McDaniel, Matthew – And Who is My… Neighbor?

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And Who is My… Neighbor?

I’ve been hoping that Matthew would branch out a bit more in his comics, and this is certainly a step in that direction, but the whole thing left me a bit cold. It’s essentially a modern retelling of the Good Samaritan story from the Bible. A young man gets beat up and left for dead, and a white middle class Republican, an evangelical conservative preacher, and a black liberal democrat libertarian (yes, this is how they’re all described and no, that’s not the start of a joke) all walk by him, with one of them stopping to help the poor guy. Which one stops to help tells you a bit about Matthew’s politics but that’s about it, and there haven’t been any changes or additions to the story to improve things. Why improve a classic, I suppose, but it’s a scant 6 pages (of three full page spreads, I cut one in half for the sample instead of giving too much of the story away), and it’s hard to avoid feeling slightly preached to. As for side annoyances, they’re here too, with the see-through cover image with the title, while a good idea in theory, really hard to read in practice. Then there’s the fact that there’s no identifying information of any kind in here, so it’s lucky this was still in the envelope because of my recent medical issues. Not much here to recommend this, frankly, although I did like the layout of the pages, but paradoxically I still think it’s a step in the right direction for the guy, at least in creative terms. No price, nothing on his website, but I’d guess $2.