SPOILERS WARNING!!
This volume starts with a bang. It’s the 50th issue, halfway through the series, and we finally get a lot of answers about the Trust and the Minutemen. Victor, the latest Minutemen we discover, tells the origins of the Trust going back to the discovery of America. That’s why the Trust basically controls the USA, they were the first to get there and control everything.
But the Minutemen are the ones that helped them with this crime on a very large scale. We finally learn about the meaning of the word Croatoa, though how does Victor know about it? Did Graves tell him? Why would he do that? Shepherd doesn’t even know it. This is probably the most important single issue of the series.
The main arc of the volume is about Wylie and it’s the longest arc at 7 issues plus an epilogue. This was one of the most emotionally charged stories, with the best re-awakening for Wylie. Not only he founds out who he really is, but he also re-discovers the tragic events that led to killing his lover Rose Madrid. He also kills Anwar Madrid, one of the Trust. So a lot happens in this arc. Even the self-contained story about Gabe, Homer, Warren has a very tragic ending for Gabe.
The epilogue is another eventful issue. We learn more about the codenames, then Wylie tells Shepherd the secret word Croatoa, which makes Dizzy shoot Shepherd. Shepherd is now on the run, calls Lono and basically makes him his successor as the Warlord. This obvioulsy brings up many questions: we assume Graves implanted Dizzy with a failsafe, but why did he want her to kill Shepherd? Shepherd is gone, but we didn’t really know what he was after. Why did he tell Lono the word, and why didn’t Graves tell Shepherd?
If last volume was a slight decrease in quality, this volume shoots it right back up as one of the best volumes of the series. Now I can see that volume 7 might have been the calm before the storm.