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Postapocalyptic Fiction, Part Four
Feb. 29th, 2016 07:21 amThe Book/s
Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Pia Guerra
What This Is
a sixty-issue comic series put out by Vertigo that ran from 2003 to 2008
Are existing power structures maintained?
More or less, but with a twist. The premise is that all of the male creatures in the world (except for one dude and his pet monkey) suddenly drop dead one day. The remaining women do a fairly decent job of keeping the lights on and the trains running. The problems that arise have more to do with the sudden drop in population than they do with anything really changing, and it's strongly suggested at multiple points that, the imminent demise of our species (and many other species) aside, humanity might be better off with no men. A lot of this feels pandering and not really grounded in the complexities of the real world, though. For example, the food shortage in the comic makes no sense given the highly gendered nature of food production (including the production of manufactured food) in the twenty-first century.
Are women raped and murdered?
Women murder other women – and how! – but no one is raped EXCEPT FOR some kinky nonconsensual bondage in which the protagonist is psychologically manipulated for his own good by a secret agent who wants him to confront a key truth about himself. This is highly reminiscent of that gross series of scenes from Wizard's First Rule in which the male protagonist is raped by a dominatrix who only wants him to grow stronger. I'm not a big fan of the trope of "fantasy rape training," which doesn't take into full consideration what "rape" actually means to people who have to deal with it on more than an abstract level.
I was talking about why I have so much trouble getting behind Y: The Last Man with an intern the other day, and she was like, "Even if there's only one man left in the entire world, he still gets to be the protagonist and point-of-view character." This summarizes so many of the problems I have with this comic. Every day I make a blood sacrifice and thank the elder gods that Brian K. Vaughan found Fionna Staples to work with on Saga.
Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Pia Guerra
What This Is
a sixty-issue comic series put out by Vertigo that ran from 2003 to 2008
Are existing power structures maintained?
More or less, but with a twist. The premise is that all of the male creatures in the world (except for one dude and his pet monkey) suddenly drop dead one day. The remaining women do a fairly decent job of keeping the lights on and the trains running. The problems that arise have more to do with the sudden drop in population than they do with anything really changing, and it's strongly suggested at multiple points that, the imminent demise of our species (and many other species) aside, humanity might be better off with no men. A lot of this feels pandering and not really grounded in the complexities of the real world, though. For example, the food shortage in the comic makes no sense given the highly gendered nature of food production (including the production of manufactured food) in the twenty-first century.
Are women raped and murdered?
Women murder other women – and how! – but no one is raped EXCEPT FOR some kinky nonconsensual bondage in which the protagonist is psychologically manipulated for his own good by a secret agent who wants him to confront a key truth about himself. This is highly reminiscent of that gross series of scenes from Wizard's First Rule in which the male protagonist is raped by a dominatrix who only wants him to grow stronger. I'm not a big fan of the trope of "fantasy rape training," which doesn't take into full consideration what "rape" actually means to people who have to deal with it on more than an abstract level.
I was talking about why I have so much trouble getting behind Y: The Last Man with an intern the other day, and she was like, "Even if there's only one man left in the entire world, he still gets to be the protagonist and point-of-view character." This summarizes so many of the problems I have with this comic. Every day I make a blood sacrifice and thank the elder gods that Brian K. Vaughan found Fionna Staples to work with on Saga.
