Over a year after FX announced that it would be bringing Brian K. Vaughan’s comic book series Y: The Last Man to television, the network has tapped a showrunner: Michael Green, who is currently co-showrunning Starz’s American Gods adaptation.
Green will co-write the script with Vaughan, whose past TV writing credits include Lost and Under the Dome (the latter which he created). Green has also written for Smallville and Heroes, as well as the upcoming X-Men film Logan.
Y: The Last Man (created by Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra) is the first comic book series I ever read, and I still haven’t found anything I’ve loved as much as it. In an alternate-universe 2002, a deadly plague wipes out every living organism with a Y chromosome—except for escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand. With his new bodyguard Agent 355 (part of the mysterious Culper Ring), Yorick must slowly make his way to his girlfriend Beth in Australia, while helping Dr. Allison Mann discover a cure and fending off the female politicians, soldiers, and other survivors who want to see the Last Man propagate the species… or die with the rest of his kind.
Imagine—a TV series whose cast is almost entirely women. And they had better get Guerra on as some sort of storyboard consultant, as she was instrumental in creating certain famous storylines from the series.
Vaughan also penned the screenplay for a Y movie around 2005, which wound up getting him the Lost gig. While it’s very different from the series, which ran in monthly installments for five years from 2002-2007, it’s a fun read to see one way it could have been adapted for the big screen. Now, with the project heading to the small screen, we have yet another take to look forward to.
