Alas, Poor Yorick
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...
The death of 355 was where the story ended for me. I didn't want to see the further adventures of Yorick and Beth(s) as they fought off goonish Israelis, I didn't want Hero stepping into the protectors role or something equally repulsive. I didn't want to pick up the next issue and have it revealed the bullet had miraculously bypassed all vital gray matter and 355 *gasp* lived, that it was a dream, that 355 had a clone, that Yorick was in the Matrix or ... well you get the picture. It's comics, any of that shit could make copy.
It's very rare that I don't want to know what happens next. But after reading #58, I had seen what happens next so many times in so many different books that I just didn't want to bear witness to it once more to a series I had really enjoyed. So when visiting the comic shop this last weekend and flipping through "Whys and Werefores" (#10 in the collected series) and reading the back, I realized the story HAD ended where I wanted it to end. I was flabbergasted. Flummoxed. Astonished. They had done the story right and not squeezed the reader out for 371 more issues of What Happens Next. And the last two issues I had not read did not disappoint. With the future of humanity secured, the melancholy that was always nipping at the corners could finally rush in, and you could savor the good and the bad in equal measure in a long backwards glance before closing the book. Good stuff.
Now... I should really get to that stack of 100 Bullets and Fables that has grown to the point of tipping over.
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...
The death of 355 was where the story ended for me. I didn't want to see the further adventures of Yorick and Beth(s) as they fought off goonish Israelis, I didn't want Hero stepping into the protectors role or something equally repulsive. I didn't want to pick up the next issue and have it revealed the bullet had miraculously bypassed all vital gray matter and 355 *gasp* lived, that it was a dream, that 355 had a clone, that Yorick was in the Matrix or ... well you get the picture. It's comics, any of that shit could make copy.
It's very rare that I don't want to know what happens next. But after reading #58, I had seen what happens next so many times in so many different books that I just didn't want to bear witness to it once more to a series I had really enjoyed. So when visiting the comic shop this last weekend and flipping through "Whys and Werefores" (#10 in the collected series) and reading the back, I realized the story HAD ended where I wanted it to end. I was flabbergasted. Flummoxed. Astonished. They had done the story right and not squeezed the reader out for 371 more issues of What Happens Next. And the last two issues I had not read did not disappoint. With the future of humanity secured, the melancholy that was always nipping at the corners could finally rush in, and you could savor the good and the bad in equal measure in a long backwards glance before closing the book. Good stuff.
Now... I should really get to that stack of 100 Bullets and Fables that has grown to the point of tipping over.