What if everything in your life was out of your hands and those around you propelled your fate? Your girlfriend left you for your best friend; your boss gave your job to someone better. What if then, after all this, someone gave you back total control? What if he revealed you were the next in line to join a secret society of super-villians that controlled the entire planet? Mark Millar and J.G. Jones provide a look at one man who goes from being the world's biggest loser to the deadliest assassin alive.

Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since.The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control—indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up—it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. —MarkThwaite

A perfect blend of humor and drama, Y: THE LAST MAN - ONE SMALL STEP is a fascinating tale of catastrophe and consequences. After a mysterious occurrence instantaneously killed every male human on Earth, twenty-something escape artist Yorick Brown suddenly found himself as the last man alive on a planet inhabited solely by females. But when Yorick and his secret service bodyguard learn of a Russian spaceship with two healthy males on board, they quickly journey to its projected landing site in Kansas to see if the rumor is true. Now as Yorick and Agent 355 wait to see if the cosmonauts will survive their return to Earth's atmosphere, a zealous faction of the Israeli military attempt to kidnap the last man for their own nefarious purposes.

Yorick Brown, the last man on Earth, finally makes it to San Francisco where his unbalanced sister, Hero, finds him seemingly succumbing to the male-killing plague after losing his still-unused engagement ring to the burqa-clad agents of the Setauket Ring. But is the ring really the key to his survival? And what does it have to do with the mysterious Amulet of Helene, which the Setauket leader is determined to take from Agent 355 by any means necessary.

The latest volume in the gripping saga of Yorick Brown, an unemployed and unmotivated slacker that discovers that he is the only male left in a world inhabited solely by women after a plague of unknown origin instantly kills every mammal with a Y chromosome.Accompanied by his mischievous monkey and the mysterious Agent 355, Yorick embarks on a transcontinental journey to find his girlfriend and discover why he is the last man on Earth. This volume finds Yorick, Agent 355 and Dr. Mann traveling across the Pacific to Japan in pursuit of Yorick's stolen monkey Ampersand, whose innards may hold the key to mankind's future

The saga of Yorick Brown, the last man on Earth, continues in PAPER DOLLS, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra's award-winning VERTIGO series. In addition to catching up on the adventures of Yorick's monkey Ampersand (whose body holds the key to stopping the male-killing plague) and telling the origin of Agent 355, PAPER DOLLS chronicles Yorick and 355's search for Yorick's fiancee Beth in Australia — a search that yields a large dose ofunwanted publicity for the Last Man, and deadly consequences for those he cares for!

If you're looking for a comic book that falls outside of the usual superhero fare, Y: The Last Man is one of the top choices around.A creation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerrera, it's a post-apocalyptic story in which a mysterious virus has wiped out every male on Earth, except a young man named Yorick and his monkey, Ampersand.In the eighth trade paperback, Kimono Dragons (issues 43-46), Yorick, Agent 355, Allison, and Rose are in Japan on the trail of the abducted Ampersand.Yorick and 355 find themselves mixed up with the Japanese mafia led by a former Canadian pop star named Epiphany, while Allison and Rose hope to find some answers in Allison's mother's lab.The remaining two issues (47-48) are standalone stories, "The Tin Man" and "Gehenna" (Goran Sudzuka takes over the pencils from Guerrera, with Jose Marzan Jr. still doing the inking), which explore the histories of Allison and Israeli solder Alter.Y: The Last Man is part of DC's Vertigo line and has some mature content, including nudity and graphic violence.—David Horiuchi

Featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio,Y: THE LAST MAN is the gripping saga of Yorick Brown, an unemployed andunmotivated slacker who discovers he is the only male left in the worldafter a plague of unknown origin instantly kills every mammal with a Ychromosome.Accompanied by his mischievous monkey, Ampersand, and themysterious Agent 355, Yorick embarks on a transcontinental journey to findhis long-lost girlfriend and discover why he is the last man on earth.This volume of the critically acclaimed series features Yorick and Agent355 preparing for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with hislost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wipedout half of humanity is revealed!