Most of my reading recently has been in trade paperback form. The first series I dove into is called “Y the Last Man” and asks “What would happen if every being with a Y chromosome dropped dead suddenly and unexpectedly, except for one man and his monkey?” Now that right there is priceless in and of itself, but the story only gets better. Oh so much better.

I’d tell you more, but, well I will!

Read more after the jump.
I first ran across the series a few months ago, K and I had been canvassing Orlando game stores with postcards about my Magic podcast and while we drove we suddenly passed a guy waving on the side of the road dressed as the god of thunder, Thor. Well that smells like a place my postcards would be welcome! We pull in and find a comic shop called “A Comic Shop.” Featured prominently on the wall are the trade paperbacks for the series with a big note underneath reading “This is why God created comics!” That’s a mighty big statement about a comic book series. I didn’t buy the series that day, I got the first one a few weeks later and tore through it. I ended up ordering the rest of the series online and it is, simply put, why God created comic books.

Comics have the unfortunate stigma of the superhero. When someone says comic book we all (everyone) thinks Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, X-Men or some other tightly clothed person with abilities above society. In fact, some of the great comic books have no such character and Y is one of those.

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

The main character is Yorick Brown, an out of work magician (specializing in escape artistry) and his pet monkey named after a piece of punctuation. While he was locked away in his apartment, at a single moment around the globe - men dropped dead. Planes fell out of the sky as the vast majority of pilots were men. Chaos descended for a few weeks before women regained control.

The story is actually near it’s end as they planned it to run for 60 issues and we’re mere weeks away from the final issue (then I just have to wait for the trade paperback!) But the story has come a long way, see the motivator for young Yorick is that just before everything went to pot, he was about to propose to his girlfriend who was in Australia at the moment, studying abroad.

So Yorick’s motivation is to stay alive (in a world without men, not easy to do.) However his mother ends up leading the USA and when she discovers him alive, he is given a mysterious bodyguard from a mysterious sect of the government who’s job is to get him to “Dr. Mann” a female scientist who leads research into cloning and is the world’s best hope at getting the Y chromosome flowing again.

Adventure ensue, from encounters with a female cult called “Amazons” (they even include an Amazon.com joke) to mysterious ninjas and Mad Max style run-ins while moving through the desert.

As the story continues though we really see the underlying message of the story. I still don’t have an exact answer as to why Yorick survived, hopefully I’ll find out in the final paperback, but the story’s explanation for the sudden downfall of man-kind is that all living beings are connected on a much lower level. We’re linked. They put forth the story of how one ape on a continent discovers tools and then at the same time another ape in another continent begins using tools as well, they didn’t do it by coincidence, when one did it, the rest were suddenly with this knowledge as well. So when Dr. Mann had succeeded at cloning, men were now obsolete, and so they dropped dead. Cloning could take care of the rest.

This part is where the story began to get thin for me. I compare it to Star Wars’ midichloriens - just ask why? Why do we need a scientific explanation? Make it like hyperspace and skip the fine details. The more details you give the reader, unless they’re correct or mostly plausible, the more likely they’ll find an issue and lose their suspension of disbelief.

Even with these criticisms though, the story is amazing. They keep you enthralled. I started out buying just one, then I ordered 2, then I just ordered the remaining 6 all at once. The story is powerful and it carries an important message with it - what that message is though, I’ll let you decide.