Parenthetical.net

A Grown-Up Table diversion into comics… Y is over. (Well, it’s been over for awhile, but I wait for the trade paperback compilations of the issues, and I just recently picked up the last one.) It’s one of the first series I fell in love with, and the end did not disappoint — I was bawling like a slightly manipulated baby.

The premise: Yorick Brown, twentysomething slacker everyman, and his pet monkey Ampersand are the only survivors of a mysterious plague that instantly wipes out all male mammals on earth. Yorick’s only thought is to find Beth, his girlfriend, who is studying abroad in Australia. But as the last man on earth, he’s too important to be allowed to follow his own agenda. He hooks up with Dr. Alison Mann, a geneticist, and Agent 355 of the mysterious Culper Ring, who is assigned to protect him until Dr. Mann can figure out what allowed him to survive. The trio travel across continents, pursued by (among others) politicians, the armies of several countries, and radical feminists known as Amazons, while the world falls apart and is rebuilt again by women.

Slightly spoilery

By the end, the “scientific” “explanations” get a little hand-wavy, and there is a Joss Whedon Moment (that actually made me shout, “Fuck you, Joss!” before I remembered that he didn’t write it this time). But the characters and their emotions are true, and the brilliant world-building remains solid.

I could say a lot about the gender, race, and sexuality commentary throughout the series (which I think is pretty genius, most of the time), but others already have.* So I’ll just say that I loved it, and I’m so sad it ended, in the same way I was sad when Buffy ended. RIP Y: they saved the world a lot, in spite of themselves.