Lots of one-shots giving us backstories on all the main cast (hah, I see what they did there with the title). Some of them are really impactful (Tim-22's and Driller's), while others really would have been better of interspersed within the main story. That's my big complaint with this volume. It brings everything to a screeching halt, and it's so early on in this series that it makes me wonder why we didn't get these stories earlier or at least interspersed within the main plot. It would have helped me connect to the extended cast a lot sooner.

I really hate writing nothing but negative stuff, but another complaint I have is that this volume undercut why Andy would want to reconnect with Tim-21. Effie's backstory honestly paints Andy as someone so bitter and biased against machines that he shouldn't want anything to do with Tim-21 other than make a buck off his corpse. I hope we get a better view of how Andy saw 21 as an actual brother/family member and not just a makeshift friend.

Anyways, this volume has some decent character work (Driller's a killer guys. Driller's a REAL killer), but if you're on a budget and just want to keep up with the main plot you can probably save your money and skip this volume all together.