10 Thoughts on... Y: The Last Man: vol 3.

Hey, I just realized that I haven't done a 10 Thoughts post in like a month or so. There's actually a really good reason for that though... I HATE the way these posts have been coming out! They're easily some of my worst work... I have a few that I typed up a while back(including this one), but I just can't stand them... I'm actually toying with a new format for when I feel like doing a 10 Thoughts post, but it's still in the development stages. Anyway, I don't have any new reviews for tonight, so I figured tonight was as good a night as any to post this. Enjoy... Or don't...

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.

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.

10 Thoughts on... Y: The Last Man Vol. 1

Here we go with try number two of this “10 Thoughts on...” deal. Let's see if it comes out any better than my first shot at it...

Y: The Last Man, Book 1: Unmanned.. Collecting: Y: The Last Man #1-5

-This comic gets started with every single creature with a Y chromosome on the Earth suddenly vomiting up blood and dying... Well every creature with the exception of Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand.

-Throughout this trade, we get no real clues as to what caused the massive die-off, and Yorick himself, being an amateur illusionist, believes it was the ring he picked up from a magic shop that he was intending on proposing to his girlfriend with once she returned from Australia.

-The closest thing to a clue we have about what may have happened to the men is that a secret agent from the US Government, Agent 355, had gone to Jordan to spirit a woman out of the country due to some sort of ancient necklace the woman was wearing. The woman refuses to leave, explaining that her father had warned her that a catastrophe would occur if the amulet left Jordan. Some terrorists who wanted the amulet wind up killing the woman, and 355 kills the terrorists, taking the amulet with her. Soon after leaving Jordanian airspace, all the men perish.

-Two months after the death of all the men, Yorick(obviously very covered up) and Ampersand make their way to Washington DC in search of his mother, who was a congresswoman from Ohio. Yorick finds his mom, who is overjoyed that he survived, but wants Yorick to hide, since in the two months since the great die-off, several dangerous groups of women have popped up.Hi mom!


-Yorick's mother tricks him into entering a safe room hidden under the White House after an attack by a bunch of crazy Republicans. Since the majority of women left in the government were Democrats, the wives of the dead Republican Representatives decide that they deserved the jobs of their late husbands.It's funny 'cause it's true!


-Agent 355 winds up locating the Secretary of Agriculture and explains to her that with the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, etc. dead, she was now the acting president and had to head to Washington.

-355 and the new president show up at the White House just in time to see the crazy Republicans and the few female Representatives and secret service agents having a stand-off on the lawn. The new president(being a rare non-crazy Republican) manages to convince the crazy Republicans to leave for now, just as Yorick breaks out of the safe room and heads outside.

-Yorick wants to head to Australia to find his girlfriend, but the new president tasks 355 with escorting Yorick to Boston where there was a female geneticist who was extremely knowledgeable in the area of cloning and genetics, with the hope being the geneticist could clone/figure out why Yorick and his monkey were still alive.

-Yorick and 355 manage to locate the geneticist in Boston, Dr. Mann, but Mann is unable to do any experiments on Yorick because her lab was mysteriously burnt down. Mann explains she had a back-up lab in California, meaning the trio would have to sneak out to the west coast, keeping Yorick safe from harm during the trip.

-Besides all of that, we also learn that the new leading military force in the world is Israel, since they actually had female soldiers who had seen military action, something much of the rest of the world couldn't also lay claim to. The Israelis go about conquering several Middle Eastern nations around them as they begin to throw around their newfound world power status. Another pending threat is the Daughters of the Amazons, a bunch of women who had fallen into a cult that felt that all men deserved to die since men suck. These women have cut off one of their breasts like the mythical Amazons of old and have amongst their ranks Yorick's sister, Hero. Needless to say the rumors that one man had survived the great die-off was of great interest of them, since they felt it was their duty to rid Mother Earth of ALL men.

Score: 9 out of 10. This first trade was more intriguing than great to me. The story was extremely engaging, and the mystery of what happened to the men was great, even though it didn't take center stage during the second half of this trade. Yorick is an easy character to like, as are 355 and even Dr. Mann. They have their own distinctive personalities, and each bring something different to the table. Who knew a world run by women would be turn out so sucky?! I always figured all of the world's troubles stemmed from the men!