Oni Press is starting its New York Comic Con off with a bang this year. During the pop culture mecca’s retailer day Wednesday, Oni announced it had acquired Dave Baker’s acclaimed Halloween Boy series for publication. According to Oni officials, the first volume, Last of the Halloween Boys, will be published in 2026.
Most recently, Baker was the creative behind the widely acclaimed (and Eisner-nominated) Mary Tyler MooreHawk. He serves as the writer, artist, and letterer of Halloween Boy and its signature duotone style.
“Halloween Boy is my attempt at making a two-fisted adventurer for the post-superhero age. Does the book feature megalomaniacal villains, inter-planetary warfare, and classic pulp-inspired escapades? You bet,” Baker says of the title. “But, it’s also a deeply personal reflection on family, fraternity, and purpose. The comics medium has been obsessively deconstructing and dismantling how we view what a hero is for the past forty years. I think there’s value in that, and some of those tendencies can even be seen in this project. However, when it came to creating The Demon Who Lives, I really wanted to re-construct the heroic iconography that lured me into this great medium as a child. To repurpose, remix, and rebuild the best aspects of these types of stories in a hyper-earnest and sincere way. Hopefully, The Man of a Thousand Fates means half as much to other people as he does to me. After all, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.”
Oni boss Hunter Gorinson echoed the sentiment, praising the series’ pulp-inspired work. To date, Baker has published seven volumes of Halloween Boy, each one containing 44 pages or so of story. Oni’s Last of the Halloween boys will collect those first five “volumes” into a single hardcover release.
“As anyone who has experienced Mary Tyler MooreHawk knows by now, Dave Baker is one of the most potently creative voices making and creating comics to emerge within this decade. Dave’s work is like riding a psychic vortex through eight decades of comics history – where Golden Age archetypes, underground comix, postmodern fiction, and, above all, some ripping good yarns all combine into a new kind of intensely calculated storytelling that defies the typical whims of space and time,” added Gorinson. “HALLOWEEN BOY is a brawling, bloody dose of 21st century pulp fiction with a brain buried underneath all of its bruises. Call your comic shop — because The Demon Who Lives is coming!”
New York Comic Con 2025 is being held at New York’s Jacob K. Javitz Center from Thursday, October 9th to Sunday, October 12th.
English (US) · 