Manfried Saves the Day by Caitlin Major & Kelly Bastow

OK, first of all I probably should say that I'm not a "cat person." There is one in my house, and I guess I tolerate cats more than I would dogs (slobbery little monsters), but I'm not all that fond of dumb animals in general.

So I am in retrospect not the right reader for Manfried Saves the Day, a graphic novel by Caitlin Major (writer and colorist, copyright owner) and Kelly Bastow (artist) about a world where...(breathless) Get this! Anthropomorphic cats have a whole society just like our own! And they keep cute little naked "men" as pets! "Men" are just like cats! (Except they only come in one gender, and that's the gender that the creators are not, curiously.)

This is a sequel to Manfried the Man, which I have not read. The general rule is that the first book is better, and I have no reason to doubt that would be the case here, too. Maybe that book was more random-gag focused, or had a less cliched story. Anyway, if you like the idea of talking cats keeping tiny nonverbal humans as pets, try the first book.

Saves the Day has a plot so cliched that I kept expecting it to be subverted -- literally, every page I was thinking up other ways for it to go, and anticipating which of the twists Major would decide to take -- but I'm here to tell you that it ends up going exactly the way it looks like it will, roaring straight through all of the signposted events like a movie for particularly dull children before ending in a way Scooby-Doo would have sent back to the drawing board for a touch more nuance.

You see, there is a man shelter. And there is a mean landlord who wants to get rid of the man shelter to do mean-landlord things to it. And there is our hero, Steve, who has a demanding job and a girlfriend who is somehow even more demanding in ways that the creators don't seem to realize are not fair at all to Steve. That girlfriend, Henrietta, runs the man shelter, and is Ahab-level obsessive about it, though again Major is on Henrietta's side. And, inevitably, the only way to save the man shelter will be to win the annual Man Show, against (obviously) the highly-trained men of the mean landlord, who additionally will cheat in really obvious ways.

Can the scruffy underdogs beat the privileged jerks? [1] What do you think?

Since the actual plot of Saves the Day is annoying, predictable in its every straightforward second, and relies on Henrietta putting pressure on Steve in ways no one should tolerate, any pleasures of this book will rely on how much the reader enjoys seeing a little man-creature doing "adorable" cat behaviors.

See my first paragraph for context.

I did not enjoy this book. I think I only finished it because I did think Major couldn't possibly be writing the completely straight version of this story (and was wrong about that) and because it's short with lots of bright pretty pictures on every page. I do not recommend it for anyone with reading tastes anywhere near mine.


[1] ObMeatballsReference: It Just Doesn't Matter! It Just Doesn't Matter!