[Batman]

I finally got over to the comic book shop for the first time in months and, now that I know it hasn't gone to crap or anything, I just wanted to give a hearty recommendation to a weird little comic book called Y: the Last Man.

I'm not going to say that if you like Preacher, you'll like Y, because there are a lot of differences between the two. But there are a lot of similarities,too. If you liked Preacher for the taboo-busting depravity and blasphemy, well, Y doesn't have any of that.

What they have in common is a very clean, straightforward art style; a story that is clearly headed somewhere, (but isn't any great hurry to get there, on account of the writer just enjoying writing this particular set of characters); a nice mix of action/adventure and realistic conversations; and a lot of grappling with gender politics.

No angels or devils or gun-slinging saints, though. Y only wants you to suspend disbelief on one thing, and stays pretty grounded in reality otherwise. But it's a whopper: one day, every man on earth suddenly died. All but one: escape artist, helper-monkey-trainer, and pop-culture iconoclast Yorick Brown. Why him? That's what he'd like to know.

Here's a pretty typical sample page I found on the web. Ironically enough, Yorick makes a reference to Preacher.



(The punch line is "...I'm the strongest man on earth.")

I hear that the story is almost to the end, but the omnibus editions aren't hard to find if you're looking to start from the beginning.

[OpTard]

Y is a great book, but if anyone's gonna be picking it up for the first time, the biggest advise i can give is READ IT IN TRADE. considering it's only got about 6 or so issues left, there isn't really much of a choice, but it also reads so much better. it's a good book, but it really feels like it slows down in the middle when you're reading issue by issue, but as trade it reads really well. if someone's not reading it, you should.

i'll have another one of my (as stated semi-regular) recommendations as soon as something worth recommending comes out.

[Capellan]

If you buy Y in trade, make sure to check your copy of Volume 2 before leaving the store: a whole bunch of them have a printing error. 16 pages are printed twice, and 16 pages are missing.

I had to send two copies back to Amazon because of that, and still haven't managed to get a properly-printed copy.

[Lucky]

I loved Y when I was reading it and then it really started to wear down. Truthfully, I go hot and cold with things and I was getting cold on comics in general. I stopped reading soon after I stopped reading Y... but I was definitely down on Y while I was still very high on Infinite Crisis. Fables, or The Walking Dead. It was right around the boat trip. I don't know, it was losing me. But I seem to recall Optard voicing the same opinions at the time and he seems content. And I'm guessing serg's "it didn't go to shit" line as refering to that same period.

One of these days I'll pick back up with it along with Fables, TWD, and all the actual Marvel/DC stuff. I figure when Civil War finishes up I'll do a whole big catch up there. But now that I know that Y is ending soon anyway I guess I might as well wait until its over and read it all at once.

[Loki]

I second Oppy. Read them in trade, and perferably more than one trade at a time. Individually the stories bog down. Together they're much better.

[OpTard]

here's how it happened with me...

Y and fables both started around the same time. from the start i thought both were great, but i was really high fables. everyone else kept saying "fables is good too, but Y is the book." then i'd say probably around the late 20s or early 30s, very consistently, everyone i knew reading Y as comics started saying "i think you're right zig, fables is the better book," while the ones reading it in trade were calling it their favorite book.

i never read it in trade, but those were very consistent reactions for me, so trade is what i have to recommend.