My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

Just finished reading Emil Ferris's amazing graphic novel and I can say, as a grizzled comics fan with wide-ranging tastes, that I've honestly never seen anything quite like it. Spectacular illustrations cover almost every inch of this huge volume, all printed on lined three-hole paper emulating the illustrated diary of the ten-year-old protagonist, a tough and beleaguered tomboy on the rough streets of 1960's Chicago. Well-written and deeply immersive, this piece drew me into the world of Karen, a monster-obsessed kid struggling with sexuality, race, poverty, and the violence of her surroundings. It is as dark a work as I've read in comics yet has a jaunty sort of zest for life in it that constantly pulls the narrative along and saves the reader from being overwhelmed by some of the disturbing elements within. It's especially astonishing as the first work from a writer/artist, working in seclusion for over six years. It reminds me, in all the best ways, of the confessional work of Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar, of the strange life-stories of Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes and Jeffrey Brown. It also reminds me of my own childhood, of how different a child can view the world, though my own early years were far less fearful. Ferris's illustrations also show an abiding love not just for horror movies (and particularly for our mutual Universal monster favorite, the Wolf Man) but for the great horror magazines of the 1960's from CREEPY and FAMOUS MONSTERS though the gory WEIRD and TERROR TALES varieties. Perhaps also some of the Spanish/Mexican horror mags, too, I'd guess. This is a great book. I can see it speaking to those that struggled with gender issues, but its scope is well beyond that, a love poem to lonely, different kids everywhere. I eagerly await the second part of the story, which will be published in early 2018. Go to Amazon and browse through a few pages, if you wish. It is not a story for children (and, honestly, I swore aloud when I hit the pages that will keep it out of most school libraries) but it speaks to the damaged child in each of us, I think.

She grew up in gritty Chicago loving monsters. I grew up in gritty New York, also loving monsters. My brothers and I lived for the days when, "Frankenstein" or, "The Wolfman" were on TV, or, "The Crawling Eye," or, "The Attack of the Crab Monsters," or "Them!" I loved comics. They taught me how to read. They made me WANT to read. Stan Lee's overblown scripts would send me to the dictionary, something that nothing else succeeded in doing, not my mother's cajoling or the scourges of the nuns. I loved the artistry, and collected my favorites. They kindled in me a love of all art. I knew the names of my favorite artists and writers, and looked for them on splash pages. My brothers and I spent all our time drawing and writing stories. This was not an approved pastime. I lived in a beautiful, but decrepit prewar complex of apartment buildings, all connected by roof, alley and underground tunnels. Secret doors and maze-like paths were our playground. I ran with a constantly shifting pack of kids as we scoured the neighborhood for adventure. The garbage heaps were our raw materials. This was our enchanted castle. Our family had dark secrets, secret shame, divorce and madness. My father disappeared one day, and I didn't find out what happened to him for twenty-five years. Monsters were a vacation from a reality that I couldn't understand. I understand Emil Ferris' vision. Her childhood world was like mine. Her heroine, Karen, is smarter than I was, but I had kindly neighbors that I cared for and who cared for me as well. I wasn't as brave as Karen. I didn't probe my mother's secrets, I just wanted to escape them. Emil Ferris' work is astonishing. It is beautiful and terrible and true. Her pen work and esthetic evokes and imitates the great masters. Her visual storytelling is fluid, sumptuous and poetic. Her story is sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always compelling. I can't wait for volume two.

As a monster-loving kid who grew up during the ‘60s and ‘70s, I identified with the scorned, mysterious phantoms of my favorite horror films. My fascination with these immortal creatures never died, lying buried from time to time and then resurging when the darkness within summoned that icily familiar grip. Reading Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters, I feel again that freezing familiarity, the clench of a kindred spirit. The narrator in Ferris’ stunningly illustrated graphic novel, like myself as an adolescent, seeks escape from her feelings of loneliness and alienation by immersing herself in fantasies of thrillingly compelling supernatural beasts. Ferris, writing from the perspective of the narrator, Karen, creates an equally enticing world of fantasy by blending stories and imagery from Karen’s experience as an urban Chicago preteen in the 1960s with depictions of the horror magazines and paintings Karen adores. The book , formatted to resemble a lined notebook sketch pad, brilliantly perpetuates the illusion that the reader is stepping into the imaginary realm of a creative and extremely perceptive young girl. Detailed interpretations of monster magazine covers and famous art works such as Fuseli’s “ The Nightmare” are juxtaposed with gruesome depictions of Karen’s neighbors and playfully doodled sketches of Karen as a trench-coated child werewolf. As Karen explores her interest in art, Ferris’ illustrations reveal a variety of styles—from the neon-lit grotesqueries of Ernst Kirchner and the German Expressionists to the luridly seductive pulp art of popular comics and the grittily unflattering portraits of Robert Crumb. Unlike many graphic novels, Ferris’ work focuses on inner conflicts, the dangerous secrets festering inside neighbors, schoolmates, and family members that threaten to emerge in monstrous form when exposed. Secrets connect the lives of Karen and the people she knows. During her attempts to unravel the mystery of her murdered neighbor Anka, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, Karen discovers secrets within her family and within herself. A growing awareness of her own sexuality and the tragic revelation of her mother’s fatal illness lead her to find strength and solace in her imagination. The monsters she loves, draws, and writes about are her salvation. Ferris’s depiction of Karen’s monster fantasies and homoerotic stirrings while struggling with family tragedies, violence, and prejudice, though at times grim, is nevertheless inspiring, infused with wit, a sense of childhood resilience and untarnished insight. Like the enduring, undying creatures of the night that Karen idolizes, Ferris’ graphic novel (the first in a series) fascinates and enthralls, giving readers a tantalizing bite that leaves us craving more.

I could pile on many more superlatives for this masterpiece, yet another graphic novel that testifies to the genre’s bona fides as literature (I’m talking to those “purists” who still refuse to acknowledge the artistic potential of graphic novels). Emil Ferris’ narrative relies just as heavily on visual text as it does on verbal text (perhaps even more so) as she tells the melancholy tale of Karen, a young girl in late 1960s Chicago struggling to make sense of just about every aspect of her life. Confusion and ambiguity seem to define her world. Her neighbor Anka has been shot dead, and no one seems to know how or why. Her mother is dying of cancer. Her brother Deeze loves her but shields her from the truth. Kids at school bully her. She loves visiting the museum. She’s developing feelings for one of her friends, another girl who seems interested in her too. Martin Luther King is assassinated. Karen believes if only she were a monster, she would have a sense of power over her world–a sense of control that seems to elude her as she edges closer to the truth about everything that perplexes her. I fully intend to read the second volume of this magnum opus, but I need some time to catch my breath and process the brilliance of this initial volume first. Spectacular.

This book is so big, I am having trouble reading it. It is not comfortable to hold while reading. And it is so thick, it makes it awkward. I know this is a strange thing to complain about, but it really bothered me. I finally finished reading this. It took me over a month, which is very unusual for me. I saw a lot of people posting about this book on Litsy, and that made me want to read it. I was hoping for more of a horror story feel to it. That was not at all what this book was about. I love reading about Anka's childhood. Her life story is so interesting. She goes through so much. I found it all so enthralling. For me, this is the best part of the book. Karen's life was interesting. So different from my own upbringing. The drawings were very good. I really liked the recreation of the horror magazine covers. All of the people seem rather ugly. So this book was pretty good, but I don't know if I will read the next in the series.

I was very pleased with the incredible artwork in this graphic novel. The ballpoint pen drawings with limited use of color (for the most part) is done in such detail that it just blew me away. There are just page after page of awesome artwork and interesting pictures. The story is not the typical graphic novel or comic book subject matter. I wasn't sure what to expect, and the description doesn't really capture the feel of the entire book. If you want a "hard-boiled" detective story, this is not one. However, if you like interesting stories with the exploration of a place and time and the slow reveal of info about a diverse cast of many characters. . . this may be for you. Though the book is clearly not intended for young kids, the content adds up to the same mix of occasional nudity or sex, adult themes, troubled characters and similar content you would expect out of a PG-13 coming-of-age movie. The main character explores her initial feelings of romantic/sexual attraction, and her newfound understanding of more adult undertones in her everyday life that may have been missed previously. The story does seem to jump around without smooth transition to some extent, but as a result you get a lot of "meat" in the course of the book, which is quite long and a large format. The abruptness of some of the topic shifts also fits well with the sketchbook/journal nature of the entire piece, which is really incredible. When you read the more negative reviews, focus on the description of the story and the book, not the subjective opinion of the author. I can see how some people would not be as interested in this book as I am (from a subjective point of view), but the art alone is worth the cost of admission. I read a lot of comic books and novels, and this bridges the gap to some extent to create an interesting story that may meander some, but it always seems to lead somewhere I can't wait to be led. As part one or a three part story, there is no real neat ending (of course), but I am interested to read more and I can't wait for part 2.

Incredible art and story.

After even just a cursory flip through this great big book, you’ll understand why writer and artist Emil Ferris spent over six years working on it. Each page is a cross-hatched labor of love. It’s written as the heavily illustrated diary of a 10-year-old girl named Karen Reyes who’s obsessed with monsters (depicting herself as a wolfgirl), especially the undead sort, and longs for the day one finally pops out of the shadows to make her one of them. This singular story grabs you from page one with hairy, clawed hands and carries you along at a brisk pace as Karen investigates the suspicious death and mysterious life of her upstairs neighbor (drawing herself as a wolfgirl detective in a trenchcoat and fedora), navigates awkward friendships and gut-wrenching family issues, and discovers her own queerness. A Chicago native, Ferris set her tale in Chicago in late 60s. Having grown up there myself, I enjoyed recognizing city landmarks and it was a pleasure to explore the Art Institute of Chicago through Karen’s eyes, a place where I spent so much time myself. Karen’s voice and emotions feel so very real to me. For all the talk about and drawings of monsters, this is a very human story with wonderfully complex and well-realized characters. That combined with the numerous expressive drawings on each and every page (drawings that ought to be studied at length even though the story is a rapid page-turner), makes this an exceptional monster-girl coming-of-age story. I’m eager to read volume 2...

Imagine (if you can) someone taking David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", and gene-splicing it with the classic movie monsters of Universal Studios, the seedy underbelly of Chicago, and a pre-teen's gorgeous biro-pen-rendered journal. That's about the best summary I can come up with for "My Favourite Thing is Monsters" by Emil Ferris. Emil has constructed a story world like no other, written from the perspective of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, who is thrown into a deviously twisted mystery involving the murder of her upstairs neighbour. Karen's investigation leads her to the taped journals of Anka (her beautiful neighbour) and her harrowing past. This is one hugely thick and immensely satisfying book to get wrapped up in. Laid out against the backdrop of a foolscap-lined spiral bound journal, Emil's artwork will grab you by the throat and shake you. Exquisite ballpen drawings intermixed with garishly coloured (but again gorgeous) pulp horror comic book covers and scratchier pen drawings, if nothing else it's a visual feast (and I've become completely obsessed with drawing and mimicking this style myself in my own art). Beyond that though it's a gripping read as the story darts between Karen's observations of her dying mother, her louche brother and of course deeper digs into Anka's life. It took a bit of getting hold of this in the UK but you can find copies (I highly recommend Speedy Kitty as a reseller if you want a copy pronto in great condition btw). It's probably one of the best graphic novels I've ever read (and I've read a lot), and I'm overjoyed to hear a sequel is on the way. You need this in your life, simple as.

Weird, beautiful and wonderful!

This book has 'a must read' written all over it. Fantastic debut by Emil Ferris. Inventive, beautiful and sincere, the work presented as a diary entries of a 10-year-old Chicago girl Karen Reyes who lives in the world of monsters but that is only part of the story.

Non ci sono parole per descrivere la bellezza di questo libro. Ogni pagina è meritevole di attenzione sin nei minimi dettagli. Imperdibile.

Tem tudo para dar errado: desenhos estranhos, uma história meio desconexa... uma certa sensualidade meio perversa... e poxa, essa mulher aí da capa, o que é isso? Desenho à caneta esferográfica? Bom, é isso mesmo. A ilustradora teve um problema gravíssimo de saúde o que lhe custou toda a mobilidade nas mãos. Quando retornou, é isso o que ela conseguiu... antes que tenha pena, é uma verdadeira obra de arte! Um ambiente meio mafioso, tipo década de 1940... e uma menina monstra, literalmente no cio... hesitei em baixar a amostra, quando cheguei ao final... bom, eu realmente queria mais!