The Politics of the Acockalypse

Published by Auguste February 2nd, 2007 in Gender Issues, Books, Art

Wednesday’s J*ff G*ldst*in hilarity dissolved into a nerdfest (probably won’t be the last time, as long as I’m around) about comics; specifically Y: The Last Man. This post scores low on the timeliness scale; the series started, and established most of its themes, in 2002, but it’s winding down now and if I don’t hurry and write the post I’ve been kicking around, even fewer people will care than are going to care now (at least until someone exercises their movie option).



Disclaimers: 1) Spoilers will, by necessity, abound; 2) I am aware that other comic book fanpeople have already written about this series long ago, and I haven’t read most of those. I would imagine others will have touched on many of the themes I’m going to bring up, but we’ll survive; 3) Yes, it is worth spending this much time on a comic book, in certain cases, so please don’t ask incredulously.



Y is Yorick, a recent college graduate who, in accordance with the Little Miss Sunshine Rule of Characterization, has a Quirk which will Come In Handy Later. He’s a street magician, you see, and he has a sidekick to boot, a Capuchin Monkey named Ampersand. He’s taken on this little “shit-flinging bastard” (that may not be a quote, but it’s close enough) to prove to the world that he’s useful, like his friends, who are all apparently on post-graduation quests; his girlfriend is in Australia on an archaeological dig of some sort while he stays at home practicing his strait-jacket trick, failing to get jobs, and waxing philosophical on the phone to his girlfriend, to whom he is about to propose.



But he never gets the chance, because at that moment every male mammal on earth drops dead.

If it weren’t the whole point of the story, it’d be the most grandiose deus ex machina moment in the history of fiction.



More:
http://pandagon.net/2007/02/02/the-politics-of-the-acockalypse/