Joss Whedon

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Next, Humphries introduced the night’s keynote speaker, Joss Whedon, who had earlier been presented with an original page from “Y” in appreciation of his unrelenting support for the book. The writer pledged that his speech would bear as little resemblance to “The Chris Farley Show” as possible. Whedon elected to begin his remembrance of “Y: The Last Man” with the final issue, saying, “As I was finishing the last issue, and telling my wife that I had something in my eye, I got to the last page and saw the picture; saw the image, and I saw the title, and while I was actually crying, I laughed and I was like, ‘Brian, you fuck,’ The last title, the last word, for me, is the epitaph for the book — possibly the human race— and for the character. And I know he had it for 60 issues. He had a character named Yorick, and never said ‘alas.’ That shows a level of thinking and structure and reserve and patience I just don’t have.” Whedon felt this was indicative to Vaughan’s approach to the entire book: “Like the Cylons, he has a plan.”

Whedon then related an anecdote about how he first came to know the guest of honor. While signing at Comic-Con International in San Diego some years back, a friend of Vaughan’s presented Whedon with a “Y: The Last Man” trade paperback. “My friend Brian wrote this book, and he wants you to have it,” the fan said to Whedon.

Upon returning to his home after the convention, the “Y” trade, along with the lion’s share of his new convention acquisitions, became engulfed in what Whedon described as a “sea of shit.” It wasn’t until wading through that sea some months later that Whedon came upon the trade once again and sat down to read it cover to cover. Vaughan’s business card had been tucked carefully inside the book, and Whedon wasted no time in contacting the then-fledgling writer. “Approximately thirty seconds after finishing the entire trade, I then e-mail the person on the card to tell him that he’s my new best friend, whether he likes it or not,” Whedon said. “He resisted at first. They all do.”

Whedon contends the strength of the book lies not only in its “ridiculously good premise,” but also in the way the creators defied expectations. “I read the first issue, and saw it was very beautiful and very frightening and very extraordinary, and thought, ‘My God. It opens up an entire world of porn,’” Whedon said. His response to issue #2, which featured a supermodel driving a dump truck full of dead bodies, was decidedly different: “Okay,” Whedon had thought, “I don’t think he’s going to go exactly where I’m thinking.”

It was at this point that Whedon first took notice of the artwork of “Y” co-creator Pia Guerra. “Pia draws what I like to refer to as people,” Whedon said. “The beauty and the clarity and the humanness of the art is matched only by Brian’s ability to occasionally shut up and let it just happen.”

An outspoken feminist, Whedon explained he’d spent years of his childhood searching for comic book heroines who were more than just stereotypes, and that one of the things he finds so extraordinary about “Y” is that it has helped to usher in an era of storytelling in which gender stereotypes are no longer an issue. “It’s not about any kind of stereotype,” Whedon said. “It’s not about riffing on what we’ve done in comics before. People are all incredibly flawed. There is no hope for any of us. Except maybe there’s a little bit, and maybe we can be free, and the fact that [Vaughan and Guerra] brought that to us is to me an extraordinary gift. [‘Y: The Last Man’] is in fact a term I almost never use, a graphic novel, and it’s one that I’m extremely grateful that we have.”

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