I knew him. Well, not really. (English majors, did you like how I used "well" after "him", but not really? Did anyone grind their teeth? Be honest.)

After having no real desire to commit inanity to words in ye olde blog in an age, I'm not sure what about finishing "Y: The Last Man" (heretofore YtLM) brought out the need to splut out a few words. I had been reading the YtLM since issue #1 and had a broad range of reactions to it. On the surface it immediately smacks of the ultimate male fantasy of end days. But while the scifi-y-what-if premise is as flimsy as it gets, the development of the characters, the details of the heroes journey (lowercase h), the entrance and exits of so many interesting people, places and themes was like finding Dom Perignon in a Boone's Farm medium. I wasn't always happy with how things would in equal turns twist suddenly or drag on, and the scifi aspect of the story was at best weak hand waving (which it eventually self-acknowledged -- much to my glee), but in the end it excelled at what all comics should: it gave good story. A solid performer, I generally always ended up reading through YtLM first before digging into anything else I picked up at the comic shop. Smart, sharp writing, a mix of funny surrounded by a potentially endless void of melancholy; it rarely gave into the cheap sentimental gut check to move the story along.

Actually, getting to that point, I stopped reading the comic at issue #58. Little did I know at the time the series ended at #60. Had I known that, #58 would have been received in a much different light. I'm gonna use a cut tag now in case you want to avoid spoilers...

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Tags: comics