Man V. Liver


By Neil Hinson & Paul Friedrich (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-5055-7                  eISBN: 978-1-4494-4400-6

This morning, if you are like most humans – or indeed, most carbon-based lifeforms – you might be suffering the well-deserved and generally self-inflicted effects of too much partying.

Our love affair with alcohol and other intoxicants is hard-wired into our DNA and forms a cornerstone of human commerce, religion (pro and/or anti The Hard Stuff!), culture and even storytelling.

How many of your favourite writers, artists and performers have or had mythic relationships with booze? How many did it kill or destroy?

It’s an inescapable fact: there’s something simultaneously super-cool, bitterly tragic and hilariously funny about getting, sloshed, smashed, snockered, shit-faced, pickled, tanked or any other of the hundreds of other euphemisms for falling four sheets to the wind…

Paul Friedrich is a Pop Artist, cartoonist and graphic novelist from Raleigh, North Carolina, equally famed for his compelling “Low Def” paintings and the strip feature Onion Head Monster.

His career was proceeding splendidly apace when he finally got together – over drinks – with old buddy and writer/journalist Neil Hinson to create almost by accident a series of one off cartoons that sold so well at comics conventions that they kept on going.

From one-off gags on napkins to self-published minicomics they persevered until they had enough for a book which was eagerly snapped up by syndicated strip specialist publisher Andrews McMeel. In 2013 this slim (154 x 14 x 160 mm), sleek hardback book/eBook was released before the entire enticing package was optioned by Disney for its online arm…

The premise is both simple and astoundingly attractive. Man is a single guy looking for momentary physical gratification, temporary love and another drink.

He well knows the inherent perils but it’s just so cool, life is short and tomorrow is another hangover day.

His conscience, common sense and liver don’t stand a chance against the hedonistic attraction of life in the now, and as he drinks, the obvious joys of social drinking and perpetual hitting on women results in telling insights of barstool philosophy which he graciously shares with any who will listen… even if they don’t want to…

Its not just the pithy sayings and devastating bon (and mal) mots which instantly capture the attention: our dashingly debonair lush is always fetchingly attired in the best of Rat Pack chic and although he’s no Sinatra, Dino or Don Draper he does his best work against a dazzling, apex-designed, primary coloured backdrop that screams “pay attention, I’m working here”…

Smart, pithy, Rye – sorry – wry, sardonic and punishingly sarcastic, this modern-day style counsellor indulges to the fullest in a celebration of the Life without Tomorrows and the result is both stunningly engaging and bitingly funny: an infallible series of sodden slogans to carry you home even if your friends won’t.
Man V. Liver © Neil Hinson and Paul Friedrich. All rights reserved.