Arkady
President
Comic books are an under-appreciated art-form -- like plays and cinema, they have the combined virtues of visuals and plotting, but like novels, there's no performance standing between the author and reader. Comic books have started to get more attention since the late 90s, as they became a dominant force in TV and movies (mostly in the superhero genre, but many others, as well: 300, A History of Violence, Ghost World, Persepolis, Scott Pilgrim, Road to Perdition, American Splendor, Red, From Hell, Sin City, V for Vendetta, etc.) But I think most adults have never read a serious comic book, so I've been recommending some here. On the religion forum I recommended Persepolis and Lucifer. Here, I'll recommend a more political one: "Y: The Last Man."
This is a comic book that's in the same genre as Stephen King's "The Stand." In fact, Stephen King called it the greatest graphic novel he'd ever read. The story is set in the aftermath of a plague that has killed just about every mammal with a Y chromosome. The story follows the titular character of Yorick, a man -- possibly the last man-- who has somehow survived, along with his male cappuccin monkey. Most of the story follows his travels, along with a special agent assigned to protect him, around the country, in an attempt to find the answer to why he and his monkey survived, and hopefully to use that information to save mammals from extinction.
What makes the story so interesting, politically, is the way it explores gender issues, by way of the implications of the world losing all males simultaneously. This has an assortment of good and horrible effects. For example, nearly all violent criminals are wiped out. But so are nearly all of the world's commercial pilots and drivers and engineers. Just getting electrical power restored is something that will take years in the post-male world, since practically everyone with expertise in doing work on electrical systems is male. The prospects of solving the long-term crisis are even worse, since the vast majority of research scientists were male. In one scene, we encounter a former super-model who now drives a dump-truck; there is a lot less demand for super-models in a world without men, and a whole lot more demand for dump-truck drivers.
Some of the direct political implications are interesting, too. In an early scene, the Congress is trying to figure out who to make the next president, since all the immediate people in line were killed (either because they were male, or because they were victims of the chaos in the immediate aftermath). At one point, the wives of a bunch of dead Republican Congress members storm the White House to demand that the decision not be made before they are seated in their husbands' seats, because the Congress is now overwhelmingly Democrat (Democrats outnumber Republicans by about four-to-one among women in government). The Republican women perceive the refusal to hand them those seats as an attempted coup by the Democrats, and show up with guns to demand a hearing (most of the Secret Service was male, so there are few to stop them).
I won't spoil too many plot points here, other than to say that this kind of interesting "what if" thought experiment gets carried out in an intelligent way throughout the series, and makes us think seriously about the intersection of gender and politics. For example, in the aftermath of the plague, Israel becomes a superpower, taking over much of the Middle East. It's a country where nearly all the females had military experience, including lots of combat veterans, and it's surrounded by some of the most patriarchal societies in the world, where women suddenly bereft of their men were at a total loss to defend themselves or even to organize.
This is a comic book that's in the same genre as Stephen King's "The Stand." In fact, Stephen King called it the greatest graphic novel he'd ever read. The story is set in the aftermath of a plague that has killed just about every mammal with a Y chromosome. The story follows the titular character of Yorick, a man -- possibly the last man-- who has somehow survived, along with his male cappuccin monkey. Most of the story follows his travels, along with a special agent assigned to protect him, around the country, in an attempt to find the answer to why he and his monkey survived, and hopefully to use that information to save mammals from extinction.
What makes the story so interesting, politically, is the way it explores gender issues, by way of the implications of the world losing all males simultaneously. This has an assortment of good and horrible effects. For example, nearly all violent criminals are wiped out. But so are nearly all of the world's commercial pilots and drivers and engineers. Just getting electrical power restored is something that will take years in the post-male world, since practically everyone with expertise in doing work on electrical systems is male. The prospects of solving the long-term crisis are even worse, since the vast majority of research scientists were male. In one scene, we encounter a former super-model who now drives a dump-truck; there is a lot less demand for super-models in a world without men, and a whole lot more demand for dump-truck drivers.
Some of the direct political implications are interesting, too. In an early scene, the Congress is trying to figure out who to make the next president, since all the immediate people in line were killed (either because they were male, or because they were victims of the chaos in the immediate aftermath). At one point, the wives of a bunch of dead Republican Congress members storm the White House to demand that the decision not be made before they are seated in their husbands' seats, because the Congress is now overwhelmingly Democrat (Democrats outnumber Republicans by about four-to-one among women in government). The Republican women perceive the refusal to hand them those seats as an attempted coup by the Democrats, and show up with guns to demand a hearing (most of the Secret Service was male, so there are few to stop them).
I won't spoil too many plot points here, other than to say that this kind of interesting "what if" thought experiment gets carried out in an intelligent way throughout the series, and makes us think seriously about the intersection of gender and politics. For example, in the aftermath of the plague, Israel becomes a superpower, taking over much of the Middle East. It's a country where nearly all the females had military experience, including lots of combat veterans, and it's surrounded by some of the most patriarchal societies in the world, where women suddenly bereft of their men were at a total loss to defend themselves or even to organize.
