Cycles (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2)

Digging into the art of this volume, as I said initially, this is a very proficient and technically fine book. Despite a mistake where I thought people changed up a lot, there was a very consistent team on the comic. Personally I feel that for a Vertigo title so far, my initial impression is it's a tad bit bland visually. Not bad, and very accessible, but yeah.

As far as different intersectionalities being explored in this first volume, gender was obviously a huge focus. And while this sort of focus generally means that the reader gets to learn more about the subject matter with Y The Last Man this focus only means the reader gets to learn more about the honestly stupid way the patriarchy were writing "women" in the early 2000s. Although some people have been holding onto this trend ever since, it does appear that Vaughan has moved on a bit, I'm less familiar with what Pia has been up to since. TLDR: Trans women aren't real women and died, trans men are killed for being fake, straight women are angry sad (with many of them congregating at the Washington Monument) and lesbians are just angry at the straight women being the least bit sad.

A premise that has gotten significantly less interesting to me with time (I originally rated this book 3 stars back in 2008) I'm holding onto a tiny bit of hope that we will get more shades of grey as the series goes on because so far things are SO black and white and reduces and falls back on reactionary views that gender boils down to your assumed role in reproduction at your birth. Survivors don't miss the people they lost, they just miss the part of them that the Washington Monument reminds them of... And when Yorik is discovered 99.9% of the discourse around him is how he can or cannot be used to reproduce - with a dash of sexual pleasure thrown in. The only good woman, and the only woman that Yorik wants to reproduce with, is his girlfriend. Someone we last saw trekking across land stolen from the cliche "dead Indian" whose ass goes front and centre to show us who this book is still written for, people who want to objectify the bodies of presumed cis women.

Sexuality, as I already touched on, was also not super well presented. Everything super black and white, you either miss men (because you are straight) or are angry that other women miss men (because you are a lesbian). I don't remember there being any bi or pan etc sexuality presented. While this is generally a book where no one is really a "good" person, I would say that in this first volume at least that rather then the people who died really being the ones critiqued (which is generally what get rid of all "men" narratives are about) anything that falls outside of the hetero cisgender patriarchy have been the ultimate losers so far via their death in the mystery plague, murder, or because they have so been set forth as the flattest bad people of them all.

Race isn't a total monolith. There's a black woman who is now in charge of ferrying Yorik around. There's also a contingent of Israeli forces, because they make everyone join the army. I mean, I guess in 2003 things were a lot more limited to people who did not present as cis men in the military, but that doesn't mean no one else knows how to do military stuff.

Neither class or disability felt like things that really came up.

I'm actually a bit torn on the star rating for this book. I had sort of planned on rating it a two star (it's ok) but the shear weariness that has overcome me in the writing of this review. I really just don't like this book. So one star it is.