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A Matter of Life

I’ll confess, I was a little worried about this one. “An autobiographical meditation on fatherhood and faith”? Blech. Most of the comics I’ve seen about fatherhood seem to come from the perspective that these people have recently discovered parenting and small children, so the slightest details about each will be fascinating to the reader. Or you may recognize it from its real world equivalent: friends who have recently had children thinking that you want to hear every single “cute” thing that their child has said and done, no matter how mundane. Why yes, I am remarkably cynical about such things, why do you ask? But hey, this is still Jeffrey Brown, so there’s plenty of entertaining stuff in here. This is mostly about Jeffrey growing up, his early days dealing with faith (his father was a minister), and how he gradually just stopped buying into it. This always seems to happen after comparative religions classes, which makes me wonder why those obnoxious fundie groups haven’t tried to stamp them out yet. After all, it doesn’t help their case when kids can learn that whole sections of the bible were copied from various creation myths and stories from older religions. Anyway, this book wanders all over the place, as it also deals with Jeffrey’s relationship to his parents and brothers growing up, how he dealt with being stuck in church on a weekly basis, and his own confusion in how to raise his old kid. After all, he might not want to deal with religion any more, but there’s still the rest of the world to think about. I was a little hazy on his final conclusion on the religion angle, as he did call himself a Christian later in the story, but it seemed like that was only to be friendly to a lady he was chatting with on the street. Who hasn’t been stuck in one of those conversations, where your only options are to lie about your religious affiliation or be doomed to a lecture by a stranger about your choices in life? While this one did seem a bit more scattered than some of his past work, there are still plenty of laughs to be had and truths to be pondered. Not necessarily agreed with, depending on what you believe, but pondered. And if your heart isn’t as hardened to such things as mine is, all kinds of cute moments with his son. This is also in full color, which is such a lovely change of pace that I can pretty much recommend it on that alone. Check it out, think deep thoughts about your own religious choices and parenting decisions! $14.95