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A boy’s book report on Reconstruction Era vigilantes known as the Bald Knobbers sends him on a quest for justice.
Middle-schooler Cole’s book report on Bald Knobbers, Reconstruction Era vigilantes, bears an uncanny resonance with his life. Donning a homemade Bald Knobber mask, Cole seeks to right wrongs perpetrated by his divorcing parents, mom’s new boyfriend, the school bully and his cat, Daisy. Like the real Bald Knobbers, Cole discovers the consequences of taking the law into your own hands.
"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