Hi. My name is Michael and I'm a comic book geek.

Tomorrow I head down to NYC for New York Comic Con. This will be my first comic convention. I'm partially going as a fan, partially because my job now includes selling DC Comics to bookstores. (I love my job!)

I've been into comics and graphic novels since I was a teen, when I spent most of my money on huge stacks of comics every week. I long ago stopped buying comics weekly and started waiting for the trade paperback or hardcover compilations.

So, in honor of my first "con," here's my pick for most eagerly-awaited trade paperback coming out this summer... Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10 - Whys and Wherefores. This is a series that recently completed its monthly run. The creator, Brian K. Vaughan, always intended the series to run for only 60 issues, or in this case 10 trade paperback compilations. The story follows Yorrick Brown. He and a capuchin monkey are the only ones to survive something that killed all of the other males on the planet.

In the years since the series began it has been covered on NPR, in Publisher's Weekly and in the New York Times. This is a perfect example of how comics can deal with adult themes and really tell a wonderful, complex story.

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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:

Y: The Last Man, Vol 1 - Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, DC/Vertigo Trade Paperback, $12.99, ISBN: 978-1-5638-9980-5
Y: The Last Man, Vol 10 - Whys and Wherefores by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, DC/Vertigo Trade Paperback, $14.99, ISBN: 978-1-4012-1813-3, on sale June 24, 2008

note: in the interest of space, I've listed the first and the final volumes of this series. There are obviously 8 volumes in between, so get reading!

(all information is for the U.S. editions).