Dave Baker is a fun and talented creator, and I greatly enjoyed digging into this volume. This is highly imaginative work and manages to play with comics tropes in new ways -- I love the visual style, action, and humor that comes through. Highly recommended!

My thanks to NetGaley and Oni Press for an advance copy of this graphic novel telling the stories of a mysterious stranger with an unknown past, who helps those that need it, gives shelter to those without, all while trying to unlock the mystery of who he is, and why he is named after a holiday.

The past makes a person. Those memories, those mistakes lessons learned, and pain always pain, help us deal with the affairs that make up life. Letting strangers into traffic on highways, helping a child lost in a mall, even helping ghosts find their way to the afterlife. We learn from the past, but what happens when the past is a mystery. When only rumours and dreams tell one about how they were raised. What happens then? Can one deal with the world, be ready for what might come. Or will one be lost, unsure of what the future holds, and uncertain in how to deal with it. Especially when one is named for a holiday, and no matter how much time passes, is always thought of being a boy. Halloween Boy Volume 1 is written and illustrated by Dave Baker and tells of an adventurer without a past, his trials and tribulations and the upcoming battle that will decide everything, even who he is.

Halloween Boy has no idea about his past. Named after making a choice that saved two lives, one his training computer said would be impossible, Halloween Boy travels the lands as a mercenary ghost hunter, archeologist and saver of people who need it. From his floating Skull Island Halloween Boy has lived many adventures, been consort to a Queen, and yet has ideas about a father he can't stop thinking about. And a nagging fear that something bad is coming.

This is a big pulpy adventure story about memory, loss, and understanding. All really well illustrated. As one reads one can see many of the influences, from names to characters and even a bit of settings. Baker admits this started as a modern telling of The Phantom, as one can see from the costume of Halloween Boy. There is a bit of Marvel influence, a bit of Mike Baron's Nexus, and more. The story is sprawling, but makes sense. The art really does a lot for the story. The characters are all unique, cute in some ways, evil in others. The backgrounds are really good, with lots of little things hidden away, and with splash pages that make one lose time in looking at them.

I loved Mary Tyler Moorehawk, and consider it one of the best graphic novels I have read in quite a few years. This is good in a different way, a pulpy story about fathers and sons, legacies and bad things. I really enjoy Baker and his work, stories that are both entertaining and touching. I really can't wait to read more by him.