20th Century Boys is a extremely well done series so far. Even at it's worst it's still good. At it's best? Amazing. A lot of people compare this series to IT and it contains a lot of storytelling elements of that but with it's own characters and twist.

This volume actually contains a lot. We get to see the future world a little more, an escape, and the state they're in. More so we get a lot of background here of the bloody new years night. We lose a major character and we begin to piece together what happens to make the future events all kinds of fucked up.

Good: The cast of characters keeps growing and you feel for characters you had no attachment to before. I also felt sad about the future state of one character. The future is still entertaining too and the parallel feel of past, present, future is all well told and done.

Bad: The manga artist seems a bit of a "audience" member but not all that compelling. He is easily weakest part at the moment.

Overall this is a great volume that gets the plot moving. The death of a character, the future outlook, everything is building up. A very very solid 4 out of 5.