Overview

A boy's book report on Reconstruction Era vigilantes known as the Bald Knobbers sends him on a quest for justice.

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9780999193518

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Reviews

Sergel's visuals fall in the same school as Nick Drnaso and Chris Ware... ...this focus on details shows where Sergel's attention is going, a method of communicating the subjectivity of experience without spelling it out. Form serves function beautifully. -- Paste Magazine, The 25 Best Comics of 2016 (So Far) Robert Sergel's tableau-like panels and high contrast, precise lines seem perfectly civilized on the surface, while ruthlessly recording the moments of discomfort, humiliation, disquiet, and awkwardness endemic to the human condition. By turns funny, thoughtful, poignant, and humane, his comics are a real delight to the eye, too. -- Rob Kirby, Top 20 Comics List: The 2016 Edition Social scenes take a strong position in Sergel's work giving a sense of life lived and the detached moments that stay with us as a kind of narrative memory of ourselves. Sergel's clear lines and frequent use of solid, dark backgrounds make for a refreshing read and also have an unassuming quality that draws the reader in to participate in the storytelling. Thematically, he also leaves unusual moments of contemplation in the character's life open to interpretation, leaving the door open for big concepts to creep in. -- Comics Beat

""Though the true extent of his transgressions is left ambiguous, the story ends with the suggestion that any lessons Cole may have learned are not necessarily taken deeply to heart: “Everyone tried to be more civil… because they had to be.” Sergel’s visuals skillfully juxtapose the heated emotions of the story with the posed, deadpan quality of his characters, loading this snappy, pocket-sized parable with equal amounts of drollery and poignancy—and just a touch of menace."" – Publishers Weekly ""The weaving of the two stories works brilliantly. We feel Cole’s desperation, made so much bigger by the context of a whole country in post-war dissolution. Divorce, Sergel suggests, is a battleground, with kids as the losers. What makes Cole unique in the wide range of books about unhappy divorces is the historical lens he uses to explain his world. Taking a fringe story from the 1880s that isn’t widely known, Sergel gives Cole an expressive depth beyond the usual teen angst."" – New York Journal of Books ""The uncomfortable truth with which Bald Knobber leaves the reader is the assertion that much of this country’s history is the history of violence smoothed over not by justice but by time. (Hint: Google the real Bald Knobbers after you read the book and see if any of the names jump out at you.) …The sense of rigid claustrophobia emanating from shabby circumstances saturated with ambient violence seems very much of the moment, and the current moment perhaps closer to the circumstances of the original Bald Knobbers than we’d care to comment."" – The Comics Journal ""What’s surprising is that Sergel is able to put an unexpected spin at the end of the tale of dysfunction. One of the aspects missing from Cole’s investigation into and retelling of a historical event is the understanding that history has a perspective and that often reflects the agenda of the person or group doing the retelling. In many cases, this has caused history to be injected with the dichotomy of good versus evil, of parsing out moral aspects to the different sides and therefore creating the political divisions that sustain American anger. But Sergel’s ultimate solution is to turn away from that binary and look beyond the surface on all sides. Which doesn’t mean he lessens the power of Cole’s hurt, but instead widens the possibilities in the emotional give and take that’s portrayed. I’m sure the Bald Knobbers were actually pretty complicated, too."" – Comics Beat

"""Though the true extent of his transgressions is left ambiguous, the story ends with the suggestion that any lessons Cole may have learned are not necessarily taken deeply to heart: “Everyone tried to be more civil… because they had to be.” Sergel’s visuals skillfully juxtapose the heated emotions of the story with the posed, deadpan quality of his characters, loading this snappy, pocket-sized parable with equal amounts of drollery and poignancy—and just a touch of menace."" – Publishers Weekly ""The weaving of the two stories works brilliantly. We feel Cole’s desperation, made so much bigger by the context of a whole country in post-war dissolution. Divorce, Sergel suggests, is a battleground, with kids as the losers. What makes Cole unique in the wide range of books about unhappy divorces is the historical lens he uses to explain his world. Taking a fringe story from the 1880s that isn’t widely known, Sergel gives Cole an expressive depth beyond the usual teen angst."" – New York Journal of Books ""The uncomfortable truth with which Bald Knobber leaves the reader is the assertion that much of this country’s history is the history of violence smoothed over not by justice but by time. (Hint: Google the real Bald Knobbers after you read the book and see if any of the names jump out at you.) …The sense of rigid claustrophobia emanating from shabby circumstances saturated with ambient violence seems very much of the moment, and the current moment perhaps closer to the circumstances of the original Bald Knobbers than we’d care to comment."" – The Comics Journal ""What’s surprising is that Sergel is able to put an unexpected spin at the end of the tale of dysfunction. One of the aspects missing from Cole’s investigation into and retelling of a historical event is the understanding that history has a perspective and that often reflects the agenda of the person or group doing the retelling. In many cases, this has caused history to be injected with the dichotomy of good versus evil, of parsing out moral aspects to the different sides and therefore creating the political divisions that sustain American anger. But Sergel’s ultimate solution is to turn away from that binary and look beyond the surface on all sides. Which doesn’t mean he lessens the power of Cole’s hurt, but instead widens the possibilities in the emotional give and take that’s portrayed. I’m sure the Bald Knobbers were actually pretty complicated, too."" – Comics Beat"

Author Information

Robert Sergel was born in Boston, MA in 1982. He has a degree in Photo & Imaging from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. In the mid-2000's he was a member of the Transplant web comic collective. He draws the Ignatz-nominated comic series Eschew, a Best American Comics selection. SPACE: An Eschew Collection was published by Secret Acres and counted on Paste Magazine's best comics of the year. Bald Knobber is his first novel length comic. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

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