It’s finally happening. The Y the Last Man series is coming to FX. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s epic story (published through Vertigo of DC comics) of a plague that wipes out anything with a Y chromosome leaving a devastated planet has been teased to film and tv since it was first published in 2002. While the original series never shied away from LGBTQ+ topics, the subject of trans men barely made the page.
All work should be considered, to a degree, in the culture and time period it was created. In Y the Last Man’s defense, it was published at a time when LGBTQ+ was still mostly looked at as alternative. If a comic piece included more than 50% LGBTQ+ content, it was usually marketed as “other”, lost to specialty racks. While Y the Last Man did present LGBTQ+ relationships and the fluidity of sex, terms of the time were still miles away from where they would be in 2021. In short, Y the Last Man tried and some of the work didn’t age with grace.
The only references to trans, intersex, or gender-nonconforming characters are scattered. The Amazons, a group of women manipulated and brainwashed by their leader Queen Victoria to raid for supplies and destroy all monuments to men, are described as killing FTM trans people. Later, on the sea liner The Whale, a few female pirates roughly describe "Working Boys" they had come across, with poor terminology. But no trans people ever enter the narrative or speak for themselves.
Transgender people were, and are, a heavily misunderstood and underrepresented group. It’s understandable that Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, both cisgender, may not have known where to start or had been intimidated at expanding the idea. However, with so much time and cultural growth elapsed, there’s no excuse for the Y the Last Man series to also sidestep the question. And it looks like they’re not in the casting of Shameless’s Elliot Fletcher in the new role of trans character “Sam Jordan”, the best friend to Yorick’s sister, Hero Brown.
But that’s not great. Admittedly, the series has yet to premiere on September 13th and there are not too many details released. For all anyone knows, there may be a whole wealth of characters that cover the full spectrum of identity that exists. However, announcing one trans character and slamming them in as a best friend to Hero who, in the graphic novel, takes the literal hero’s journey of emotional growth past trauma is a little too “My Best Friend’s Wedding” in representation. Especially when there are so many other opportunities to flesh out that experience that are right there in the source material.
To be clear, Hero Brown’s journey is one of reflection in her relation to her family, her partners and who she may call “friend”. She's a survivor of abuse, both before and after the plague. It’s important for that particular character to be introduced and experienced on her own. Yorick is the general audience entrance to the world while Hero is the concept of "abuse begets abuse". And not the place to shove in a trans character just to have a trans character.
Enter Waverly, former model now body collector with a mean garbage truck. She enters the series in the beginning, becoming the first female to discover Yorick is a surviving male (that he knows), nearly running him over on one of her dump trips to the stadium crematorium. Waverly is the only character to directly mention a transgender person and that they were their boyfriend at that. Later in the series, Waverly appears again now with another early side character, the "Working Boy" Bobbi. "Working Boys" are assumedly cisgender women who dress as male sex workers. As the graphic novel series neared its end, Waverly and Bobbi's working relationship turns romantic.
But Waverly is no saint. In a now cringe scene before the graphic novel’s finale, Waverly rips off the fake beard of her “boyfriend” with a speech about being “ourselves”. It’s close but not quite where the conversation needed to be. But Waverly, at least in opportunity, gives a great entry point to where are the other men in Y the Last Man.
That’s the easy entry. The more important thing to be considered is transgender people are a huge part of the population, also inspiring and molding the collective shared culture. In 2002, with the small and slow spread of information, it was easy to assume a trans person was rare. However, it’s 2021. Transgender people have been here the whole time in greater numbers than expressed in media. That means, in the effect of a plague that takes out the Y chromosome, there will be a huge portion of the population who are men. Still alive. And there’s so much to do with that knowledge outside of the threat of Amazon violence and sex workers. So much more than a main character’s best friend.
Hopefully, under showrunner Eliza Clark, that gift of story will be recognized. Because how society restructured and redefined itself and the roles a human has in a society whose “ruling class” is dead, was the real meat of Y the Last Man. The story of Yorick is the audience proxy. What kept people reading was the often violent but also hopeful evolution of a new world. That’s no story for a trans best friend. That’s the story of transgender life.