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In the end, we weren't reading Y: The Last Man for all these years because it was about the last man on earth, we were reading it because it was about a group of really compelling characters. I just finished the last book of Y: The Last Man and I found it really emotional. I think that Vaughn very wisely realizes that the true focus of an ending should be characters, not plot. The wonderful thing about how the series ends is that Vaughn finds a way to bring closure to the many interpersonal storylines - and he does so in ways that are often unexpected and yet still very compelling and satisfying. The last issue, in particular, was an emotional read and was, in my opinion, an ending that met all my expectations and then some.
I really recommend reading the series twice. What an amazing ending to this story. No, it doesn't have the pirates and space shuttle crashes of earlier volumes, but the creators keep the suspense and the tension running high, all the way to the last page. Loved it the first time, understood it the second. Beautiful.
When Beth and Yorick reunited, a moment for which we'd literally waited years, it lacked any real emotional intensity. I applaud Vaughan for undertaking such a mammoth challenge: any man attempting to write an entire series about how women would remake the earth without men is either supremely confident or a little crazy. Instead, it felt to this fan as though Vaughan simply went through the motions of getting all the plots tidied up and packed away. I assumed this was the lull before the storm; that Vaughan slowed things down a bit so he could hit us hard for the ultimate chapter.He didn't.Whys and Wherefores should have been monumental. This final installment to the Y: The Last Man series left me both unsatisfied and disappointed.Y: The Last Man started out as a fantastic series. Its characters were swindled out of what should have been a majestic goodbye, and its readers were left without much to celebrate or commiserate. As Vaughan spread out his cast of characters, most of whom are obviously women, the title lost some of its magic. Y: The Last Man, while initially very good, also originally focused mostly upon Yorick.
In other words, they seemed to become objectified, which is the antithesis of how the series started. Alter's motivation turned out to be a cliché. It was a high concept with excellent characterization and an epic, fascinating plot.But, as the series wore on, it lost steam. But sadly, as the series wore on, his women felt less and less genuine and more like a male's excuse for including lesbianism and girl-on-girl violence. Agent 355's final fate cheated both the character and her characterization. The only truly authentic scene involved Yorick and Ampersand, his pet monkey, both of whom are male.Which leads me to an important distinction. For the record, I would be supremely interested to hear a woman's take on this series.All in all, Y: The Last Man ended with a whimper. It simply read like an ending rather than a finale.~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant
The story follows a formula that includes action and humor. Brian Vaughan is great at creating characters and getting you to like them. The relationship between the main character and his female companion is the strong point to the series, it kept me interested. The main character is the guy we can relate to, he's not an action figure, he is talented and intuitive about people but he's not a tough guy at all. I don't like the resolution to the series, its unfair to the characters and to the readers. Brian Vaughan decides to "trick" us with his ending. Its a great series and I highly recommend it but I don't like the final installment.
I remember reading another person's comments that the series shouldn't end while I was one-third to midway through, and thinking "Yeah, I don't want to get to the end." Now that I've finished the story, I have to disagree (although I would certainly welcome a short re-visit a la Grendel Tales or the Sandman spin-offs). I've read a lot of comics and graphic novels, but there have only been a few that were so good that the emotional response was almost physical. I think the story met an appropriate conclusion, but no Hollywood ending here. The Y: The Last Man series is one of those books (Maus is one of the other books as is the 9/11 commemorative issue of Amazing Spider-Man). The story never took a clichéd turn and explored the man/woman/life dynamic in so many ways and on so many levels. Get it. Read it.
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