Do not judge a book by its cover has usually been a good rule to follow for me. A lot of the time, a cover does not cover enough of the story for you to really understand the “down and dirty” or the “nitty gritty meaning of things” and reading past the cover of your book (and maybe especially with comics and graphic novels), is smart. However, with Lost Boy by Jay Martin (and an introduction by Shawn Mendes highly recommending Martin’s work) you could judge by its cover.
This is because nothing is going on in the cover, except a boy and what looks like a dog (at first glance, but is a fawn), walking away from the viewer. And that’s the majority of the book. Therefore, I feel that I’m not the reader for this graphic novel as I needed more to the story. Things felt unbelievable to me which took me out of the moments as they were happening. It is also slightly supernatural, but all adventure story with the fact the boy of the story is trying to survive a deadly car crash and the extreme cold of the mountain; not to mention wolves and a not so planned “Penguin plunge” into an icy lake.
However, interesting illustrations and our solo main character do have their moments. Again, you get an idea of the style of things from the cover. The dark colors, the busy woodland details. Things are deceptively simple, but not overly “deep in meaning,” yet do pay attention to things. The part that saves this story for me are the illustrations. They are oddly soothing despite the adventure at hand. But of course, when things are dangerous (the icy lake, the wolves attacking), things are intense and visually you see this with what details are given and what colors are used. Black, blue and shades of red are the main color scheme.
Potential triggers include, but not limited to: car accident, death, parental death, blood, vomit, serious injury, animal death, wolves attacking the deer and boy, near death experience.