Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3: One Small Step

When a plague of unknown origin kills every mammal with a Y chromosome, Yorick Brown discovers that he is the only male left and embarks on a transcontinental journey to discover why.

In this addictive follow-up to the brilliantly imagined Y: The Last Man, we're still in the near future and Yorick Brown and his monkey sidekick, Ampersand, are still the last two males on Earth. It's been some months since the mysterious plague that wiped out all male creatures. Since then, women have been picking up the pieces. A mysterious government agency, the Culper Ring, is trying to get Yorick across the country for scientific study without being discovered, which isn't as easy as it sounds, but at least the growing drag king subculture makes it possible for people who look like men to walk around without exciting too much comment. Meanwhile, an Israeli strike team is trying to capture Yorick for its own uses, and the U.S. president is colluding with them. Most suspenseful of all, a space station carrying two surviving male astronauts is about to crash down in a Kansas cornfield. The stakes are high, and Vaughan masterfully interweaves story lines: the astronauts' survival, the military operations, an enemy spy, the valiant scientists and an unexpected travelling drama troupe that offends an entire town when it puts on a play in which the world is saved by a lone surviving man. Meanwhile, is Yorick falling in love with his bodyguard? Guerra knows just what the story needs, backing up Vaughan's tale with killer artwork and a smorgasbord of female heroines who look terrific without the least suggestion of cheesecake. This book is complete and utter comic gold.
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The last panel of Cycles [BKL N 15 03] revealed that, although Yorick Brown is the last man alive on Earth, two other live men are on a space station. Their return to terra firma would take some heat off Yorick, who, in the third Y: The Last Man collection, remains in the custody of secret U.S. agent 355 while Israeli commandos pursue him. He, 355, and cloning scientist Allison Mann head for the decontamination facility near which the astronauts intend to land. They are joined en route--near-fatally for 355-- by a Russian agent, who comes in handy when the Israelis show up and snatch Yorick. Only after negotiations, ammo exchanges, and Yorick's own heroics does 355 re-take him. This hunk of Yorick's odyssey ends with a surprise as nasty as the Cycles surprise was hopeful. A pendant featuring Yorick's pet monkey, Ampersand, and a peripatetic theatrical company fill out the volume; drawn by a different, slightly more polished artist than the main story's Pia Guerra, it is every bit as well written by Vaughan. Ray Olson
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