Notes: Grade and review pending re-read. Collective review for volumes 9-10 can be found here: Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book Five.*The name of this book is Y: The Last Man, Vol. 9: Motherland, not, as Goodreads insists, "Motherland." This is due to their myopic policy that a comic book with both a volume number and subtitle shall be listed here only by the subtitle. Every comic book reader with more than a passing interest knows this is fundamentally incorrect. Refer to this book as

Any story needs to be held up to the yardstick of its wrap-up, and this is no slouch. I'm not used to seeing comics throw all their focus and love on a single idea after so much time has been spent on what appears to be, you know, THE LAST MAN. But here's a little secret. It's not really about him at all. It never was. And even after so much panel time, he's really nothing more than a red herring.Do I need to spell it out?Well, yeah! It's about women. Hello!! And this volume is doing a very fine...

The Y chromosome has been rationally self-destructing for hundreds of millions of years. It used to contain thousands of working genes, but was whittled down to just a few dozen even before the plague.Men have long been a necessary evil for continuation of this species, but the moment that evil became OBSOLETE, nature righted its course. I was merely the trigger that set off a time bomb that's been ticking for millennia. We finally had the reviling of what cause the genderside. the 2nd last issu...

This is a tricky one to review, because while there's a lot I loved about it --- it's very satisfying in a narrative sense, with a lot of long-running threads resolved and tied together, and it gives us much more of Dr. Allison Mann's backstory --- I absolutely hated the answer to the question of what caused the XY-killing plague.Without going into spoileriffic detail, I'll just say I thought it was an obnoxious injection of magic into what had been a non-magical, realistic world. I have a bioch...

This is it, this could be the moment when we find out what this series is really about.... because we know it's not about Y right? And check out what equates to Y The Last Man #53 'The Obituarist' which is the best issue in the entire series so far, a one-shot set in Washington from when men first all died off. I do reckon. 9 out of 12 overall.2017 read<>

Same decent art. Same intriguing story. This series continues to bring it!I have been slowly working my way through this series but loving every minute of it. It is unique and odd and maybe not everyone’s’ cup of tea. But, the creative approach to a potentially apocalyptic event has been fleshed out in many interesting ways. There have been so many “what ifs” for the author to play with that it was probably as fun to write as it is to read!It appears that the next volume is the last volume of th...

Another volume that brought out the tears as the group is ready to part ways. I have grown to care for this group and have been on this journey right along with them, so in a way, I felt like I had to take sides and decide which group I wanted to leave with.Not really spoilers ahead but warning that if you're not yet at this volume it may reveal plot elements you may not be ready for:--We get the background story on Dr. Ming and Dr. Mann's father affair.--Dr. Mann gets sick as a consequence of c...

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said, so all I can say is that this was a enjoyable volume, and a good continuation of the Y series.

After reading nine volumes of this story, I've come to the conclusion that all the female characters are actually written very similarly. I think what annoys me most about these comics is that I know Vaughan is a good writer. I know he's clever and innovative. I don't understand why he chose this path for his story. He could have done so many things, but I think that in and of itself may have been overwhelming. I don't understand why all the splash pages are extremely sexist either. Like almost

An absolutely crazy theory behind the 'event', more answers, more flashbacks, more journeys for the characters, the same dumb, insufferable asshole.......

"Well, you're a sight for sore eye".Vol 9 Motherland reveals the reason behind the gendercide. And, we are now headed for an exciting Series Finale.Y: The Last Man is about the only man ("The Last Man") to survive a mysterious plague that wiped out every other male of all the species on the planet ("every mammal with a Y chromosome).

8 volumes (48 issues) later, the readers finally get the reason why the plague happened. But was the wait for the revelation of the mystery worth it?

Wrapping up to a close. Maybe I can finish the series today! I just want to know the end already.

I was ready to rate this volume lower, but I just can't. I only have one more to read, and I have to say this is the most enjoyable and imaginative of the entire series so far. I love the two side stories that the editors decided to put at the end of the book; breaking the order from that in which the original issues were published caused no harm whatsoever, and ending the volume on such a fun, almost meta-note was delightful. Further, they fleshed out this world even more.SPOILERS BELOW***MAJOR...

In this volume we learn of a theory to explain why almost all people with the Y chromosome died. This story adds lots of historical details that we were never told before and allows the author create an explanation that had not previously been hinted at. This felt suspiciously like an explanation the authors had decided upon last-minute after hooking people with a neat premise without knowing where the story was headed. Regardless of motivation, this style of adding copious amounts of back-story...

Excellent addition to the series. The stakes feel higher and the pay off is definitely there. This isn't the end of the series, but you can definitely feel it start to come to a close.

I really don't care for Yorick.He annoys me and I'm not sure what 355 sees in him. Oh, wait. He is the last man on earth.<--he's looking pretty good now, isn't he?Shockingly, the answer is still not really. On the upside?We are rolling towards the finish line, people!Could Dr. Mann's father be the source of the plague? Can Rose prove to Dr. Mann that she really does love her?Beth has a dream (wtf?) that Yorick is alive and heads starts scouring Paris to find him. The garbage truck supermodel fro...

I walked into this vol like:And I walked straight out of it like:(Forgive me for the Cardi B GIFs but I felt no one could express it quite like she could and the “WHAT WAS THE REASON?!” video lives rent-free in my head😂)Remember a couple of volumes ago where we said that (view spoiler)[ Allison’s failed birth of her clone (hide spoiler)] couldn’t be the reason for the end of all men because it was a dumb reason? Well, SURPRISE! Turns out it’s not nearly as dumb as we thought it was. Except it i...

So without giving anything away here, we're given the long awaited answer to the plague. Well, it looks that way at this point. Anything can happen with this series (I don't mean that in a bad way). When I was finally shown the reason, it really didn't matter.Let me clarify. Obviously the reason behind the "gendercide" needs to be given to the audience. It's just that Vaughan has created these characters that are sticking with me. Some people may have problems with the big reveal and I can certa...

Easily the best graphic novel I've ever read, in terms of sewing up character development and delving into the fractured souls scrambling about in a less than cheerful world.Motherland is such a fantastic book, I have a hard time believing that it comes from the same series as Cycles, Paper Dolls and Girl on Girl. So much time has been spent in setting up different story lines and developments by Brian Vaughan, that I had no idea how satisfying his conclusions would become, emotionally and thema...