Y:The Last Man

It took me just about a year to read all ten volumes of the graphic novel Y:The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. This was mostly due to my relying on the library. It's a great library, but apparently I'm not the only person in town who was following the series and I have a strange aversion to reserving books. (What if it comes and I'm NOT READY?)

Anyway, this series was my first long-term commitment to this form of writing (aside from childhood obsessions with Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke) and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Around Volume 3 of the story of the last man on earth after a bizarre plague wipes out half of the human population (males, obviously), I couldn't imagine in what other form it would have been possible to tell this story.

A pet peeve of mine in "comic books" was always that the writing wasn't linear. That is, it was very hard to tell which bubble you were supposed to read first and even the art wasn't always great--dark and grimacing (or big-breasted, depending on the gender of the character), but I found a lot to like in Last Man.

I suffered a bit from the time lapse between volumes, but found that there were often great chunks missing from the action anyway. I guess wacky post-apocalyptic action can be like that.
I grew fairly attached to the characters, even the confusingly-named Beth and Beth, and I found myself really down at the end. To me, the last book is sad, right down to the final ALAS scrawled across the page, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be sad in the grand scheme of things. Also, how else would a book about the human race teetering on extinction end?
I REALLY want to read this series all over again but there's no wayI will because there's always something new I've got to try. I may check out Vaughan's other series, Ex-Machina, but really, my heart isn't into all graphic, all the time, so there's no rush.