Y: THE LAST MAN Is Finally Happening

Plans for a movie version of Y: The Last Man have been floating around since 2007, before the series had been completed. The 10-volume Vertigo comic by writer Brian K. Vaughn was on the verge of a big-screen adaptation as recently as the summer of 2013, and for a while there it seemed like it would stay in development hell indefinitely until the rights reverted to Vaughn and co-creator Pia Guerrera last year. Now, with Vaughn’s involvement, it appears the live-action version of Y has finally found a home on FX.

After the mysterious simultaneous deaths of all living things with Y chromosomes, escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand are the only remaining male mammals on planet Earth. The dystopian sci-fi setting is ripe for long-form serialization, with a story that focuses on a multitude of apocalyptic aspects from the loss of faith to loss of infrastructure. Plus, with the success of The Walking Dead and its recent spinoff (both spearheaded by creator Robert Kirkman), and the recent Universal deal involving Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction bringing their creator-owned properties to TV, it appears the comic-creators-as-showrunners paradigm is one that networks seem to have a lot of faith in.

Vaughn also created Saga for Image, Ex Machina for Wildstorm, Pride of Baghdad for Vertigo and Runaways for Marvel, but he’s no stranger to television either. While his involvement with the initial development of Under The Dome doesn’t inspire much faith, he’s also a LOST alum, having written a dozen or so episodes, and above all else, he’s one of the best writers working in American comics today. The series is still in the early stages, but Vaughn being directly involved, alongside The Hunger Games producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, sounds like great news to me.