Comic books don't need super-heroes.
I returned actively to the hobby of reading comic books
about 5 years ago, and it was books of the non-super variety that drew me back
after taking nearly 15 years off from the hobby. I have nothing against capes and cowls, and have I
do read my fair share of these books, but the books I returned to after my
hiatus were 100 Bullets, Fables, and Y the Last Man. It
was the shortest run of this batch of comics took me the longest to finish. I
started reading Y the Last Man in 2010, and it was nearly a year ago
that I read up through issue 48. It took me a year to read the final dozen
issues
.
Perhaps I was trying to put off the end of the story,
knowing that once I made it issue 60, I knew it was over. Perhaps it was worry
that the end of the story would not live up to the promise that the first 48
held out. I am a plot-first reader, and so I was going to need to what
happened, what caused the disaster, why Yorick was immune. In short, I was
going to want answers.
Vaughn delivered very nicely on his promises. Each of the
last few stories wrapped up important plot point, with issue 60 serving as a
very interesting epilogue, jumping into the future six decades. The final
ending of the story, the last few pages, the last few panels, all left me
satisfied. Both plot and character were taken care of. Endings are notoriously
hard to pull off, and this ending is
pretty good.
It was during the time of reading stories like Y and 100
Bullets that I first heard the expression "comic books are a medium,
not a genre." I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly, and have loved
diving into this style of books.
Sequential art can tell any type of story, and even though superheroes are the
most popular stories told in this manner, they are not the only stories that
can be told in this manner. In the last
few years, the non-hero books The
Walking Dead, Unwritten, and Mouse Guard have all found their
way to my stack.
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