Some spoilers ahead, so read with caution.
The art is beyond five stars. Page after page of beautiful linework, each stroke of ink is magnificently rendered. As an illustrator myself, I fell in love with nearly every panel.
Now, the story, I have more to say about.
The story doesn't fill me with triumph or awe, and I don't even necessarily agree with some of the theses the book seemingly presents, but it does fill me with a great deal of lingering thought. It presents a great many questions, few of which have readily available answers.
One thing that stands out to me is that there are few, if any, responsible or stable adults in this book. In large part, this points to the tremendous pressure of the Great Depression, and the manner in which it caused huge portions of the population to buckle into shadows of their former selves.
The protagonist, Freddie, watches his father lose his job, succumb to alcoholism, and ultimately run out on his two sons. He continues to write to them promising he's searching for a job, but all he succeeded in doing is making their situation worse, including taking all the money in the house when he left.
Sam, the self-proclaimed "King of Spain" in the disguise of a hobo, becomes Freddie's traveling companion and protector. In many ways, he is an echo of the failings of Freddie's father, and even relates to the feelings of inadequacy that caused him to flee -- he, too, ran out on his fiancée, out of shame for his perceived failure to find steady and sustaining employment.
Sam's fiancée is a figure whom he clearly idealizes, and when we finally meet her she does seem much more functional than most of the adult cast. But though she forgives Sam for running out on her, she seems to place the blame on other figures, such as his own father figure (another hobo who claims to be Jesse James) and even thirteen-year-old Freddie, who becomes a target of misdirected jealousy and whom she seems reluctant to even speak to.
Other adult characters are mostly hobos, figures who either help or hinder Freddie on his journey. The narrative extends a degree of sympathy and humanity to all of them, as a great deal of the story's thesis relies on the idea that anyone can fall victim to hard times and be battered into a lesser version of themself.
Mostly, this was effective, but it pointedly fell apart for me when the narrative appeared to extend a degree of sympathy to Joker, a hobo who had attempted to sexually assault Freddie. It seems to ascribe his pedophilia, at least in part, to mental illness developed from being on the road, even paralleled to Sam's drug-induced delusions later in the book (though Sam was never in any way predatory). To me, this feels like a false equivocation: hard times can make many people into a hobo, or even a thief, but certainly not a child rapist. Nor does any degree of mental illness excuse his attempts to prey on Freddie.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but oddly, it feels important to one of the greatest questions to book asks of the reader: how much choice in life do we really have? One of the most haunting moments of the book comes from a simple musing from Freddie, in which he speculates that adventure is simply a rationalization for something "inflicted upon those who couldn't run and hide," and "when we could run no further, the world found us in our hiding places and destroyed us, one by one."
It's in stark contrast to the dreams that sustain Freddie for much of the book -- he is an idealist at heart, and a kindred spirit with fellow dreamer Sam, who also veers between childlike hopefulness and the understandable belief that things will never improve. The book itself offers little by way of optimism, aside from sweet moments of connection between Freddie, Sam, and the people who help them.
However, towards the end of the book, Freddie appears to have a revelation that "making a difference" and "fighting back" are not necessarily forceful actions, but simply making the world a better place. He fixes a child's spinning top -- broken by some bullies Freddie had encountered -- and leaves it for the boy to find, which fills Freddie with a sense of accomplishment. I found this to be one of the most quietly hopeful elements of the novel: it seems to answer, we are not powerless. Even as a young homeless boy, Freddie finds that he can make the world a better place for someone else.
I have more to say, but I'll leave it there for now. I look forward to reading the sequel, and to seeing how it expands on the themes of this book.