at the official Vertigo website
- Y: The Last Man at themovieinsider.com
- Yorick, Don't Be A Hero: Productive Motion in Y: The LastMan by Lyndsay Brown at ImageTexT
- Comics2Film: Y: The Last Man