Book Review: Manfried the Man by Caitlin Major

Wait, till you see my comic of tiny to normal size woman doing dog like things. Wait...Nevermind.

Manfried is a stray taken in by Steve Catson, a slacker with a dead-end job and nonexistent love life. Soon Manfried becomes the Garfield to Steve’s Jon Arbuckle: lazy, selfish, and sometimes maddening in his weird human behavior. Yet the pair depends on each other to get through life’s troubles. When Manfried runs away, Steve musters his meager resources to find his best man-friend and bring him home safe. Ultimately, both Steve and Manfried realize they’re capable of so much more than they thought.


You've probably seen that comic with the mansize cat and the mansize cat sitting on the key board. This is a whole graphic novel with that concept. I was intigued to see what they would do with a full novel of this idea.

The concept is interesting, but not much after that. There's just a not a lot of comical room for cat like creature doing cat things. Attempt is made to do more than just goofy gags.

The plot is quite standard to most Webcomics. Lovable misfit that needs to figure out his life, while friends are more together and judge him, with a cookie twist to get your attention. For those sort of things, this does it well enough. Steve's affection towards Manfried does play a major plot points, mostly him scared he will be a crazy man person.

Some funny moments and gags, mixed in with relatable life stuff.

The art style is nice and the colouring is done well to match scenes. It is a bit disturbing at first to look at tiny penises all the time, and none of the cats wear clothes, their balls are ignore though.

This world has left me with questions. Like they are no tiny female humans so how do they reproduce. It doesn't really matter, but it just a thought in my head. Especially as there are packs of them. I have questions, but I don't think there actual answers to them. I want to see the dogs which exist in this universe but the men are hybrid of both cats and dogs with what they do and how they behaviour. They're lazy, fight like cats but you can train them to do tricks.

Overall, I give this book 3/5 stars for canned hamburgers. I like this well enough, but I don't think I'm invested enough to pick up the sequel. I think it more we're not the right matches for each other, as they nothing I can point to say what wrong with it. If you're interested by the idea, I would say pick up  and give it a chance you're self. Maybe not the sequel to this, but I would check out more works by Caitlin Major.

I got this book for Review off Netgalley and it is being published by Quirk Books 1 May 2018.