Y: The Last Man, Book 4: Safeword

Volume 4 contains two stories, the titular "Safeword", which reveals a lot more about Yorick than we ever knew before, and "Widow's Pass", penciled by Goran Parlov. You can always tell when a drawing wasn't done by regular artist Pia Guerra because Dr. Mann's features are way more obviously Asian. Anyway, the two stories are pretty different, focusing on two different aspects of the tale. The first is cerebral, and the second is action movie stuff. They're both really good, although the first was more interesting to me because it's not something you see a lot in comic books.

"Safeword" is as adult as the comic's gotten, at least in our culture's puritanical view of sex as more inappropriate for children than violence. It doesn't really get close to exploitative, but it's a little out there. I don't know why I keep bringing up the fact that Y is written for adults. It's kind of hard to make a full blog post about just six or so issues of a comic within a larger story. Anyway, the book's still on track. "Widow's Pass" is a pretty solid example of the comic's less subtle side, and it also has an important moment for Yorick. There's a pretty iconic image of him I've seen before, and seeing the scene that inspired it was pretty interesting. The book ends with another tease of what's to come, and I'm still on board.