Y: The Last Man: Safeword

Brian K. Vaughan

Wow.

Y: The Last Man has been good so far-- straightforward action-adventure with an unlikely hero. Sounds like a Hollywood action flick, doesn't it? Well, yeah. Turn your brain off and have a good time. Safeword, however, blasts Y out of the good and into the stratospheric.

One thing I'm noticing about the graphic novels I'm encountering that are truly excellent-- Preacher, Sandman, Bone, Watchmen, etc.-- is that the story goes off in directions you'd never expect, and yet it all manages to tie in without seeming overly artificial. (Well, okay, you suspended disbelief from the first few panels, but it all makes internal sense anyway.) At the beginning of this episode, the unlikely hero, Yorick, is delivered into the hands of one of 355's old workmates for safekeeping while 355 and Dr. Mann head off into Denver to get some antibiotics for Ampersand, who's developed an infection. All seems to be going well, until... well, basically, saying anything about this episode is a spoiler. Trust me, though, it's worth it.

It almost seems as if, somewhere between books three and four, Vaughan grew up. Don't get me wrong, inane jokes still abound, but where the other books have overall had an action-movie tone of juvenile humor about one man on earth with three billion women, Safeword develops a tone from the get-go far more intimate than its predecessors. You care about the characters more by the time you've finished the first chapter than you have before, and that makes all the difference.

If Vaughan continues at this clip, this will rival Watchmen and Preacher as one of the best out there.