Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils by Goran Sudzuka
Cover by Massimo Carnevale
It’s said often and usually in good intention, but rarely is it as said in earnest. This cover alone was worth the price of the book. It’s provocative, sexy, and holds a well-balanced composition. I wouldn’t mind having this framed in my house. But I also have a large oil painting of a wolf snarling fiercely, so I’m not sure how much my tastes count here.
Vaughan’s tale has grown leaps and bounds with a steady momentum to get to the point we’re at now. He’s masterfully kept it small in focus whilst only giving us just enough information on the characters to understand them at that moment in the story. We’ve been given looks into 355’s past and now we get the history on Dr. Mann. Turns out her involvement here may not be as random as we all thought. Of course, we already began to discover this a couple issues ago, but now we learn the full extent to Dr. Mann’s experience with cloning.
Vaughan has said there is a definite end to this story at 60 issues. That’s only 13 issues away and we’ve really only gone so far with Yorick’s love story with Beth. I feel like I’m just getting to know these characters, and in a way, we are. That’s saying something for Vaughan that a series marked by in-depth character focus feels both full of personality and yet like we still have so much to explore. Vaughan has definitely shied away from any macro view of the world without men. The only sense of the wider world outside of Yorick we’ve gotten is when Vaughan’s focused the few players left in global politics.
Part of the reason why the series doesn’t feel near finishing is because the heroes haven’t come up with a viable plan for saving the human race yet. They’re still floundering around trying just to keep their sanity intact. For both of the ‘stable’ women surrounding Yorick we’ve discovered that they are anything but. The world of the last man on Earth is a world I don’t want to leave.
Rating – 9
