nixsight

Another week of very little reading – Ballard is still kicking my arse, but a new “Y” graphic novel fell through the door today, and that’s always ace.

Feel free to bend my ear, or tell me what you’re reading, in the comments.

Y: The Last Man Vol 5 – Ring Of Truth

“Y” has become a compulsive read since I started it a couple of weeks ago. In fact, when I opened the parcel containing it at work today, I flicked through the first couple of pages, and found that I’d read the first two issues worth of story before I knew what was going on.

This volume delivers the same lovely, witty writing, and clean and expressive Guerra art as always. in fact, with Paul Chadwick’s earlier guest story out of the way, Guerra’s restraint and wise panel composition choices stand out even more – with a cast of so many characters, and a story with so many twists, a smart artist knows when to keep it simple, I guess.

This volume is the halfway point in the span of the book, and though it’s still a page-turner, and this installment probably features more revelations than any before, this is the point where the real balancing act between keeping things moving, maintaining the intrigue and intricacy of the plot, and rolling on toward the end starts to make itself known.

However, there are only a few points at which the narrative starts to creak a little under it’s own weight and gravity, and those are only when the plot flashes as it answers some long running questions, or otherwise makes them moot. The reason those brilliantly played moments are worrying is almost all to do with what they mean to the rest of the series, rather than how impressive they are in terms of comic writing and art.

In fact, I can imagine that someone reading the issues month by month might have been totally blown away by the events in this book. Every few pages there’s an intense and long-inevitable face-off, or an unexpected character finally stepping out of the shadows, and by the end of the page-count, it seems like a majority of the mythos has been neatly answered and sorted into little boxes. It’d feel like the series was on it’s sudden but steady high-speed rise to a climax.

But reading it now, I know that there’s another five volumes of comic to get through, and I feel almost like the changes in dynamic that these stories will force may make it hard to fill all those volumes. In some ways, this feels like the point at which Vaughan decided to really fuck with the reader’s expectations, and shake up the status quo, and often that sort of authorial adventurism is a great friend to creative endeavour.

“Y: The Last Man” is such a precarious and perfect piece of work, though, that all I can think of is how fragile it’s appeal might be in the face of all these resolutions. And it occurs to me that I’ve seen some awesome story from Brian K Vaughan, having read a lot of these, “Ex Machina”, and “Runaways”, but I’ve yet to see him actually finish anything.

I have no idea what to expect. Though I suppose, although history has shown that there are a lot more writers who can come up with a great premise, and set it up well, than there are ones who can finish a story off convincingly, Vaughan may always teach me a thing or two about a thing or two.