In 2019 Shelfdust asked over a hundred comic book critics, podcasters, vloggers and commentators to pick their personal, subjective favourite ‘first’ comic book issues of all time. From their choices we counted down the top fifty entries, which you can find here! But we’re not leaving it there. Now the list is over and we know which comics made the list, we’ve invited critic and podcaster Matt Lune to host a weekly show right here on Shelfdust! Each week Matt will be sitting down with a different comic critic to look at every comic which charted into the top fifty, one issue at a time.

This week it’s time to throw off the strait jacket, as we look at the comic which ended up in 14th place: Y: The Last Man #1 by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzan, Jr, Pamela Rambo and Clem Robins!

Many people would hail Y: The Last Man as the definitive “#1” comic book issue. It’s easy to see why: it’s structure jumps from character to character with absolute grace, giving the reader everything they need to know about every single person who appears. The rest of the series continues in a love-it-or-hate-it fashion, but the first issue is a snappy, assured debut which offered something different to anything else in comics at the time. How does that issue hold up today, though? Matt spoke to special guest C.P. Hoffman all about it!

You can listen to the episode:

Come back next week….. as Matt will be talking to J.A. Micheline about Fantastic Four #1!

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C.P. Hoffman has written extensively about comics online, including for WomenWriteAboutComics, CBR, Nerdist, and The MNT. A Staff Attorney & Pro Bono Coordinator at FreeState Justice, you can also find them on Twitter here!

Matt Lune is a critic and podcaster who has written for publications including PanelXPanel, The MNT and Multiversity. You can find him on Twitter here!

 

This podcast is made possible thanks to the Shelfdust Patreon page! To find out more, head to our Patreon page here!

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