Set Description:
Brian K. Vaughan's career had a fairly rough start. Sure, he was fortunate to be offered work at Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse early in his career. However, Brian's run on Swamp Thing was not successful (Brian thought that he had possibly ruined the series). It was not apparent that Brian was one of the next great voices in comics prior to 2002.
Brian's career took a major turn when he pitched an idea to Karen Berger at Vertigo: suppose all of the men on earth but one died one day. What would life be like for the last remaining male? Vertigo green lit the project and issue 1 was published in 2002. The rest, as they say, is history.
Pia Guerra did the primary pencil work on the book, but would be spelled at times by Paul Chadwick, Goran Parlov, and Goran Sudzuka. JG Jones painted the cover for the first 17 issues. Aron Wiesenfield painted the covers to issues 18-22, and Massimo Carnevale painted the covers for issues 23-60. Jose Marzan Jr. Inked all 60 issue.
Y: The Last Man was a critical success from the get go and was nominated for the Eisner for best new series in 2003, but lost to a little comic named Fables that you may have heard of (the critically acclaimed Gotham Central was also nominated that year).
Y: The Last Man continued for 60 issues before concluding in 2008. Along the way, Brian won 2005 Eisner for Best writer. The only other writers who has won the award before Brian were Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Kurt Busiek, Garth Ennis, and Brian Bendis. Pia and Jose won the 2008 Eisner Award for best pencil and ink team and Y: The Last Man won the Eisner for best continuing series in the same year.
To this point, Brian's other major serialized works include Ex Machina, Runaways, and Saga. All four rank among my favorites of all time. Ex Machina is my favorite of Vaughan's works, but Y: The Last Man is a close second and is generally the comic that I give to my non-comic friends as a gateway drug to the comic medium.
This run is my ode to Brian K. Vaughan's most celebrated work. My goal, which I was the first to meet, is to have an entire 9.8 SS run of the book. I was fortunate to get Brian to sign books for me at Image Expo and NYCC in 2012 (and I was fortunate that Doug Hurley, Steve Frudciante, Jackie Do, Neil Tseng, and Kyle White all agreed to carry books through Brian's line to help me get all of my books signed). DWC was kind enough to gather signatures from Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan Jr. for me at Calgary and Heroes in 2012. Rich Henn, the Signature Series ninja, gathered JG Jones signatures for me at Wizard World Philly in 2012. Books in this run were witnessed by Doug Hurley, Jackie Do, Rich Henn, and the DWC team. With the exception of a handful of books that I purchased from Kyle White and Court Gebeau, these books are all books that I hunted down on my own (I've looked through at least 12 full runs of YTLM looking for issues that would qualify as 9.8s. Issue 26 was a particularly difficult issue for me to find in 9.8 condition, as were the Double Special and the After Watchmen Editions).
When this set is finished, I hope to share some BKV like trivia and other goodies with anyone who's bored enough to check out my set. Thank you for looking at my collection.
BEWARE: SPOILERS WILL ABOUND (when I finish)
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