Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned (Paperback)

But luckily the writer of one of those failed projects (Swamp Thing's Brian K. Vaughan) came along just then and helped revive the line. He and artist Pia Guerra created a book called Y the Last Man that has quickly become one of the hottest phenomenons in comics today.

In the first trade paperback collection for the series, Y the Last Man: Unmanned, we are introduced to Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand, who are both somehow spared when every other male on the planet dies. This first book sets up many of the events that are to follow, establishing situations like that of Yorick's mother, one of the few female Congresswomen left who is now trying to rebuild the government, or that of the Amazons, a group of women who believe the Y chromosome was an aberration and the men deserved to die off.

There is a great sense of mystery surrounding this series. Vaughan has done a wonderful job of leaving certain aspects of the story unresolved yet still maintaining the fans' interests in what the answers to those questions might be. Readers might wonder, for example, what causes the deaths of all the men on Earth. Was it the removal of a mystical artifact from its homeland or an experiment in cloning gone wrong that killed the men? Might the cause have been some kind of biological weapon created by the government, thus satisfying conspiracy theorists the world over? It could be any or all of those things. Y the Last Man defies easy classification, using elements of fantasy, science fiction and political intrigue as a backdrop for its characters to explore, all while weaving an atmosphere mired in the unknown that keeps the readers in suspense.

But like all of the best Vertigo books, Y is driven by character more than anything else. Y rises above the standard plot devices that usually plague stories about the end of the world, because, despite being set in a post-apocalyptic world, it is not about that apocalypse. The reasons behind the deaths of the men are unimportant. Here the focus is instead on how the people left behind act when forced into this situation, and what is most amazing about this book is how true it seems, how real.

Most of the credit for that belongs to artist Pia Guerra for making the world resemble our own so closely that it feels authentic. When we see the congested highways filled with cars, behind the wheels of which sit the bodies of dead men, we feel the anguish the characters must, and it leads us to contemplate how we would cope with such a predicament. Similarly, Guerra convinces us the characters are truly alive with facial expressions and mannerisms that would give the best actors in Hollywood a run for their money, especially in our lead character Yorick and one of the villains of the piece, the Amazon leader Victoria.

Cleverly written and beautifully drawn, Y the Last Man is an incredible book that bursts through clichés and explores interesting characters in a world not too far removed from our own. The monthly adventures of Yorick Brown gain at least a thousand new readers each month, and as sales continue to climb, it is on pace to surpass Alias as the highest selling mature readers book on the market today. If you haven't yet jumped on the bandwagon and tried Y the Last Man: Unmanned, I can't help but wonder why.

(And I promise that the book is really better than that pun was.)