One of my favorite current comic book series is Y: The Last Man, which is currently nearing the end of its run. The book, written by new Lost scribe Brian K Vaughan, takes place after a mysterious plague kills every single male of any species on Earth… except for goofy amateur magician Yorick Brown and his helper monkey Ampersand. The two begin a global journey searching not just for a possible cure to whatever killed all the men, but also for Yorick’s fiancée, last seen in the Outback. The one in Australia, not the steak house, although one imagines visiting every single one of those damnable chain restaurants would take forever as well.
Vaughan has delivered a screenplay to the good people at New Line, but nothing seems to be happening. “Everybody at New Line seemed to like it,” he told SlashFilm at the recent New York Comic Con. “For Hollywood, it’s either really fast or it’s really slow, and it’s really slow right now. I’ve done my job and it’s out to directors now and it could be totally out of my control after this.”
New Line has found themselves in an interesting place in the last year or so – they need a hit, and they need one very badly, and Y doesn’t feel like a traditional “hit” to me. However, it does feel like something that New Line could market to a decent gross. Maybe they should call me up – I have an awesome idea for an opening scene to the movie. It’s set to Simon and Garfunkle’s The Only Living Boy in New York. I can’t decide if that’s too obvious or exactly the kind of obvious that the asshats who make decisions at movie studios love.
Meanwhile, Vaughan has begun adapting his other comic, Ex-Machina, into a script. As much as I love Y, I think Ex-Machina, about a superhero who becomes mayor of New York City after saving one of the Twin Towers on 9/11, is just about the best comic book on stands right now.