Y The Last Man vol. 3: One Small Step. Collecting: Y The Last Man #11-17
-Yorick and his trio(355 and Dr. Mann) come across a Russian agent named Natalya, who after seeing Yorick(who REALLY needs to work on the whole “hiding” thing) explains that there were two other men alive aboard a space station(as well as a lone woman), an American and a Russian.
MEN!-We learn that Yorick's mother sent the Israelis after Yorick since she didn't trust the US military(who were still in disarray) to find and return Yorick to her. So how does Yorick's mom know where he is at all times? She had a tracking device installed inside of Yorick's pet monkey, Ampersand.
-The Russians knew that the American Government had a special biological fallout shelter hidden in Kansas, and as such have given the Astronauts the go-ahead to try to land in the wheat fields of Kansas, near the shelter.
-The quartet(Yorick, 355, Mann, and Natalya) manage to find the fallout shelter and are met by a helpful pair of twin scientists, who were the only scientists who had remained there. Oh, and the fallout shelter is hidden inside a barn.
-The group hears a loud explosion from outside and 355 and Natalya rush outside figuring that the explosion was from the landing space capsule.
-Unfortunately all 355 and Natalya discover is some blown up farm equipment and they rapidly realize that they'd been hoodwinked. The Israelis had set up the explosion to draw 355 and Natalya outside so they could head inside and kidnap Yorick, which they successfully do.
-355 and Natalya discover two Israeli soldiers watching them, and 355 manages to kill both women. 355 gets on the radio of one of the dead soldiers and tells the Israeli commander that there were two male Astronauts about to touch down to Earth in mere moments, and that she'd allow the Israelis to have the Astronauts provided they returned Yorick. After some thought, the Israeli commander agrees to the deal.
-The Israeli commander waits and eventually sees that 355 was being truthful, watching as a space capsule begins to make it's way to the ground. The commander takes a rocket propelled grenade and tries to blow it out of the sky, since she wanted her country to have the only man left. Yorick manages to crash into the mad woman, messing up her aim, and one of the commander's top lieutenants betrays her, finally having had her fill of her commander's madness.
Now that's a BIG gun!-355 and Dr. Mann arrive at the capsule's crash site and are only able to pull one Astronaut free of the capsule before it explodes, killing the other two occupants. As luck would have it, they pull the female Astronaut free. By this time Yorick has been returned to the fallout shelter, and 355 and Dr. Mann bring the female Astronaut inside. The Astronaut explains that the men forced her to leave the exploding capsule first because she was pregnant. So although they lost the male astronauts, the female astronaut was potentially carrying a male fetus.
-Natalya decides she'd stay at the lab to protect the astronaut and the two scientists since she failed to retrieve her countryman, and Dr. Mann, Yorick and 355 continue their trek towards California.
Score: 9 1/2 out of 10. The main story was phenomenal, nearly as good as the last trade. The only thing that brought this trade down a notch was something that I didn't mention in the review(by choice!), a two part story dealing with Ampersand running off and joining up with a traveling acting troupe... Yeah. If not for that though, this trade very easily could have gotten another perfect score.
Man...this trade is SO good! I'm glad you're still loving the series. I was a bit weirded out by the theater troupe story the first time I read it, but on my second read I liked it a lot more. Those characters also show up later, and they provide a lot of comic relief as well as some interesting theories about the nature of the plague.
ReplyDeleteI must have totally blanked on them showing up again, because I'm like halfway through book 9, and I don't remember seeing them(and I doubt there would be time for comic relief come the last book). I'm going to be pretty sad when I finish these trades off...
ReplyDeleteI really really liked Natalya when I was reading this, she was a interesting character and her butchering the language just made her all the more likable. Also I laughed when Yorick thought the twins were Dr. Mann's clones, cause for a split second I thought the EXACT same thing.
ReplyDeleteJeez, it seems as if I read this AGES ago. When in reality I was reading it a week ago. And I'd have to agree with you 100%, this trade was excellent. I think this is one of two trades I read through so fast because I enjoyed it so much. I was on edge waiting to see if the two male astronauts would make it..and I think I was a little let down to see the woman was the one to survive.
ReplyDeleteAlso, am I the only one who didn't see the female astronaut as being a little whore for sleeping with both astronauts. lol. Who's the father? Now THAT would've been a good episode of "Maury" lol.
Anyways, this whole series is damn good and easily makes Brian K. Vaughan one of my new favorite writers. Great post X. Can't wait to see your thoughts or the rest of the series.
Yeah, Natalya is a great character, JT. Totally agree with you there. The way she talks English(as well as the way 355 speaks Russian) always has me chuckling.
ReplyDeleteAs for the female Astornaut and her two men, I guess there's really not much else to do up in space, Lisha! :P
Oh, btw, I finished up book 9 last night, and started the last book, so I'll probably put a Y post up towards the end of the week, just to talk about how the end of the series went, once I finish the last book of course!
The theater group are the people filming the action movie later on in the series. Maybe that's not until the tenth book, I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteRemember how I said that I was halfway through book 9 and they still hadn't shown up, Marc? They had the last story in book 9! I read it and went, "So THAT'S what Marc was talking about!" :D
ReplyDeleteHaha, glad to know that I wasn't crazy and just making up events in the book!
ReplyDeleteSo glad your loving this series X - its one of my fav ever, it just gets better and better.
ReplyDeleteMatt HeX
HA! I was beginning to wonder, Marc... :D
ReplyDeleteHey, great to hear from you, Hex! I literally just finished the last book last night, and yeah, it's safe to say it's going to go down as one of my all time favorites. I'm still trying to figure out my feelings about the end of the series, but yeah, this series was one hell of a ride!
Ahh damn you beat me X! Lol, I finished it today and although this series was fantastic, I'll say the ending disappointed me a lot more than I expected. I seriously think we could've got one more volume out of it. But hell that was a great series.
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