Y: The Last Man

On July 17^th 2002 every creature with a Y chromosome died out, leaving womankind and their counterparts in the animal kingdom (or queendom) to inherit the Earth. All that is except for Yorick Brown, an escapologist with a degree in English Literature, and the helper monkey he’s volunteered to train, Ampersand.

As concepts go it’s a good one. Writer Brian K Vaughan does a great job of bringing to life a believable post-male world. The women left behind show a pleasingly large variety of emotions, meaning that even bit part characters feel genuine, as though they’ve survived something truly life-changing. Which, within the reality of this series, they certainly have.

Government and religion are two of the biggest background themes of the book. The US government is shown the most vividly, which is understandable given that the majority of the series’ main characters are American. Tantalising hints are dropped as to how the women are coping with reforming their government, with a larger world and problems always being on the verge of being shown. It’s the right approach: too much information would undoubtedly be boring.

Later in the series we discover what became of countries like France, Germany, Australia and Britain, and the nation of Israel’s story is fleshed out considerably. What could be considered the central antagonist of the series is the highest ranking military officer left in Israel, her discovery of Yorick’s existence and subsequent pursuit of him being one of the lengthier stories of the book.

We learn the fate of the male-dominated Catholic Church and witness the rise of the Daughters of the Amazon, a religion based on the belief that the Earth wiped out men to allow women to take their rightful place as rulers of the planet. The Daughters sound like a far-fetched comic book idea, but they’re handled in a realistic fashion that makes you think that if this wildly outlandish situation did come to pass something not entirely dissimilar could happen.

The questions of how Yorick and Ampersand survived the plague, as well as its cause, are both handled well. Which is good really, because they’re essentially the driving force of the book. Had they been bungled it’s likely the series would be nowhere near as enjoyable as it is. Several theories are introduced to us for what caused the “gendercide”: Mother Earth turning on man, the removal of a magical amulet from Jordan, an attempt by the US government to stem the growing population of China that sent wrong, a random plague that’s somehow skipped all the women, and even the banning of women from the theatre are all ideas floated at various points. The final reveal is satisfying and doesn’t break the internal logic built up within the series.

Yorick’s survival technique is revealed halfway through the book’s run and coincides with a subtle change in tone. The first half of Y details the last man’s journey across America with cloning expert Dr Allison Mann, who hopes to resurrect mankind with Yorick’s DNA, and 355, a government agent tasked with protecting Yorick by what remains of the government. It’s a journey that takes three years, with the last three of the book seeing the gang travelling the globe with greater freedom and the pasts of the characters being filled in.

The motivations of the characters are decidedly small scale. Yorick wants to be reunited with girlfriend Beth. Agent 355 wants to finish missions tasked to her before quietly retiring. And Dr Mann wants to finish her research and help bring humanity back from the brink of extinction… okay that one’s not exactly small in scale. These clear motivations ensure the characters feel real.

Pia Guerra’s art is a big positive for the book. She instils Yorick’s face and body language with warmth and personality, making him a likeable lead character. Her real strength is the variety of women she can draw. Without the ability to flesh out crowd scenes with moustaches and beards many artists would have given us pages of people that look more or less the same. Guerra avoids this with a seemingly infinite cast of faces to plug into the background. All the regulars are instantly recognisable and her handling of emotions is pitched perfectly. More superficially her work puts me in mind of Steve Dillon, although she deals with action sequences far better than he does.

Y: The Last Man is an inventive book with a sense of humour and a perfect pace. Mysteries are solved at just the right pace, strung out just long enough to hold interest without becoming tedious or annoying. It’s got a satisfying ending too. How many comic books can boast all that?

Stickleback

2000 AD, I’m told, used to be a must-buy for every comic fan in Britain. It was the home of Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Strontium Dog, and the ABC Warriors. It was the comic you bought for a sense of humour and a healthy dose of creativity. Perhaps more importantly it was the comic that gave early career exposure to creators and artists such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Alan Davis, Steve Dillon, Grant Morrison, Kevin O’Neill, and Dave Gibbons. 2000 AD earned a reputation early on in its life as a book of very high quality, and one that wasn’t afraid to give unknowns a chance.

Sadly the modern 2000 AD has lost a little of this lustre. The dark drive Marvel and DC undertook in the 80s and 90s, ironically spearheaded largely by writers and artists who had received their starts at 2000 AD, stripped away part of the mystique of the British title. So did the increased availability of those companies’ titles in Britain.

While the weekly release still features the likes of Dredd it’s rare for a series to reach the heights of popularity enjoyed by strips decades ago. Occasionally though there are still flashes of ingenuity when a particularly enjoyable strip gets commissioned. One such title was brought to us in 2006 when writer Ian Edginton and artist D’Israeli brought us Stickleback. Despite the familiar mix of steampunk and Victoriana it felt fresh and exciting.

The first set of issues, collected under the name England’s Glory, introduces us to the titular Stickleback. Clearly meant to put readers in mind of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis James Moriarty, he is a criminal mastermind with a gaggle of freakish henchmen at his beck and call. He bears a deformity himself: his spine spikes out through his back, visible in an ever-present sight gag sticking through whatever he happens to be wearing.

It’s this physical attribute that gives the character his name apparently, although I’m a little unclear as to why. I always thought a stickleback was a type of fish.

The pacing of the book is predictably good. That’s a trick that 2000 AD titles usually pull off well, thanks to the six pages generally given to each instalment of a story. It means that more plot has to be packed into a smaller amount of space than the comics of larger companies, discouraging authors from including anything that can’t be deemed essential.

The supporting cast of criminals are based on tropes of Victorian literature. There’s a tribal midget with a blowpipe, a giant strongman, conjoined twins, and a well-to-do gentleman who’d pass fine in polite society if it weren’t for his charred skin. It’s surprising how little they appear across the first (and currently only) collection’s pages, but Edginton does a good job of making them seem as though they mean something by giving us reasons to empathise with them.

Opposing Stickleback and his crew are Detective Valetine Bey and Sergeant Leonard Chips. Their status as law enforcers means we’re expected to view them as villains, being that the protagonists are criminals and all. They’re enjoyable enough characters, although for the first part of the collection it feels as though they’re a little too prominent.

The book follows the criminals’ misadventures in and around London, covering other elements of Victoriana. Far eastern mummies, clanking robo-men and Lovecraftian horrors (perhaps they’re a little later than the Victorian Age but they feel like they belong) all crop up to interact with gang. Action is the order of the day.

Truth be told the stories, while well-constructed and readable, aren’t going to blow your mind. Plot twists tend to feel a little underwhelming and it’s left to the imagery and artwork to hold the reader’s attention. D’Israeli’s art is wonderful to look at, suffused with plenty of detail but never seeming overly complex. His use of deep shadows and knack for conjuring up striking characters that appear only in a few panels marks him as a great talent. He’s definitely someone who deserves to be more highly thought of than he is. It’s a shame that his art style isn’t something mainstream comics are interested in using.

Stickleback is a quirky little title with a unique blend of ideas aided by fantastic artwork. It proves that 2000 AD still has access to writers and artists who can turn out something worthwhile that isn’t part of the company’s larger history. It also shows that the compilation book can still be relevant if given a chance. Perhaps Tharg should get around to releasing a second volume.

Joe the Barbarian

Before I give my thoughts on Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy’s Joe the Barbarian two things should be pointed out in the interest of fairness. Firstly the series won an Eisner Award. That marks it out as something significantly special. Not just anything gets an Eisner. Secondly I am not Grant Morrison’s biggest fan. This book is a near perfect example of why that’s so.

The problem I have with Morrison is that he so often seems to go for style over substance. There always seems to be an underlying drive to show how cool he is and how much he knows about mysticism, drug experimentation, society’s fringes and other things that don’t necessarily translate well to the world of comic books. Were this his only characteristic I doubt I’d ever have any interest in any of his comics. I also doubt he would have become such a prominent author. One trick ponies rarely find success to the level Morrison has.

These bad points are tempered by an incredible creativity. This is what stops me from outright disliking him. He has traits and abilities that can, when he’s on form and not preoccupying himself with deliberately baffling nonsense, allow him to produce a damn fine comic book. All-Star Superman and the early issues of the 2009 Batman and Robin book are both solid examples of how good Morrison can be when he’s on form. Titles such as The Invisibles and The Filth (both of which I’ll review at some point) showcase Morrison at his dreck-delivering worst.

Joe the Barbarian slots firmly into the middle ground of the Scot’s work. It’s not as convoluted and pretentious as his worst works but it’s by no means a simple read. Even its own internal logic appears baffling, contradictory and poorly defined in places. At the same time it’s a wonderfully inventive book at its core. The world building is some of the best of any Morrison title I’ve ever come across. JTB is most similar to Doom Patrol in the Morrison pantheon, it has some pretty hefty faults but it’s mostly enjoyable.

Morrison has borrowed liberally from various sources for this book. There are touches of The Neverending Story in the general concept, although given that this is a comic and not a book or film similarities to the Sandman arc Game of You are even more glaring. Numerous pop culture kids’ characters pop up. Generic Transformers and teddy bears bulk up the general populace of the fantasy world and numerous comic characters can be spotted, including John Constantine, Batman and Lobo.

The story centres on diabetic teenager Joe Manson, who lapses into an insulin coma as the result of school bullies nicking a bar of chocolate. He hallucinates an elaborate fantasy world that draws elements from his real life surroundings. The simple journey down a couple of flights of stairs to grab a cola from the fridge and turn the lights back on after a power outage is intercut with his journey through the elaborate trappings of his fantasy world.

The way in which Joe’s house and the Iron Kingdom are linked is the book’s greatest achievement. The boy’s bedroom is Playtown, populated by childhood action figures (one of which is clearly based on Morrison, chalking up another utterly needless cameo in one of his own creations). It’s here that pet rat Jack, or “Chakk”, joins Joe on his journey, another nice idea. The bathroom is a series of pipes in Joe’s fantasy land, while the warmth of the fireplace in the living room becomes Hearth Castle.

Many things from reality are reinterpreted as the history and landscape of the Iron Kingdom, with his father’s death, mother’s grieving, a running bath tap, and the light switch in the basement all becoming key plot elements in addition to the boy’s diabetes. It’s easy to overlook the unoriginality of the premise when Morrison has done this much with it. He’s taken an idea that’s been used before, yes, but he’s completely done his own thing with it. It’s engaging stuff.

Sadly the book falls down somewhat in the plot area. Too much time is spent playing around with the reader’s inability to know what’s real and what isn’t. The ending of issue three hinges entirely on this fact, resolved in the next issue in a very disappointing fashion. While it’s not a bad thing that the creative team don’t rush into establishing the truth of Joe’s situation Morrison’s obsession with teasing becomes distracting.

Perhaps it’s unfair to knock the book for this. After all the plot is basically about a thirteen year old failing to get some sugar and dragging himself downstairs to get some glucose and flick a light switch. The neat trick of turning a regular house into a magical realm with its own pantheon, mythology and religion is the selling point here and, as I’ve said, that’s done very well.

For those unfamiliar with Grant Morrison this probably isn’t a bad starting point. It gives you an idea of how good the guy can be but also provides ample warnings for how ludicrously self-indulgent his scripts can get. It provides an equally good introduction to the world of comic books in general. It’s not the best ever written but it’s far from the worst and amply demonstrates how comics can do things that film, television and radio can’t. There’s no way this story could ever have been done justice in anything other than a picture book.

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

Deciding what’s real in DC’s fictional Universe is a tricky proposition at the best of times. No matter how many crises are created or line-wide reboots are initiated the past is always there with its numerous iterations of the company’s main characters co-existing, starring in stories that blissfully contradict each other yet at the same time have to be made to work in a seamless stream of continuity.

This problem is never more glaring than when discussing Batman. Is he a detective, a vigilante, a superhero, a psychopath or all of the above? Each writer focuses on these aspects of the character, and his supporting cast of cops and villains, differently. He’s all of these things, but sometimes he’s one more than the others.

This is the idea that Neil Gaiman explored with Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? With Grant Morrison having killed off ‘The Dark Knight’ in what constituted his “real” monthly adventures Gaiman was drafted in to produce the quintessential final tale of Batman. Every interpretation, version, and variation of Batman. Death of the Batmen, if you like.

Gaiman was given free rein to construct whatever story he felt appropriate. Unsurprisingly he delved into the character’s weighty history. While this means that there’s plenty in the two issues that sails over the heads of all but the most knowledgeable fan it’s not a move that isolates. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Batman will be able to follow the plot in its broadest terms. As this is supposed to be a celebration of the character it makes sense to revel in everything that’s gone before.

That said the first issue would be odd for anyone, even the character’s biggest fan, on a first reading. Stories are told of Batman’s death that contradict each other as well as the story told over in Morrison’s canonical run. Selina Kyle talks of how she fell in love with ‘The Caped Crusader’ before retiring to run a pet shop. Years passed before Batman approached her out of the blue, bleeding from a gunshot wound. She tied the unconscious hero to a couch and let him die.

Alfred Pennyworth relates the tale of Bruce Wayne coming out of his shell following the death of his parents only when he was fighting crime. The young Batman sought bigger and bigger highs, prompting Alfred, a former actor, to hire acquaintances to play the part of villains. His pal Eddie starts by becoming the Riddler, with Catwoman, Penguin and, presumably, others following suit.

Alfred eventually became the Joker, revealing that he would face off with Batman once or twice a month. The story culminates, once again, with Batman’s death. This time it comes at the hands of Eddie, who has gone mad and insists he is the Riddler.

Over all of this a conversation occurs between Batman and an originally unidentified character. Batman notes that the stories aren’t true and contradict each other, also pointing out that Alfred couldn’t have been Joker because the Joker is sat listening to the story. The idea of the first issue is that every story is true, no matter whether it makes sense or not. It all happens somewhere.

This is a nice enough way of addressing DC’s frenetic and schizophrenic approach to their own continuity issues but it doesn’t exactly feel like the send-off Batman deserves. The subdued pace and lack of action is not what the character has become known for. While focusing on the history of the character is the right thing to do in context it’s taken way too far by the author. It feels more like an exploration of continuity more than the celebration we were told it would be.

The second half switches tack slightly, with tales of death appearing across panels rather than pages. It allows Gaiman to continue establishing the idea of each Batman being real while the ghost Batman listens and works out what’s going on.

I’ve already given away a fair chunk of what happens in the story so I shan’t announce the final revelation. Not because it’s particularly creative (it’s not) but because it’s something that deserves to be read without foreknowledge. I liked it and thought it was a clever way of addressing the reality issues I mentioned above. It’s not just about the mantle of Batman being passed on to a successor, or the man behind the mask dying. How could it be? We all know that Bruce Wayne is Batman and he always will be.

In terms of artwork Andy Kubert does a lovely job of subtly depicting the different eras of Batman. I shan’t pretend I know enough about the character’s history to have noticed every detail he included, but I did enjoy the visual nods to Arkham Asylum, the better 90s films, and the Adam West TV show. As Gaiman’s writing made very clear, all are just as much the real Batman as the rest.