SPOILERS WARNING!!
The opening arc of this volume reveals a lot about the past. In the ‘60 we learn that Javier, Augustus and Graves ascended to power replacing their old predecessors: Neil Walker was the previous Agent, Augustus and Javier replaced their fathers. But how much further does their alliance go? We also meet Shepherd’s predecessor, Mr Shore.
Meanwhile in the present Axel takes a pill from Javier and kills himself. Why did he do that? There is some past issues between Axel and Javier, but we don’t really know what that is. Also Megan is not dead, Victor didn’t shoot to kill, but who ordered the shoot? Augustus, so that he’d have Megan’s support (even personally)? Or Lono/Graves?
And finally Lono goes to pick up Jack, waking him up from the conditioning. I don’t think Graves sent him, I think Graves doesn’t think Jack is ready yet. But Lono doesn’t care, he just wants to have another Minutemen to “control”.
All this in just 2 packed issues. Lots of revelations and lots of questions. As usual with this series, many dialogs have hidden meaning, so much that to understand them all we would probably have to re-read them after we finish the whole series.
The two stories in A Wake (#70-74) are both important to the overall plot. One is about the House of Nagel after Axel’s death. His children Anna and Lars seem to agree on who they’d like to lead the family, but Lono pits Anna against Lars, so in the end they both die. The “plan” of killing all houses except one is still going, though whose plan is it exactly?
The other story finally shows up the last Minutemen, though we don’t really find out who it is until the end. I liked how the two Rome brothers, Ronnie and Remi, keep missing the word Croatoa while they’re dealing with their problems. That plays really well on our desire to finally meet the 7th Minutemen.
The volume closes with a one-off story that doesn’t seem to tie to the big picture. Probably the last one, since we’re now 3/4 into the series. The big finale is coming up.