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Y: The Last Man is a dystopian science fiction comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra published by Vertigo beginning in 2002. The series is about the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal (barring the same man's pet monkey) on Earth, exploring gender issues and scientific genetics.
A mysterious plague picks off every male being on the face of the earth — except two: Yorick Brown, a young escape artist, and his pet monkey, Ampersand. With the exception of a few radicals who do their best to shut down any efforts to bring back the men, women across the world worry that their species is doomed. A scientist, meanwhile, insists that cloning has made men obsolete.
The source of the plague that wiped out every living mammal with a Y chromosome except Yorick Brown, Ampersand and Doctor Matsumori is never fully explained. A number of possible explanations are provided throughout the course of the series, but a definitive answer is left for the reader to decide. Discussing the cause of the plague, Vaughan is quoted as saying:
“I feel that there is a definitive explanation, but I like that people don't necessarily know what it is. In interviews we always said that we would tell people exactly what caused the plague. The thing was, we never said when we were going to tell. We weren't going to tell you when we were telling you, I should say. We might have told you in issue #3. There might have been something in the background that only a couple people caught. It might have been Dr. Mann's father's very detailed, scientific explanation. It might have been Alter's off-the-wall conspiracy theory. The real answer is somewhere in those 60 issues, but I prefer to let the reader decide which one they like rather than pushing it on them.”
