This is a delightful story about an aspect of childhood that is often overlooked: your relationships with the older non-relatives in your life. Maybe this isn’t as much of a thing currently; I don’t have kids and I’m not a kid, so it’s entirely possible that families rarely if ever interact with their neighbors any more. But back in the day! Back then (I’m a couple of years older than Matt, meaning that we both had our childhoods in the 80’s), it wasn’t at all odd to knock on the doors of elderly neighbors asking for candy or cookies, maybe hot chocolate if it was cold, to use their phone to call the parents to check in (and try to get more time before you had to come home), etc. That, if you haven’t guessed yet, is the “Herb” in the title. Matt’s first memory was actually at Herb’s house, after his wife had come home from a trip to the hospital. Matt and his family were chatting and joking with them before Herb’s wife took a drastic turn for the worse right in front of them, leaving Herb all alone in that house. Matt’s family got him a dog pretty quickly after that, and Matt would often stop by for cookies or just to watch tv and hang out with Herb. His family eventually moved a few miles away from Herb when he was about 10, which at the time basically meant that he lived on the other side of the world to Matt at the time. There was also the whole going through childhood, then puberty, then college thing (which distracts us all), meaning that Matt only saw Herb one other time. Herb wasn’t doing well at the time and Matt mostly wanted to get out of there, but years later he dug into Herb’s life to try to solve the mystery of what he was really like. This book is much more than just that story, as Matt also goes into detail about his reactions to his upcoming brother (conflicted, to say the least), his intentional (and unintentional) attempts at being a daredevil, his obsession with The Greatest American Hero, his relationship with his high school girlfriend’s mother… a life, basically. With plenty of bits skimmed over, because this isn’t a full autobiography, and he does a solid job of not straying too far from the overall theme. No shockers here because I’ve been a fan of his work for awhile now, but this is maybe his best comic (that covers a lot of ground, so it gets a qualifier) and it absolutely is worth checking out. $15
Posted by Kevin 
