• DOI:10.1353/AFA.2015.0009
• Corpus ID: 161247862

“We Don’t Need Another Hero”: Agent 355 as an Original Black Female Hero in Y: The Last Man

@article{Mafe2015WeDN,
  title={“We Don’t Need Another Hero”: Agent 355 as an Original Black Female Hero in Y: The Last Man},
  author={Diana Adesola Mafe},
  journal={African American Review},
  year={2015},
  volume={48},
  pages={33 - 48}
}

• D. Mafe
• Published 17 July 2015
• Art
• African American Review

This article reads the comic-book series Y: The Last Man as a subversive articulation of critical race and feminist discourses despite the guise of Eurocentricity and the pretext of a white male “protagonist.” I argue that the true protagonist of the series is the black female character Agent 355, an unconventional hero who complicates stereotypical representations of race, gender, class, and so on. Despite a post-apocalyptic setting where the male species is largely extinct, 355 (rather than the sole human male survivor) is also the narrative’s driving force and the most powerful, albeit unattainable, object of desire.