Slowly Going Bald

Like all geeks, as a kid I flirted with comic books. The format certainly didn't fascinate me the way it did others, and I had to work at my fledgling devotion, usually not straying too far from mainstream titles or those that tied into worlds in which I was already invested. For instance, I had a few Superman books, and the run of individual issues in which Superman battled Doomsday and died (which I later sold), but that was most of it. In fact, the only book I bought that really struck me as something big and worthwhile and good was Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. I picked up a slightly battered copy at a used bookstore on Naco-Perrin when I was about 12, and still have it on my shelf. Looking back, I can realize I liked it so much because it was different, and dark, and seemed somehow braver than anything else I'd experienced in my brief foray into the field. But after that, I drifted away from comics, and I didn't get back into them until a couple years ago, when I picked up a copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen, which flat-out blew me away. It was complex and weird and huge, and the characters were so emotionally complicated and the stories so beautifully woven together that I realized two things: (a) I'd missed a lot of good comics in my life, and (b) some comics are a lot better than people give them credit for.

The first problem is mainly one of timing, and thankfully, it's also easily remedied. After all, Miller's The Dark Knight Returns came out in 1986, and I didn't read it until around 1995. The popularity of trades and availability of reprints meant that it wouldn't be hard to become reacquainted with the field. But the second problem is a more difficult one to solve, mainly because most people are willing to allow for a wide spectrum of quality in film, TV, books, and other forms of media, but relegate comics to the kids' table, refusing to take them seriously as a storytelling platform. I've had some experience with this since I like country music, but most people are unable or unwilling to learn the difference between, say, Whiskeytown (great) and Toby Keith (a festering boil on the face of humanity). They think that since all comics look the same, they must all be the same, filled with bad dialogue and big tits and not much else.

Which brings me, I guess, to Y: The Last Man, a series by Brian K. Vaughan that follows the exploits of Yorick Brown, who becomes the last living man on Earth when all the others die instantaneously in a mysterious plague. I picked up the first trade after hearing a few positive reviews, and it quickly became one of my favorite titles and Vaughan one of my favorite writers¹. The series has gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews, as well, but it's the nature of those reviews, and specifically some of their attempts to liken the book to other mediums in an attempt to classify it, that has me worried.

For instance, the cover of the latest trade paperback — Vol. 9, which collects issues #49-54 — has a blurb on the front from Time.com that reads, "Rivals TV's 'Lost' as a smart, consistently entertaining work of popular art." On one hand, I'm tempted to agree with the statement, since it somewhat accurately manages to conjure the image of the blend of reality-based drama and genre-twisting fiction that "Lost" creates in its best moments. But I also think it's damning to say something along the lines of, "This comic book is so great you'll think you're watching TV." When is that acceptable in other forms of criticism? It's taken a long time, but the variety of cable programming is finally making people realize that a good TV series isn't necessarily "cinematic," merely good in its own right. But would it make sense to say that a record sounds so good you'll think you're watching a movie? Or that a TV show is so good you'll think you're reading a novel?

Like I said, I don't completely disagree with the Time.com critic, but I'm wary of shoehorning exciting new stories in different media into such small, pre-cut holes. Y: The Last Man isn't like watching "Lost," because reading a comic book isn't like watching TV; for one, the pacing is different, and you're at your leisure to study panels for their artistic detail, or plow through them in an action sequence, or simply stare at them whenever there's a frame, or sometimes a full page, that's so emotionally resonant that to simply read it and move on would be a crime.² Comic books can be re-dressed as "graphic novels" when they're collected and anthologized, and the more daring experiments in form take on lives of their own outside of typical classifications — Black Hole, Blankets, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, etc. — but at the end of the day they're still comic books, with all the idiosyncrasies of the medium. Y: The Last Man is a sweeping, wonderful story, self-referential and self-aware and smart and daring and involving and sometimes so heartbreaking you won't believe that something scribbled in pen and ink could be so good. But it is, and to liken it to another medium simply because it's an easy comparison isn't fair to any party. Y: The Last Man is a good comic book. And that's plenty.

<sup>1. I'm the kind of comic book fan who tends to track authors instead of characters; for instance, I'm firmly neutral on Superman, but I'll read Superman for All Seasons because it's written by Jeph Loeb.
2. This happens a lot in Y: The Last Man, and artist Pia Guerra is fantastic at milking these moments for all they're worth. The final page of issue #56 made me all wibbly inside.</sup>