A Blog that I Promise is Actually about Brian K. Vaughan Comics
JacobNote1: This post is going to appear at times to heavily stray away from the comics I claim I’m discussing, but I promise all my personal stories are relevant to how I experienced these comics.
In Y: The Last Man, every mammal with a Y chromosome mysteriously dies except for Yorick Brown & his pet monkey Ampersand. In Paper Girls, everyone in the titular girls’ home of Stony Stream seemingly vanishes except for the four girls. In The Walking Dead: The Alien, zombies. For over two decades, Brian K. Vaughan has continuously gone back to post-apocalyptic settings, whether original concepts or working off other creators’ stories, & I think I get it. None of Vaughan’s protagonists appear to really care all that much about the state of the world they’re in. Yorick is primarily concerned with reuniting with his girlfriend, who is (or I guess was) studying abroad in Australia & simply gets dragged along with other plots because he has a Y chromosome. The paper girls are caught in the middle of a time-traveling war, yet they somehow remain distracted by coming-of-age struggles despite all the chaos. & while Jeffrey Grimes does actually care that zombies are roaming the streets, he describes the day in which his comic takes place to be the best day of his life. While these comics’ respective apocalypses are explored, the focus is primarily on how the survivors cope. By taking normal emotions & placing them in extreme settings, these comics provide a sense of catharsis not just for their characters, but the readers as well.
Part 1: Aliens
Beginning in 2003, The Walking Dead was created by writer Robert Kirkman & artist Tony Moore, with Charlie Adlard replacing Moore not too long in. The series ran for 193 issues & received a number of spin-off limited series & one-shots, with The Alien grouping into the latter. Written by Brian K. Vaughan & art done by Marcos Martín, The Alien is a self-contained story focusing on Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes’ younger brother, Jeffrey. The story is decent, if a bit typical by Walking Dead standards, but what I find so interesting is the book’s premise. I read about half of Walking Dead when I was in 9th grade, so I may be mistaken here, but Jeffrey is rarely mentioned & I wouldn’t expect most readers to remember Rick even had a brother. That fact feels like it was exclusively made for YouTube iceberg videos. Yet despite all that, I, presumably like Vaughan, found myself oddly intrigued by this character. It feels hard to verbalize, as logically, what makes Jeffrey different than literally anyone else?
When I was in 11th grade, I was in a theater class in which one of our group projects required us to video ourselves reading lines. In my group, it was me & these two 12th graders, & I couldn’t tell you their names, what they looked like, or really any single detail about either of them, & yet I occasionally find myself thinking about them. Filming that video wasn’t particularly memorable, evident by the fact that I don’t remember what we recorded, but I still get somewhat sad upon remembering. This is a similar sadness I would get when thinking of Rick’s brother (prior to reading The Alien), one that I suspect stems from their shared inconclusiveness.
Central to these three comics is the feeling of people being lost in memory & I think that’s where the connection to my theater groupmates arises. When I read Vaughan’s (post-apocalyptic) comics, I see the survivors as people I once was acquainted with, people who have been suddenly thrust into a role of importance that I had never ascribed to them. This is an extremely self-centered take on the concept of second death, but the last time I think about those groupmates will be when they die as I am the sole bearer of their memory. A memory that is not & was never accurately them, but rather a fictionalized notion of them. Every time Rick mentions his brother, I believe he is doing so in a similar manner. His brother died in The Alien, but the fictionalized notion of him died the last time Rick spoke his name. So with The Alien serving as a permanent record of Jeffrey, even as brief as it is, he is finally given a definitive life. The Alien proves Jeffrey Grimes existed.
JacobNote2: I genuinely have nothing to say about Paper Girls that would substantially add to this conversation. Don’t get me wrong, it is good, but I just didn’t connect with it as I hoped I would’ve. Though even without delving into the book beyond its surface-level narrative context, it’s evident that it perfectly exemplifies Vaughan’s interest in writing aimless protagonists, with the girls literally being lost in time.
Part 2: Cowboys
I don’t think Y: The Last Man is my favorite comic, but it is definitely the one I’d recommend first to someone who is looking to get into comics. It’s paced incredibly well & at 60 issues, it never drags while still feeling substantial. Vaughan is a very solid writer & has a lot of television sensibilities, which grants this comic a unique accessibility. Additionally, this comic truly has an incredibly well-written lead trio, with Yorick, Agent 355, & Dr. Mann being some of the most fleshed out & engaging characters within the medium of comics. The biggest seller of this comic, though, is that it’s not about superheroes! I love a good superhero story as much as the next comic reader, but y’all know how hard it is to convince someone who is tired of superhero movies to read a comic? Or even to convince them that comics are not synonymous with superhero stories? If you are to read any of my comic suggestions, please let it be this one.
Now to be honest, I read this comic a little over a year ago at this point, so my memory of the specifics is a bit blurry. That said, the two things that really stuck with me were the ending (won’t spoil, promise) & Yorick’s sister (I see the trend too). Unlike Rick’s brother, Yorick’s sister, Hero, is actually present within the story, though, like Rick’s brother, her presence is always distant & saddening. Issue #26 gives a condensed rundown of her life, & unfortunately, like The Alien, that issue didn’t do much for me. It’s hard to fault the issue, as in theory delving more into Hero seems like a great idea, but I found that her character worked best the less I knew about her. Most of what the issue covers had already been implied & the vagueness of her upbringing is what invited the self-inserted melancholy that made me so attached. Like Yorick, I’m also a younger brother to a sister I didn’t talk to all that much growing up. With my sister having left for college when I was about 12 or 13, I don’t remember much of our shared childhood, but one of the things I do remember is her talking to our parents about high school. To me, she seemingly had this rich life of people & places, almost akin to one of those 2000s Disney shows, so when my high school experience inevitably differed, I felt a sense of wrongness. Even now in college, all my excess down time brings about a sort of oddness stemming in part from the fact that I wasn’t able to live the same sort of life with its emotional highs & lows. In actuality, I think my sister had a rough time both in high school & college. I realized the expectations I had set up for myself were based on a false amalgamated account of what I thought her life was, & yet despite knowing that, I can’t seem to fully separate myself from those expectations. The more time that passes, the more I’ve fictionalized her life & the more times it’s changed based on my own regrets & hopes. It’s become illogical, with my sister sometimes having grown up in a New England suburb in the 90s, other times a Frutiger Aero version of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, & even sometimes in a world where all mammals with a Y chromosome mysteriously died. I read Hero as my sister, & in turn, I read Hero as myself.
JacobNote3: No final thoughts this time.
JacobNote4: I think Y: The Last Man has my favorite comic covers, so as a fun little exit I’ve ranked my top three from the run.
#3
#2
#1
