Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

The Last American

Rate this book
"I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United Sates of America, and to the republic for which it stood, look where it got me."

Over twenty years have passed since a global war plunged the world into nuclear armageddon. Placed in suspended animation by his superiors, U.S. Army Captain, Ulysses Pilgrim, is woken by three military robot aides. Now Pilgrim has one last mission: wade through a post-holocaust U.S.A. and search for survivors.

Written by John Wagner and Alan Grant and featuring the unique art of Mick McMahon, The Last American is a brilliant, yet terrifying look at the reality and futility of nuclear war.

First published January 1, 1990

4 people are currently reading
68 people want to read

About the author

John Wagner

1,285 books188 followers
John Wagner is a comics writer who was born in Pennsylvania in 1949 and moved to Scotland as a boy. Alongside Pat Mills, Wagner was responsible for revitalising British boys' comics in the 1970s, and has continued to be a leading light in British comics ever since. He is best known for his work on 2000 AD, for which he created Judge Dredd. He is noted for his taut, violent thrillers and his black humour. Among his pseudonyms are The best known are John Howard, T.B. Grover, Mike Stott, Keef Ripley, Rick Clark and Brian Skuter. (Wikipedia)

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
38 (27%)
4 stars
55 (39%)
3 stars
38 (27%)
2 stars
9 (6%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
Profile Image for Alex Sarll.
7,058 reviews363 followers
Read
September 6, 2017
1990: the classic Dredd team of Wagner, Grant and McMahon release another, far darker tale of life in post-atomic war America, just as the Cold War grinds to a halt. How they must have cursed their timing.

2017: a reissue looks considerably more timely. Hell, it's only set two years from now.

Captain Ulysses S Pilgrim (the name is on the nose, but just about plausible) is preserved in the USA's only working suspended animation chamber, just before the missiles start flying. Awoken by three robots which have gone a bit funny in their 20 years alone watching old TV, he sets out to find survivors. Normally, you'd expect this to segue into some macho fantasy of battling mutated beasts and cannibal gangs to rescue sexy neo-primitive girls. This is very much not what The Last American supplies. Instead he treks through the ruined, poisoned land, finding only skulls and ants, gradually losing his mind as he hopes desperately for some signal of any other survivor, increasingly ready to accept even the flimsiest or most dangerous signs of life. It's all horribly plausible. One might suggest certain belligerent little daddy's boys with stupid hair and nuclear arsenals should read it, if only one had any confidence that their attention spans could manage all four issues.
Profile Image for Edward Erdelac.
Author 79 books114 followers
February 8, 2013
This is a relentlessly dark tale about a disgraced and incarcerated soldier, Ulysses S. Pilgrim (born when Kennedy was assassinated), who is put into a one-man cryogenic freeze by the President of the United States to wait out an atomic holocaust and singlehandedly rally American survivors and re-establish the government, along with the help of three personable robots.

Only problem is, once the "Apocalypse Commander" emerges from his twenty year long sleep on Independence Day, he finds himself a star-spangled loner trudging through a black, blasted wasteland.

The comic dips in an out of hallucinationatory (even musical) segments, and keeps dangling hope in front of Pilgrim like a carrot to keep him going. He follows a phantasmic radio broadcast, and searches for hope in the journals of the long dead, but it's a starkly realistic portrayal of the realities of an atomic war.

Ends on what could be thought of as a cliffhanger unless you take the facts of the situation into consideration.

Mike McMahon's art reminds me a bit of Kevin O'Neil, with sharp angles and clunky robots, exaggerated human forms.
Profile Image for Jack Bumby.
Author 7 books3 followers
April 29, 2022
I heard about this story after Garth Ennis praised it in an interview with Brian K. Vaughn. Lo and behold, Ennis' quote adorns the front cover: "one of the very best comic books ever published".

And it is really something. Anti-war, anti-America, anti-religion, utterly bleak and nihilistic - this is definitely a British comic. It follows in the wake of the nuclear apocalypse, in which a cryogenically frozen US soldier is awakened to restore order and reinstate the American way of life.

His name is Ulysses S. Pilgrim and his official rank is 'Apocalypse Commander'.

The book might promise an action-packed ride but it's anything but. Pilgrim struggles to find any other life out in the wastes, to fire bullets at or otherwise, and the majority of the book follows him and three robots in their massive tank/command center as they search the ruins of America.

As he goes along, his mental state deteriorates and we're treated to visions, dreams, dancing zombies singing songs from the American Songbook, and all sorts of madness. The man is utterly alone, and it slowly dawns on the reader just how insanely terrifying that would be.

The art is absolutely insane. It's weirder than anything I've read in a long time, and definitely reflects a world of underground comics that I'm only passingly familiar with. Pilgrim is all hard edges and chiseled features, feeling at odds with his perfect, round companions - but right at home in the rubble of the American Dream.

We might not be living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation (or it's so constant that we're used to it) but the book resonates. Especially in a post-Trump era, where America seems to be turning into a twisted mirror version of its former self every day. Or most likely it was never anything special, perhaps the myth of America used to be easier to swallow. But whatever the case, the idea that in the event of nuclear annihilation of their own making, that a warrior of God and the US of A would be the ideal candidate to save us all, I don't think it could feel more timely.

In one particular dream sequence, Pilgrim finds himself face to face with US Presidents of eras past. And he notes that ultimately, they're just men. Some might be courageous, some evil, but they're only men. They're not chosen by God, they're just dudes hopefully doing their best. But that's usually not the case.

The themes are timeless, the story is fantastic. I couldn't recommend it more. In the wake of nukes and bombs in the name of freedom, America will come and save us all.
Profile Image for Afa.
129 reviews
November 28, 2017
Dari team komik Dredd, suasana ceritanya distopia seperti tajuknya. Sepanjang perjalanan protagonisnya merantau mencari kalau-kalau ada survivor perang sepertinya, mindanya melayang ke perca-perca kenangan bersama rakan taulan dan kaum keluarga.
Profile Image for Chris Browning.
1,477 reviews17 followers
December 24, 2020
Written towards the end of the Wagner/ Grant collaborative years, The Last American feels like a commentary on their most famous work on Judge Dredd. Where Dredd takes a post apocalyptic landscape and uses it for angry but still wildly funny satire (at least during the collaboration years), The Last American takes the same milieu and drains it of every single bit of hope. Wagner takes the first two books, setting up the universe (Pilgrim waking, reflecting on his new world and travelling through New York where a ghoulish fantastical variant on Alan Moore’s penchant for music routines in his comics plays out - something I think gently pokes their peer for being pompous over) and Grant the last two (hope in meeting others revealed as an unsuccessful ploy to maintain Pilgrim’s sanity and another bleaker glimmer of possible hope ameliorated by a truly bleak story around it).

Neither have what you would call a sunny disposition, but I think Grant’s is the one with the deeper sense of gallows humour which reflects his own beliefs over where Dredd should have continued going. But even though their collaboration was fracturing you can sense that the tension that created really works for the story because the narrative is necessarily quite slight and the tension has to come from somewhere. And although it doesn’t tread any wildly new ground it feels like an important late eighties reminder as nuclear panic faded slightly that the future could always, always be awful

The reason it’s a masterpiece though is down to McMahon. Always a genius, with his brilliant chunky physicality, he’s almost abstract here - everything is blocky and nightmarish like a delirium version of humanity. There’s even a deliberate use of scratchy blacks for the sky, where it could easily have been one smooth colour - everything is abrasive and ugly and unpleasant aside from the robots who are curved and almost the most natural looking thing in here: there’s a delicious irony to make the obviously inhuman things look like the most attractive objects in this nightmare world. And there’s also all these rocks suspended in the air littering the pages which is a genuinely striking and bizarre image, like the whole universe thrown into chaos in microcosm. It’s an extraordinary book but McMahon is always able to find new and startling ways to interpret the story. It’s his masterpiece all the way
Profile Image for Tarn Richardson.
Author 12 books60 followers
May 27, 2017
Wow! Rather speechless after reading this! What an incredible achievement, writing something so profound, so desperate, so optimistic; a real tangle of emotions. The horror of nuclear war brought home in such a harrowing fashion and yet, throughout, is this constant pulse of human endeavour, belief and the drive to survive.

The line you read and read again, and read again, is the one about how, in the first minute of nuclear war, the same destructive tonnage is dropped on the world as was dropped in the whole of world war two.

Staggering, terrifying and human - despite there being only one human in it - along with a host of robots.

Wagner (and Grant) continues to surprise and amaze.
Profile Image for Konstantine.
336 reviews
August 7, 2025
does seem rather cruel that we had to deal with the whole rapping presidents craze before we got engulfed by nuclear flame
Profile Image for Paul Spence.
1,559 reviews74 followers
March 18, 2023
Although issued under the 2000AD imprint, and the work of three of 2000AD’s finest ever creators, The Last American is very far removed from the dystopian science fiction usually associated with the weekly comic. It’s an unremittingly bleak look at isolation through the eyes of what may be the last human alive, drawn by Mike McMahon whose style was moving more and more toward an exploration of artistic structure. Not quite cubism, but not far removed from it.

Ulysses S. Pilgrim is revived by robots after twenty years of suspended animation. He’s an American soldier preserved at the height of the missiles flying in a war that ended with mutually assured destruction shortly after his sleep began. He’s been sharing a bunker with three robots, Able, Baker and Charlie, with the latter the only concession to any humor beyond the bleakest variety, his speech patterns modelled on the vast quantities of archived TV he watches in the video banks. Pilgrim’s mission is to rediscover civilization, and there’s a distinct possibility he’ll not be able to complete it.

With their focus on ruins and devastation populated only by ants and skeletons Wagner and Grant’s story is possibly the most chilling and realistic postscript to nuclear war you’re ever going to read in a graphic novel. With their introduction of hallucinogenic visions involving singing skeletons dancing through New York or a congress of former Presidents they pull away from that, and more importantly provide McMahon with something he draws the hell out of.

It’s impossible to overstate how stunning McMahon’s art is on The Last American. Were he truly European, rather than British, he’d surely be lionized along with the giants of the medium, Breccia, Toth, Pratt, Crepax. He’d been continually evolving his style over fifteen years, and this is the apex. Some panels are almost abstractions, loose overlappings of shapes, but most are chunky and jagged illustrations almost carved onto the pages, be they Pilgrim with his ludicrously complicated uniform and firearms or the desolation he inhabits. Early on that’s contrasted with a cartoon turtle representing the preposterous optimism of the 1950s that a process of duck and cover was all that was required to survive nuclear war. The turtle recurs, a sort of perverse reflection of Pilgrim’s mental state.

The art alone should earn The Last American a place in any graphic novel collection, but Wagner and Grant ensure a constant narrative tension accompanies Pilgrim. Although first published in 1990, they wrote the series two years earlier during a period of global instability as their writing partnership disintegrated and this all feeds into their barren extrapolation of Earth’s future. Pilgrim was a tragic figure before his suspended animation, and is now doubly so, desperately clinging to some small hope when faced with only false leads, denied at every stopover. Pilgrim’s sanity gradually deteriorates, reflecting the similar theme of the 1986 Australian film The Quiet Earth.

The Last American was astonishing when originally published and remains a unique and coherent collective vision. It’s a masterpiece.
Profile Image for Pedro Plasencia Martínez.
217 reviews19 followers
November 22, 2024
Obra antibelicista y antiarmamentística que trata de concienciar sobre los peligros nucleares que manejan ciertas potencias en el mundo, cada vez más lamentablemente. 'The Last American' se escribió justo después de la caída del muro de Berlín y del desmantelamiento de la URSS, pero se desarrolla durante la Guerra Fría, así que los autores no quisieron dejar marchar la paranoia y el miedo que acechaban en esos tiempos convulsos en los que se barajaba la extinción de la humanidad como una posibilidad real.

El alegato de este cómic se realiza a través del mundo devastado, de las víctimas, de las ruinas y de las políticas irresponsables que condenaron al mundo. Es una obra oscura, sin esperanza y los pocos chistes que aparecen son muy amargos. El protagonista reanimado de su sueño criogénico no puede hacer nada salvo contemplar el horror y pronto su cordura sufre, dando paso a delirios que denotan culpabilidad, tristeza o añoranza. Me hubiese gustado encontrar algo de aventura para aligerar un poco el pesimismo de estas páginas, pero no cabe duda de que es una gran propuesta que contiene un mensaje que no debemos olvidar.

ENGLISH
Anti-war and anti-armament work that tries to raise awareness about the nuclear dangers that certain powers in the world handle, increasingly unfortunately. 'The Last American' was written just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the USSR, but it takes place during the Cold War, so the authors did not want to let go of the paranoia and fear that lurked in those turbulent times in which the extinction of humanity was considered a real possibility.

The argument of this comic is made through the devastated world, the victims, the ruins and the irresponsible policies that condemned the world. It is a dark, hopeless work and the few jokes that appear are very bitter. The protagonist reanimated from his cryogenic sleep can do nothing but contemplate the horror and soon his sanity suffers, giving way to delusions that denote guilt, sadness or longing. I would have liked to find some adventure to lighten the pessimism of these pages a little, but there is no doubt that it is a great proposal that contains a message that we should not forget.
Profile Image for Lucas.
521 reviews6 followers
December 3, 2023
Coming right at the end of a bygone golden era of British comics, The Last American has 2000AD legends John Wagner and Alan Grant team up with the ever so talented Mick McMahon. This book is a product of nuclear paranoia, with its authors growing up at the end of the cold war. We follow US soldier Ulysses Pilgrim as he wakes up in a post-apocalyptic America and tries to find other survivors, with the support of his three helper robots. It's fun, though I'm not entirely sure how serious it's actually supposed to be.. It delves into survivor's guilt a little, and tries to explore what I think they called the "last American syndrome" in the book and harbors a whole lot of patriotism which I'm assuming is at least partly satirical considering it's coming from the creators of Judge Dredd. But more than anything, it's a place for McMahon's art to shine. It reminds me of Hewlett's art a lot (which makes sense considering I found out about the book through an interview where he mentions having it in his studio during the latter years of working on Tank Girl). It's kind of cubist, very off the wall, but it a kind of serious and gritty way (because of the "realistic" post apocalyptic context). It makes for a very cool blend.
Profile Image for fonz.
385 reviews7 followers
February 15, 2023
La verdad es que está muy bien, un negrísimo postapocalíptico nuclear de angustiosa actualidad en el que el último superviviente, un soldado norteamericano metido en el frigorífico durante veinte años, lejos de convertirse en un héroe de acción enfrentado a los putos mutantes comunistas del desierto radioactivo, ha de lidiar con la locura, la soledad, la angustia, la agobiante presencia de la muerte y el espantoso destino de la raza humana. El dibujo de McMahon también es muy bueno, aunque a veces se echa en falta algo de espectacularidad en las panorámicas que son más descritas por los textos de apoyo que por el dibujo. Pero mi mayor problema con este tebeo es su repentino final, se podría alegar que bueno, que el viaje de Ulysses no tiene fin esta vez, pero es que se acaba de tan cualquier manera que uno sospecha que los problemas entre Grant y Wagner, que rompieron como pareja guionista tras la realización de este tebeo, precipitaron el abrupto final. Pero aún así el tebeo se "disfruta" y es una pena que no se haya rematado de otra manera.
Profile Image for Chumley Pawkins.
120 reviews7 followers
August 27, 2022
Honestly, one of the best miniseries I’ve ever read.

It blew my wig off when I read it at the time of its publication in the late eighties/early nineties and continues to do so to this day.

That it’s so little known, recognised or appreciated in an era when Neil Gaiman’s pedestrian output is feted with multi-million dollar TV adaptations is criminal.
Profile Image for Adriana.
3,517 reviews42 followers
August 14, 2018
It's darker that what I usually go for and the art is just not my thing.
I do, however, acknowledge that there is definitely something in the story and the way it's told that stays with you and makes you think.
Profile Image for Kyle Burley.
527 reviews9 followers
July 23, 2017
Bleak, depressing tale of the last American soldier searching for survivors in a post-nuclear wasteland. Very much a product of cold-war era anxiety but, still, sadly relevant.
Profile Image for Hugo.
1,148 reviews30 followers
September 21, 2025
Dark, dismal End of the World shenanigans, an American obsession filled with sly and cynical British humour, descending into depths we do know we didn't want, and each page a stunning piece of artistic invention and design—bar Slaine, possibly McMahon's most stunning art.
Author 26 books37 followers
April 24, 2014
Weird mix of cool post-apocolyptic adventure and dark, dreary 'we will most likely all die in a nuclear war' vibe that makes for a really uneven story.

Not a fun read, but intriguing, and I've always been curious if they could have managed a sequel or an ongoing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.