Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, Lynne Yoshii, NYCC, The Last Survivor

The Last Survivor Is Hopefully Not The Last Issue – A Review Of Lynne Yoshii's Debut Comic

Published Mon, 13 Oct 2014 20:00:45 -0500

Timothy Carson writes for Bleeding Cool:

Type Lynne Yoshii's name into the search bar of Google and a slew of beautifully rendered images will appear on your screen; her work spans Elektra, Storm, to even the Night Elves of World of Warcraft, and I personally purchased this print of Dark Phoenix from her in Artists' Alley.

That's her "I'm going to destroy everyone and their second family" face.

I was drawn to the intensity captured in the print – the terrifying expression, the light radiating from the emblem on her chest, the way her hair becomes flame-like at the tips. As an obsessive fan of the Dark Phoenix Saga, I appreciated that Ms. Yoshii refrained from making her overly sexy and instead focused on the crazy. Dark Phoenix is not a cover girl – she's an unstable and pretty much unstoppable cosmic entity with serious anger issues.

Let us be honest, though: she'd rock your world.

Anyways, it was because of the magnetic and immediate connection with Ms. Yoshii's work that I became most excited to dive into her debut comic, The Last Survivor. And, I have to say, The Last Survivor is an excellent and atmospheric first issue.

I've been praising Lynne Yoshii as an artist, but I also have to give her due credit for her understated and straightforward narrative technique. As an artist, her work pays close attention to the details, while her writing is spare, yet effective. The storyline for The Last Survivor is similar to Aliens or Starship Troopers – the plot follows an unnamed female trapped on a space station with a vicious alien creature. As the title suggests, she is the only person left from her crew. However, in an interesting twist, the alien also happens to be the last of its kind as well, immersing the reader in an intense game of hide-and-seek with lethal consequences. No spoilers in this review, though. You'll have to read it for yourself to find out how it ends.

The lack of dialogue doesn't hinder the progression of the narrative; in fact, it only adds to the suspense of the story, as it left me with the feeling that there was nothing more to be said. The words have been spoken. The guns have been fired. Now it's either you or me, and neither side is willing to relent. I especially enjoyed that the heroine never speaks in the story. The reader is instead given the plot details through mental exposition, as if she's recording her possibly final moments in a diary that will never be found. It's an alarming and intriguing concept that Yoshii executed flawlessly through her brief and simplistic writing.

While a competent and capable writer, I would argue that the strength of The Last Survivor lies in its artwork. The muted color palette – greys, greens, and blues – really accentuates the desolate and lonely atmosphere of the unnamed heroine's predicament. My favorite page happens to be a startling, backlit spread of the woman observing the ravaged corpses of both human and alien. It is in these moments that Ms. Yoshii clearly understood that words were not needed to convey the emotion: the image spoke for itself.

Overall, The Last Survivor is a moody and dangerous game of cat-and-mouse that asks the unanswerable question: who's the cat, and who's the mouse? I highly recommend keeping an eye on Lynne Yoshii in the future as both an artist and writer. You can visit Lynne Yoshii's website at www.lynneyoshii.com for more information and to keep up with developments, and more of her artwork can be found at www.protokitty.deviantart.com.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!