Cookies and Herb. Matt MacFarland. Fieldmouse Press. 2025. 72pp. $15.
Thank goodness for the wise and gentle elders in our lives. If not for their patience and guidance, we’d be all the lesser for it. Matt MacFarland beautifully depicts these special human connections in his comics–and not in a typically sentimental way but in his own distinctively direct and honest approach.
I first discovered MacFarland’s comics in 2016 with his on-going noir series, Dark Pants, about a pair of cursed pants that make their way from one owner to the next. Read my review here. This new title, in comparison, is like night and day while also neatly fitting into the MacFarland universe. All of his characters, whether in a dark comedy or in childhood auto-bio, share a similar vulnerability.
MacFarland’s sweet spot of inquiry is exploring the human condition in its most tender moments. He has already proven himself quite capable with, Dark Pants, his one-person anthology series. He’s moved on to a tongue-in-cheek exploration of married life in Scenes From a Marriage and other assorted short form comics. He recently did a hilarious comic featuring a very sensitive and vulnerable Big Foot for Volume 6 of the Rust Belt Review anthology.
MacFarland looks back at his childhood and coming-of-age in this new book. He begins his story with him as an alienated little boy in the early 1980s. Little Matt finds solace in his regular visits to his next-door neighbor, Herb, a retiree who seems to have an endless supply of cookies on hand. The drawing style is fun and simple and could easily fit within a children’s book format. Ah, but then things do get dark. A few pages in, little Matt is given the news that his mom is expecting and he will soon have a little brother. While this would be potentially exciting news, Matt finds it rather threatening. No sentimental journey here. In fact, Matt’s conflicted feelings come to a head when, given a chance to hold his baby brother, he drops him.
There’s an impressive steady pace to this comic that seamlessly follows Matt from childhood all the way to a young man out of college and onward into middle age. There are some delightful visual treats along the way too. I especially like how MacFarland depicts Matt’s disoriented POV as he’s opening his eyes from sleep with eye-shaped panels gradually opening. Another nice touch is after Matt’s famous tricycle crash, the one that gives him his nickname of “Crash.” In the panel right after the disaster, characters are depicted upside down as per Matt’s POV. Through it all, the reader is treated to a very immersive and empathetic experience. Matt, the boy, young man and adult, evolve and gain the wisdom that often feels comes too late and yet also seems to arrive in the only way it could possibly have arrived.
