10 Thoughts on... Y: The Last Man: vol 2.

It's the weekend, meaning it's time for me to switch away from my regular, current reviews and bust out a few trade reviews. I'm still happily playing through Dragon Age 2(for the PS3!!) and have lost 17 hours to that game thus far. Can you guess what my weekend plans entail? Anyway, enough jabber, here's the review.

Y: The Last Man, Book 2: Cycles. Collecting Y: The Last Man #6-10.

-Yorick(covered in a cape, hood and gas mask) manages to gain access to a train by trading a motorcycle he swiped from the Amazons towards the end of the last trade. With all of the men gone, the only real way to get cross country is by the trains. Anyway, Yorick, 355 and Dr. Mann(as well as Ampersand the monkey) get on-board and kill some time talking about stuff. As luck would have it, two thieves hop into the car Yorick and company were in, demanding whatever the trio had on them. 355 draws her gun, which freaks out Mann, who tries to stop 355 from shooting anybody. By this point, Yorick, like an idiot, charges the two criminals and gets tossed out of the moving train. 355 beats the hell out of the thieves before tossing Mann out of the train and then following herself, since her whole mission was to keep Yorick safe.

-Yorick's sister, Hero, is pulled deeper into the ranks of the Amazons thanks to the Amazon's charismatic leader, Victoria.

-Some woman living in a small town in Marrisville, Ohio finds Yorick's unconscious body(as well as Ampersand) laying near the train tracks not that far from her home.

-The woman(whose name is Sonia) takes Yorick into her home and watches over him until he wakes up, quite surprised by his new surroundings and demanding to know what became of 355 and Dr. Mann.

-Mann wakes up a little banged up but no worse for wear after falling from the train, while 355 is laying with her head cracked open against a rock.OUCH!!!


-Yorick tries to impress upon Sonia not to reveal his presence to the other townswomen, but unfortunately she had already told them, leading to a crowd of women waiting outside of Sonia's house to see if there really was a man still alive. The women are relatively friendly, and Yorick is shocked by how well run their town is, a far cry from some of the towns and cities he had passed back east. While talking to the woman, Dr. Mann rushes over and tells Yorick that 355 needed assistance. The townswomen inquire what kind of a name 355 was and when they hear she's a government agent, they give each other one of those, “Uh-oh...” looks. Ultimately the women agree to bring 355 to town to work on her wounds.

-While that is going on, the Amazons are still on Yorick's trail, with Hero locating the two thieves from the train and discovering that the man the Amazons were hunting down sounded exactly like her brother. Hero reports this information back to Victoria, hoping they could spare Yorick, but Victoria manages to convince Hero(with some awesome brainwashing techniques) that Yorick was no different than the other men, and as such had to die.

-With 355 now being looked after by Dr. Mann, and Yorick chopping wood with Sonia away from town, the other townswomen meet up afraid that 355 had come to town for them. Why would that be the case? Well, Yorick and Sonia wind up sharing a kiss, after which she admits to him that all of the women in town were from a nearby women's penitentiary, and were released by the guards since they had no way to seriously keep an eye on them. Upon learning this, Yorick freaks out and rushes back to town, ranting about how the townswomen should still be in jail.That old woman is all kinds of awesome!


-While Yorick is making an ass of himself, Hero enters the door demanding Yorick turn himself over to the Amazons. Yorick immediately goes to embrace his sister and is met with a bow to the head. From outside Victoria appeals with the townswomen to send Yorick outside so she could kill him and finally rid the Earth of all men. The townswomen refuse, much to the shock of Yorick and the rage of Victoria. Victoria demands that the Amazons burn the building to the ground, but Yorick heads outside against the advice of the townswomen, who were willing to fight to the death for him. Yorick tries to talk some sense to Hero, but she's completely brainwashed by this point and pushes him to his knees, at which time Victoria walks over with a handgun, ready to blow Yorick's brains out. Before she can pull the trigger though, Sonia throws an ax from the house, catching Victoria right in the side of the head, killing her.Talk about a splitting headache! Hee-hee-hee...


-In retribution for Victoria's death, Hero shoots an arrow into Sonia, killing her. The other townswomen charge outside, grab the fallen handgun and decide to lock Hero and the Amazons in the prison they themselves once resided in. Besides all of that, a few Israeli soldiers have snuck onto American soil after being told of Yorick's existence by someone from the White House, and we also learn that while Yorick is the last man on Earth, there were two worried male astronauts up in a space station wondering what the hell was going on back home.

Score: 10 out of 10. Ah, so THIS is why this series was so highly spoken of! There's really not anything for me to complain about here. The story was awesome, the artwork was awesome, the dialogue was awesome, in a word, this trade was awesome! And not only was this trade awesome, the future storylines that were set up look great. Hero appears to have become the defacto leader of the Amazons with Victoria gone, meaning she'll be in direct conflict with Yorick when she makes her inevitable escape from the prison. The Israeli storyline has been simmering on the back burner, but you can tell it's going to be HUGE when it finally comes to the forefront. And the last page, which showed us that there were two male astronauts who survived the great die-off was a mind-blower. Truly great stuff here.