In this addictive follow-up to the brilliantly imagined
Y: The Last Man, we're still in the near future and Yorick Brown and his monkey sidekick, Ampersand, are still the last two males on Earth. It's been some months since the mysterious plague that wiped out all male creatures. Since then, women have been picking up the pieces. A mysterious government agency, the Culper Ring, is trying to get Yorick across the country for scientific study without being discovered, which isn't as easy as it sounds, but at least the growing drag king subculture makes it possible for people who look like men to walk around without exciting too much comment. Meanwhile, an Israeli strike team is trying to capture Yorick for its own uses, and the U.S. president is colluding with them. Most suspenseful of all, a space station carrying two surviving
male astronauts is about to crash down in a Kansas cornfield. The stakes are high, and Vaughan masterfully interweaves story lines: the astronauts' survival, the military operations, an enemy spy, the valiant scientists and an unexpected travelling drama troupe that offends an entire town when it puts on a play in which the world is saved by a lone surviving man. Meanwhile, is Yorick falling in love with his bodyguard? Guerra knows just what the story needs, backing up Vaughan's tale with killer artwork and a smorgasbord of female heroines who look terrific without the least suggestion of
cheesecake. This book is complete and utter comic gold.
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Reader Reviews"One Small Step," the third volume of Y: The Last Man loses no momentum from the previous two volumes, "Unmanned" and "Cycles." In fact, I'd say it picks up steam. Now that I've become accustomed to the characters, I care more about them and find their perilous adventures more gripping than ever. "One Small Step" contains two stories, the primary one being the title story. Yorick, Agent 355 and Dr. Mann Travel through Missouri to Kansas and seek to help two more potential male survivors of the plaque to arrive safely on Earth from orbit. All males of all species on Earth died in the plague, but it didn't extend to those males OFF the planet. The International Space Station houses two male and one female astronaut, all of whom are dangerously close to suffocating in the failing life support of the station. They have to evacuate the station and find out whether they can survive now that several months have gone by since the plague. Thrown into the mix are the Israeli soldiers, led by their stoic Colonel, whose motives have been unclear until this story. Suffice it to say that old scores die hard. Brian Vaughn builds the tension slowly with several events threatening to collide explosively. The violent colonel, an endangered Yorick, and the fate of the astronauts all hangs in the balance. I found myself flying through the climactic pages of this story, eager to find out what was going to happen. You really have to read the first two volumes before you move on to this one. There's too much back story you'll miss. But it's worth the time. This is one of the best comics to come out in the past several years and is not to be missed!
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