Issues #18 to #23 didn’t have moments that made me think/pause. Mostly free-flowing; similar to how Monstress is turning out. Maybe the series is tapering out? Or the novelty has faded. All the more impressive that Sandman kept me hooked through +70 issues. Will give it one more shot by reading Book 3 (#24 - #36).
Snapshots
[Christopher] I don’t get it. I mean, off the record, I understand fighting for equal pay and all that garbage… But I thought you feminists were pacifists, too. [Alter] Who wants peace, when we have not yet begun to fight?
[Representative Brown] There are only thirteen females in the senate and sixty in the house… And almost three-fourths of us are democrats. A few wives of dead republicans think we’re trying to eliminate the two-party system just because we’re not giving them their husbands' seats.
[Victoria] I don’t know anything about you, Hero. Perhaps you’re just another pro-male interloper, posing as a true daughter of the Amazon. Now kill the girl… Or kill yourself. [Hero kills the girl] Well played, love. Believe me, I despise barking orders like a patriarch. Rest assured, when the game is over, the Queen and the Pawn go back into the same box. Saddle up, my sisters! Somewhere out there, the last of our oppressors still lives!
[Ciba, sole survivor of a re-entry into Earth] They kept saying the same thing over and over… women and children first. [Dr. Mann] They jeopardized the future of mankind… for chivalry? [Ciba] Never. Those two men were the bravest, most noble… Doctor, when they said “women and children,” they meant it literally. [Dr. Mann] You mean, you’re… You’re pregnant? [Ciba] You have to understand, we were up there for almost a year. We were scared and lonely and… And none of us really thought we’d make it back alive. [Dr. Mann] Jesus, which one is the father? [Ciba] I don’t know. I loved them both so much. So fucking much…
[Cayce] A play about the last man on earth. … [Henrietta] Is that really such a good idea, luv? Won’t it seem like we’re exploiting tragedy for, well… the purpose of entertainment? [Cayce] But this will be more than entertainment! This will be art! We’ll be using fiction to… to help us get to the truth! It’s the perfect story to convey all of the ideas I’ve been trying to get across about life in the post-plague world!
Wait, I need to know, does it have a happy ending? [Cayce] Of course, the last man saves the world. [Yorick in a hazmat suit] Really? How? [Cayce] By committing suicide and letting the women save themselves. [Yorick] No offense… but your play sounds like a piece of shit. [Cayce, after Yorick leaves] Everyone’s a critic…
[Beth] Anyway, Magdalene Asylums were an Irish-Catholic thing, spiritual sanctuaries for “sinful women.” You know… Prostitutes, abuse victims, flirts. The hilariously named sisters of mercy would lock these girls inside laundries and sweatshops, force them to work under the whip for their penance. And this wasn’t the Dark Ages, mind you. I found out my biological mum died in one of these hellholes in fucking 1989.
[Anna] Tell that to the girls who dread the return of the mutaween police force, the public lashings, and the – [Agent 355] Oh, save the white woman’s burden routine. Those girls would die to have their fathers and brothers back, and you know it.
[Rose] We’re not New Zealand, Dr. Mann. They had two gals as Prime Minister even before the big wipeout, and about a third of their parliament were Sheilas. Here, anytime a woman tried to get elected, if she was single, men would call her a lesbian, and if she was a mum, they’d say she wasn’t fit to serve. So when all the guys kicked, there weren’t enough government types to restore order, and The Queen ended up appointing her own Governor-General.
New Zealand’s history of women in politics. 1893 - right to vote, making NZ the first self-governing country in the world to have that. 1919 - women could stand for parliament. 1933 - first female MP. 1947 - first female cabinet minister. 1949 - first female Māori MP. 1972 - first female Māori cabinet minister. 1999 - first transgender woman MP. In the US, women got the right to vote in 1920 .
[Sister Lucia] No, Christ is God’s only son. We have faith that your child is a male… A male sent to be the next supreme pontiff of the universal church. [Beth] You want my child to be the pope? [Sister Lucia] What I want is irrelevant. We believe that God wants the catholic church to survive this ordeal by allowing women to be ordained as its leaders but that belief cannot become doctrine until a new pope communicates with the Lord and makes such a decree ex cathedra. [Beth] So you need to find a male pope to talk to God… So God will tell him that popes don’t have to be male anymore? That’s retarded. [Sister Lucia] The Church of Rime pulled this world out of the Dark Ages once, and it will do so again… But not until we’ve put our own house in order.
War
[Alter] As soon as we removed all of Israel’s external threats, the internal conflict that’s been simmering for years finally came to a boil. The same will happen to our allies in the States soon enough. Without an outside “evil” for its citizens to hate, poor will eventually turn against rich, white against black, and… [Sadie] What are you suggesting, the only way to protect peace in our nations is to invent a war? What the hell kind of plan is that? [Alter] A very old, very reliable one.
[Agent 355] I liked it better when I was slow on the trigger, when doing all this wasn’t so fucking easy. But there’s no room for it, is there? No room for mercy in a world where the only people left are… are women with nothing to lose. It’s taken this long stupid trip to teach me, but I know now. I know why the girls out there have to kill me. And I’m fucking fine with it.
[Sadie] Alter, in all the years we’ve known each other, you’ve always said that your sister was killed by Palestinians. [Alter] And she was. [Sadie] No, she wasn’t. Rachel was run over by an Israel defense forces bulldozer, one that apparently failed to notice her protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes. […] [Sadie] Whatever, no sane person would have questioned if you refused to serve, but you dedicated your life to the military. Why? [Alter] War is what made the world go round while the boys were here, and their absence will do nothing to change that. My sister is no longer with us because she was too stubborn to recognize that peace is more than just impossible, it’s unnatural.
Vocabulary
Pyrrhic: adjective (of a victory) won at too great a cost to have been worthwhile for the victor.
References
- Y: The Last Man #1. Unmanned, Chapter 1. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Jul 17, 2002.
- Y: The Last Man #3. Unmanned, Chapter 3. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Sep 18, 2002.
- Y: The Last Man #5. Unmanned, Conclusion. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Nov 20, 2002.
- Y: The Last Man #13. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Jul 16, 2003.
- Y: The Last Man #15. One Small Step, Conclusion. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Sep 17, 2003.
- Y: The Last Man #16. Comedy & Tragedy, Act One of Two: 'Comedy'. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Nov 5, 2003.
- Y: The Last Man #17. Comedy & Tragedy, Act Two of Two: &. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Dec 3, 2003.
- Y: The Last Man #25. Tongues of Flame, Part II. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Aug 4, 2004.
- Y: The Last Man #28. Ring of Truth. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Nov 3, 2004.
- Y: The Last Man #38. Paper Dolls, Chapter Two. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Oct 5, 2005.
- Y: The Last Man #40. The Hour of Our Death. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . Dec 7, 2005.
- Y: The Last Man #45. Kimono Dragons: Chapter 3. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. dc.fandom.com . May 3, 2006.
- Y: The Last Man #48. Gehenna. Brian Vaughan; Pia Guerra. Aug 2, 2006.
- Women In Politics | NZHistory, New Zealand history online. nzhistory.govt.nz . Accessed Mar 23, 2023.
- 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920) | National Archives. www.archives.gov . Accessed Mar 23, 2023.
The two men aren’t presented as noble earlier on in the series. They made jokes on getting treated like royalty on their return to earth for being the only men alive. Their selflessness was unexpected.