my favorite thing is monsters vol 1 by emil ferris

She is struggling with her sexuality at a time she is only just becoming aware it even exists, and as she creeps into the world of adults, is also become more clearly aware of the lives of her older brother, Deeze, and her mother.īut that makes the book sound awfully basic, and it’s anything but. On the surface, it’s a monologue by young Karen Reyes, obsessed with monster movies and visualizing herself as a werewolf girl in order to rationalize the difference in her that the world perceives and acts on. So sprawling is Ferris’ book that it’s actually hard to pin down the story in any satisfying way - that is, a way that actually captures what the book is about. It’s her first graphic novel and given the reception, not her last, and you can only hope that the quality that makes this book so mesmerizing - simply put, that of an energetic outsider - is retained. Ferris is a Chicago-based artist who had worked in illustration and toy design, but after a debilitating battle with West Nile Virus, went back to art school and redirected her energy to this graphic novel that reads like a memoir, though my understanding is that it is at best based on her childhood, with a biography hidden inside. Visually, the story is told in Ferris’ trademarked style of a breathtakingly seamless combination of panel sequences and cartoon montages.It’s fair to say that Emil Ferris’ sprawling My Favorite Thing Is Monsters - volume one of a two volume work - came out of absolutely nowhere for many people.

In this second book, the cast of characters introduced in Volume 1 of Emil Ferris’ critically acclaimed masterpiece experience revelations and epiphanies that both resolve and deepen the mysteries earlier visited upon them. She wrestles with her own sexual identity, and tells her good friend, Sam Silverberg, that the best birthday present she could receive is to ‘feel like there is someone in the history of the world who has been like me.’ Privately, she continues to investigate her neighbour’s recent death and discovers one last cassette tape that sheds light upon Anka’s heroic activities in Nazi Germany.

Young Karen attends the Yippie-organised Festival of Life in Grant Park and finds herself swept up in a police stomping. 2 takes place is tumultuous and violent Chicago in the summer of 1968. In the conclusion of this two-part graphic novel, set in 1960s Chicago, dark mysteries past and present abound while 10-year-old Karen tries to solve them.

My favorite thing is monsters vol 1 by emil ferris