Review by Frank Plowright

As a young girl Sarya is the most recognisable thing to be seen on the opening pages of The Last Human. She’s curious, friendly and charming, but accompanied by a large creature combining aspects of spiders and praying mantises that she refers to as “mother”. The several box-like AIs on the spacecraft call her Shenya. It gradually becomes apparent that Sarya’s very existence is problematical where they’re headed, and that Shenya is extremely dangerous.

When Shenya and Sarya arrive at an immigration station Luyi Bennett creates an astounding variety of aliens to emphasise, as the title tells us, that Sarya is the last human in the universe. Zack Jordan spends too long in the immigration hall, having already established Sarya’s ebullient personality, and takes too many pages to establish that humans have a monstrous reputation seemingly unconnected to reality. It’s apparent from the chapter-separating information pages that a conceptual density is present in the background, but the storytelling is too greatly decompressed and it’s the lively cartooning that drags readers through many unnecessary pages. The crisis point arrived at halfway through could have been reached far sooner, and the comedy antics and strange conversations delaying it aren’t adequate compensation.

Sarya likes playing fantasy games under a variety of different identities, and convincingly embraces others within her world. The crisis point sees her with a massive new environment in which to create her games, gloriously designed by Bennett. The simplicity of the main characters contrasted with the complexity of the backgrounds brings Little Nemo to mind, although Bennett isn’t quite that good. However, as The Last Human continues to ramble, it’s the cartooning that impresses.

The mystery continually hanging over The Last Human is why humans are considered universally undesirable by every other race, but it’s never satisfactorily answered. It may well have been revealed in Jordan’s earlier novel with the same title, but it’s a big ask to assume readers have followed on to a sequel in graphic novel form, and new readers deserve answers. Instead there’s almost two hundred pages of Sarya exploring a new environment with new friends while others search for her. In the meantime she’s searching for who she is, and everything leads to a disappointingly obvious ending.

Bennett will go on to illustrate better material than this long shaggy dog story.