Pretty good!
I just read volume one of this title, the trade paperback that collects the first five issues of Brian K. Vaughn's acclaimed series.
The series is about Yorick Brown, an escape artist who, along with his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, are the only two male mammals (i.e. mammals with a "Y" chromosome} left alive after some type of biological cataclysm of unknown origin causes every male mammal, fetus and sperm on Earth to suddenly hemorrhage blood and drop dead.
The book explores the sociological and political ramifications of this event and its aftermath, and Brian K. Vaughn does a good job of exploring them in a way that makes it clear (or else makes it seem) that he did his research on numerous technical matters, like noting what percentage of women in both houses of the U.S. legislature were women (thus setting up a confrontation with the wives of GOPers who want to take their late husbands' seats by force), the origin of the profane c-word used against women (providing a mythological mantra for a cult of neo-Amazons), and so forth.
The one gripe is with Pia Guerra's art, which while adequate, doesn't seem up to depicting the gravity of a story like this. Her style, which seems to resemble the Mike Wieringo-type art that works well in humorous or light-hearted books, just lacks the depth, both literally and metaphorically, called for with stories like this. This was made clear in a sequence in which a member of the Amazons murders an innocent person. This was supposed to be an important, stunning moment, but because of the cartoon-like art, the scene had all the ominousness and tension of well, a cartoon. Any serious act, after all, like someone falling off a cliff, can generate sharp thrills when filmed correctly in live-action, but seem comical with animated in a Saturday-morning cartoon style, and that's the problem here. Guerra's art has very little in terms of shading, detail or an authenticity that allows me to suspend by disbelief during the more harrowing scenes. Even Steve Dillon, whose style is similar, managed more linework and realism into his Preacher work.
Nonetheless, I not only enjoyed the book, but was amazed at how I breezed through the five issues comprising the collection, making it seem like two. I still get the sense that we're still in set-up mode, but I want to see what happens next, and I'm going to buy the next collections, and that's a mark of success for any story.
I recommend it.
Boy, this is getting good!
I recently read volumes 2 (Cycles) and 3 (One Small Step) of the series, and I'm loving it!!! I can't wait to see what happens next, Brian K. Vaughn does an excellent job of writing this series, and fulfilling its premise with action, suspense, drama, character development and wit that had my literally laughing out loud in the break room at work today.
By now Yorick, Dr. Mann and Agent 355 are traveling across the U.S. toward Mann's backup facility in San Francisco, encountering all sorts of characters and situations that continue to intelligently explore the myraid permutations of a world in which every living mammal, fetus and sperm with an Y chromosome has instantly perished, from a man-hating cult, to a group of self-sufficient woman who have created a utopia in the middle of Ohio while harboring a dark secret, to an all-girl acting troupe putting on performances in which all the parts are played by women (an ironic turn from the early days of Shakespeare, when they were all played by men). Along the way, the trio meets up with an assortment of people whose intentions for Yorick may or may not dovetail with their own, including Israeli commandos (whose presence in the series quite logically underscores how Israeli integrates female combatants into their military, in stark contrast to the U.S.), Russian agents who point out that there may still be males in orbit on the joint U.S.-Russian space station, and so forth.
The resolution of the astronaut portion of the storyline, in fact, delivered what may be one of the few times I've ever cracked up out loud over a comic book. (Yorick's line about blowing into town and doing maximum damage before leaving like a KISS concert also was a contender for this, and I wonder if the character's humor is another way in which he resembles Peter Parker.)
I continue to have mixed feelings about Pia Guerra's art. On the one hand, Yorick's encounters in Marrisville made me sit up and take notice of Guerra, as her rendition of Sonia was just spot-on perfect. Her Sonia, along with Vaughn's writing of her, made me fall completely in love with her, and I realized that any other "hot" artist currently in comics may not have been able to do that.
On the other hand, I continue to be a bit disappointed with the cartoony manner in which grave actions, particularly gun violence is depicted. The blood produced when someone gets shot is dark, shadowy, viscuous, and ugly. But when people get shot in this book, the little squiggly red blotches that are superimposed on their bodies makes it a bit harder to take it seriously than it would if it were drawn a bit more realistically, depicting the seriousness of being shot with a bit less varnish. This is particularly so when Natalya takes out three soldiers on page 94 of One Small Step. The descent of the Soyuz capsule into the atmosphere on page 76 of the same volume is another example of this. There are plenty of photos and movies showing the fiery event of objects entering the atmosphere, but the comic-booky, scalloped waves engulfing the capsule's underside in that shot was just a disappointment.
Either way, I'm loving this series, and just ordered five of the remaining seven volumes of the series (I already ordered volume 4 before finishing these two, and I'm gonna get volume 6 at another seller).
If you want to read a wonderfully-told science fiction series, read this one!