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My Favorite Thing Is Monsters #1
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Graphic Novels & Comics (2017)Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge. Full-color illustrations throughout.
416 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,211 reviews
June 8, 2022
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best graphic novel! what will happen?
chris ware called this book Absolutely astonishing. chris ware is not stephen king, strewing his blurbs all over town, and if he says something, you can trust it.
but if you need more convincing, here are some thoughts from someone who is not an industry superstar and hasn’t gotten much sleep lately.
this is truly one of the best books i have ever read, and i don’t mean just in the graphic novel category - i mean all books/all time. however, this story could not have been told as well sans artwork - the two components twine together into this perfectly symbiotic storytelling entity with each mode taking on equal weight. it’s an absolutely visceral reading experience and i’m slack-jawed by how ambitious it is and how well it succeeds. i read this monster in one intense session that left me feeling completely scooped out inside. i was so deeply immersed in this world that “coming back” was a near-physical jolt, and that kind of thing rarely happens to me, but i loved it.
i’d heard nothing but praise for this book, and it was selling from the store like extremely heavy hotcakes, but i was reluctant to buy it because forty dollars for a paperback is pretty steep, especially since many graphic novels, even the long ones, can be read in under an hour and then are just one more thing in your rearview. but eventually, i broke down and lugged the hefty beast home and kept it near the bedcave for whenever i’d be in the mood for a long-ass picture book.
and one night i was and within ten pages i was hooked.
this book is absolutely everything i could have wanted in a book and it is now so much more than “one more thing in my rearview.” i don’t even know if i can do the story any justice, but it’s easy enough to sell the art - bearing in mind that someone who knows more about art that i do would be able to use all the impressive art-words, but i will do my best.
it’s really fucking good!
no, but seriously - this woman kills it all over town.
there’s realistic stuff
cartoony stuff
REALLY cartoony stuff
stuff that’s mostly realistic but has cartoony details and proportions
and she also does a mean homage to pulp horror magazines
and reproductions of paintings so famous, even i recognize them, so forgery would not be a bad second career choice for her
the range of styles is technically impressive and it also broadens the visual interest and enhances the reader’s take on the characters’ moods and inner lives. and if that weren’t enough, this variegated quality is mirrored in the writing - she has a facility writing across themes and tones and emotions and genres and subject matters and has created a work with a profoundly emotional texture that will make you laugh at its odd and perfect descriptions
and also cry (or feel the urge to cry, which is unusual enough for me) at a small expression of grief happening quietly in a corner of a larger grief tapestry.
she also writes outsider characters so freaking well, and not just limited to one kind of outsider experience, but all those little bits of physical difference or details or flaws or mistakes less-evident-to-others that set us apart or make us feel alone - there’s a character in here for that. which made it feel similar to Infinite Jest to me, but only in that one aspect. this isn’t a true panoply because it’s essentially told through one voice/perspective, but the range of encountered characters and the heavy smog of loneliness definitely made me think of IJ.
because this is blisteringly emotive stuff.
it’s haunting and it bleeds but it is also celebratory and basically it is everything ever including cats
and karens
but NOT the circus.
i could go on and on, but it makes more sense for you to just go read it now and review it better than i have. it's great, and it's only the first part of what is either one or two more books - sources vary.
************************************************
this is one of the best books i have ever read. hopefully i can get back into the spirit of reviewing, because this book certainly deserves all of my sloppily enthusiastic verbal leg-humping, but i'm just a husk these days. i got one last rally in me. somewhere.
come to my blog!
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best graphic novel! what will happen?
chris ware called this book Absolutely astonishing. chris ware is not stephen king, strewing his blurbs all over town, and if he says something, you can trust it.
but if you need more convincing, here are some thoughts from someone who is not an industry superstar and hasn’t gotten much sleep lately.
this is truly one of the best books i have ever read, and i don’t mean just in the graphic novel category - i mean all books/all time. however, this story could not have been told as well sans artwork - the two components twine together into this perfectly symbiotic storytelling entity with each mode taking on equal weight. it’s an absolutely visceral reading experience and i’m slack-jawed by how ambitious it is and how well it succeeds. i read this monster in one intense session that left me feeling completely scooped out inside. i was so deeply immersed in this world that “coming back” was a near-physical jolt, and that kind of thing rarely happens to me, but i loved it.
i’d heard nothing but praise for this book, and it was selling from the store like extremely heavy hotcakes, but i was reluctant to buy it because forty dollars for a paperback is pretty steep, especially since many graphic novels, even the long ones, can be read in under an hour and then are just one more thing in your rearview. but eventually, i broke down and lugged the hefty beast home and kept it near the bedcave for whenever i’d be in the mood for a long-ass picture book.
and one night i was and within ten pages i was hooked.
this book is absolutely everything i could have wanted in a book and it is now so much more than “one more thing in my rearview.” i don’t even know if i can do the story any justice, but it’s easy enough to sell the art - bearing in mind that someone who knows more about art that i do would be able to use all the impressive art-words, but i will do my best.
it’s really fucking good!
no, but seriously - this woman kills it all over town.
there’s realistic stuff
cartoony stuff
REALLY cartoony stuff
stuff that’s mostly realistic but has cartoony details and proportions
and she also does a mean homage to pulp horror magazines
and reproductions of paintings so famous, even i recognize them, so forgery would not be a bad second career choice for her
the range of styles is technically impressive and it also broadens the visual interest and enhances the reader’s take on the characters’ moods and inner lives. and if that weren’t enough, this variegated quality is mirrored in the writing - she has a facility writing across themes and tones and emotions and genres and subject matters and has created a work with a profoundly emotional texture that will make you laugh at its odd and perfect descriptions
and also cry (or feel the urge to cry, which is unusual enough for me) at a small expression of grief happening quietly in a corner of a larger grief tapestry.
she also writes outsider characters so freaking well, and not just limited to one kind of outsider experience, but all those little bits of physical difference or details or flaws or mistakes less-evident-to-others that set us apart or make us feel alone - there’s a character in here for that. which made it feel similar to Infinite Jest to me, but only in that one aspect. this isn’t a true panoply because it’s essentially told through one voice/perspective, but the range of encountered characters and the heavy smog of loneliness definitely made me think of IJ.
because this is blisteringly emotive stuff.
it’s haunting and it bleeds but it is also celebratory and basically it is everything ever including cats
and karens
but NOT the circus.
i could go on and on, but it makes more sense for you to just go read it now and review it better than i have. it's great, and it's only the first part of what is either one or two more books - sources vary.
************************************************
this is one of the best books i have ever read. hopefully i can get back into the spirit of reviewing, because this book certainly deserves all of my sloppily enthusiastic verbal leg-humping, but i'm just a husk these days. i got one last rally in me. somewhere.
come to my blog!
August 24, 2022
8/26/22: Get ready! Volume two--the concluding volume!--after years of our waiting, has a publication date, 9/22/22. Time to reread the first volume to get ready?
7/12/21: Reread for summer YA comics class. As with any rich and complex novel with great aspirations, you can find new things in every reading.
7/26/18 Read this for the fourth time in less than a year and a half, in part because I have now taught it three times in that span of time for different classes. This time I read it for my summer graphic novels and comics class. This is the first of two huge volumes, and who knows when that second volume will come out [September 22, 2022, I just said!]. The first volume itself took many years to finally see the light of day, so we will just have to be patient. This in part defines the serialized reading experience: Waiting (and trying to remember what happened when you first began reading).
A couple notes: I just read An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration From The Private Sketchbooks Of Artists, Illustrators And Designers, and My Favorite Thing is Monsters is in part written as if it were the illustrated sketchbook of a ten-year-old girl--she's copying covers of monster comics, drawing Uptown Chicago people and buildings as well as journaling/telling the story of her year. Emil Ferris rides buses and trains (as Carl Sandburg did, only to write poems!) and as her protagonist does, sketches interesting-looking people as she goes. This is a love letter to Chicago, acknowledging some of the horrors here, too, of course.
Also, the 2018 Eisner Awards were just announced ten days ago: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters took best writer/artist, best coloring and best graphic album!! Yay, Emil Ferris!!! She deserves all the accolades, all the stars.
11/18/17 Read three times in one year!? Second time taught, this time for Fall 2017 YA class. My vote for best graphic novel/comics series of the year.
7/18/17 I only read this long (414 page!) book--the first of a trilogy--in May, and now have reread it for a class on YA Graphic Novels with a focus on strong girl characters. Karen, the main character here, is from 10-12 in this book, so is a little young for YA, but this is not really a book for younger readers, either. It is a coming-of-age story, a murder mystery, a socio/cultural and political history of Chicago in the late sixties, a shout-out for comics and art, though maybe in particular a nod to pulpy monster comics. It is a book about "monsters"--the mythological ones--and actual monsters (werewolves vs. Hitler and racists, for example). It is a story of the Holocaust and all racism bursting into the burning of Chicago in the riots of the late sixties, sexual identity and family and grief and friendship, and somehow it works and connects everything together. It's a sprawling epic and at the same time an intimate family and neighborhood tale, with great drawing and storytelling and characters. It does feature some sexual acts, nudity, so consider that if buying for your 14-year-old who is into comics. Still, for adults, this is a must read!
5/12/17 Wow, wow, wow. This is one of the comics events of the year, in my opinion, already something I would name already as one of the greatest comics/graphic novels of all time, and I just read it once, over a couple weeks time. Breath-taking. And it was written by someone unknown, and not by someone famous or popular or celebrated in the international media (such as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Alison Bechdel, Brian K. Vaughn and those folks), or even people I personally love that are in that second tier, maybe, like Ed Brubaker and Jeff Lemire, but a woman whose first (!) graphic novel is about a young girl growing up in uptown Chicago in the late sixties. Let me just say you can’t write a breathtaking monster like this book twice in a lifetime. This is her Fun Home, her Maus, so pay attention and get this book, I’m not exaggerating! It is just the first volume, an epic Moby Dick-sized book with the whole sprawling world in it, like Moby Dick.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, written and hand-drawn on the facsimile of a lined legal pad notebook, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazine covers and images. So it is a story of loving monsters set against a cultural history that references the killing of JFK and MLK and the riots of the sixties on the grand socio-political level, and it deals with Karen Reyes as junior detective trying to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor who was early on raised in a brothel. So we get Nazi Germany and American racism and mass murder and child prostitution on a grand scale in Europe in the forties echoed in the racism and social turmoil and prostitution and sexual abuse of sixties Chicago. And in a loving and often hilarious family setting!
The range and depth of this narrative is truly breath-taking. It involves racism, yes, but it also involves glbtq issues. It's about identity, featuring people who are "different" from the norm (the M.O.B., or the Masses of Ordinary and Boring) and who are seen by that MOB as monsters but who themselves embrace being different, owning themselves as (good) monsters. It involves the story of her hilariously superstitious multi-racial mother and her hot and tumultuous artist brother Deeze (Diego [Rivera] and [Emilio] Zapata), who takes her to the Chicago Art Institute and takes her “into” various iconic artworks. It involves the pulp horror comics culture of the sixties Ferris and Karen so love set against a background of real bad monsters such as Hitler and the murderers of JFK and Dr. King, and good monsters who just want to be free, like Karen and Deeze! It is often very funny, as well, with deft insights and sometimes pretty unfiltered sexual content and language. The storytelling is ambitious, multilayered, uh, I’m just astounded by it and even though I have only read it once I will begin again, and read it even more closely. But it is a huge book, a tome! It has the whole world in it, like many big books.
Some highlights, (besides the amazing drawing that splits the difference between ten year old art journal and accomplished draftsperson and the complex layered storytelling):
*When Karen is bullied in elementary school she gives her classmates horror Valentines featuring monsters instead of the boring Cupid (and gets in a bit of trouble with the nuns).
*The “cootie step” in school everyone has to avoid.
*Deeze and all his girlfriends (that Karen sometimes walks in on, oops). Some of these girlfriends are prostitutes that he helps out when he can.
* The Vesica Piscis: http://www.halexandria.org/dward097.htm. How central this is to painting, to art, to civilization! Look it up if you don't know it! As Deeze says, most creative work starts with the Vesica Piscis. And in a couple pages of looking at a couple masterpieces at the Chicago Art Institute where Karen goes with Deeze (and us) on a regular basis, Karen shows us how it works as we view paintings.
*All the visits to the Chicago Art Institute, where some of the paintings Deeze introduces her to become some of her "best friends."
*Anka, the tragic beauty.
*Mama, who lives by crazy superstitions
*Deeze, the loverboy and devoted brother and son
*And last but not least Karen, the werewolf detective girl, one of the great characters of all comics history!
Part of my love for this book comes from the fact that it is about a time in the Midwest I also lived through: My parents took me from Grand Rapids, Michigan at least twice a year to visit the various stunning Chicago museums, and always to the Art Institute. I live here now, but even if I didn’t I would know every painting she references (and draws with special skill!), thanks to my Mom. I was in elementary school when JFK was murdered, and in high school when MLK was killed and the riots erupted all over this country in rage. So I in some ways lived this late sixties story, and yet Karen's is nothing like my staid Dutch family. If you read one comics book this year, this is the one to read.
P.S.: Just in, interview with Ferris:
http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/201...
7/12/21: Reread for summer YA comics class. As with any rich and complex novel with great aspirations, you can find new things in every reading.
7/26/18 Read this for the fourth time in less than a year and a half, in part because I have now taught it three times in that span of time for different classes. This time I read it for my summer graphic novels and comics class. This is the first of two huge volumes, and who knows when that second volume will come out [September 22, 2022, I just said!]. The first volume itself took many years to finally see the light of day, so we will just have to be patient. This in part defines the serialized reading experience: Waiting (and trying to remember what happened when you first began reading).
A couple notes: I just read An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration From The Private Sketchbooks Of Artists, Illustrators And Designers, and My Favorite Thing is Monsters is in part written as if it were the illustrated sketchbook of a ten-year-old girl--she's copying covers of monster comics, drawing Uptown Chicago people and buildings as well as journaling/telling the story of her year. Emil Ferris rides buses and trains (as Carl Sandburg did, only to write poems!) and as her protagonist does, sketches interesting-looking people as she goes. This is a love letter to Chicago, acknowledging some of the horrors here, too, of course.
Also, the 2018 Eisner Awards were just announced ten days ago: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters took best writer/artist, best coloring and best graphic album!! Yay, Emil Ferris!!! She deserves all the accolades, all the stars.
11/18/17 Read three times in one year!? Second time taught, this time for Fall 2017 YA class. My vote for best graphic novel/comics series of the year.
7/18/17 I only read this long (414 page!) book--the first of a trilogy--in May, and now have reread it for a class on YA Graphic Novels with a focus on strong girl characters. Karen, the main character here, is from 10-12 in this book, so is a little young for YA, but this is not really a book for younger readers, either. It is a coming-of-age story, a murder mystery, a socio/cultural and political history of Chicago in the late sixties, a shout-out for comics and art, though maybe in particular a nod to pulpy monster comics. It is a book about "monsters"--the mythological ones--and actual monsters (werewolves vs. Hitler and racists, for example). It is a story of the Holocaust and all racism bursting into the burning of Chicago in the riots of the late sixties, sexual identity and family and grief and friendship, and somehow it works and connects everything together. It's a sprawling epic and at the same time an intimate family and neighborhood tale, with great drawing and storytelling and characters. It does feature some sexual acts, nudity, so consider that if buying for your 14-year-old who is into comics. Still, for adults, this is a must read!
5/12/17 Wow, wow, wow. This is one of the comics events of the year, in my opinion, already something I would name already as one of the greatest comics/graphic novels of all time, and I just read it once, over a couple weeks time. Breath-taking. And it was written by someone unknown, and not by someone famous or popular or celebrated in the international media (such as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Alison Bechdel, Brian K. Vaughn and those folks), or even people I personally love that are in that second tier, maybe, like Ed Brubaker and Jeff Lemire, but a woman whose first (!) graphic novel is about a young girl growing up in uptown Chicago in the late sixties. Let me just say you can’t write a breathtaking monster like this book twice in a lifetime. This is her Fun Home, her Maus, so pay attention and get this book, I’m not exaggerating! It is just the first volume, an epic Moby Dick-sized book with the whole sprawling world in it, like Moby Dick.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, written and hand-drawn on the facsimile of a lined legal pad notebook, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazine covers and images. So it is a story of loving monsters set against a cultural history that references the killing of JFK and MLK and the riots of the sixties on the grand socio-political level, and it deals with Karen Reyes as junior detective trying to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor who was early on raised in a brothel. So we get Nazi Germany and American racism and mass murder and child prostitution on a grand scale in Europe in the forties echoed in the racism and social turmoil and prostitution and sexual abuse of sixties Chicago. And in a loving and often hilarious family setting!
The range and depth of this narrative is truly breath-taking. It involves racism, yes, but it also involves glbtq issues. It's about identity, featuring people who are "different" from the norm (the M.O.B., or the Masses of Ordinary and Boring) and who are seen by that MOB as monsters but who themselves embrace being different, owning themselves as (good) monsters. It involves the story of her hilariously superstitious multi-racial mother and her hot and tumultuous artist brother Deeze (Diego [Rivera] and [Emilio] Zapata), who takes her to the Chicago Art Institute and takes her “into” various iconic artworks. It involves the pulp horror comics culture of the sixties Ferris and Karen so love set against a background of real bad monsters such as Hitler and the murderers of JFK and Dr. King, and good monsters who just want to be free, like Karen and Deeze! It is often very funny, as well, with deft insights and sometimes pretty unfiltered sexual content and language. The storytelling is ambitious, multilayered, uh, I’m just astounded by it and even though I have only read it once I will begin again, and read it even more closely. But it is a huge book, a tome! It has the whole world in it, like many big books.
Some highlights, (besides the amazing drawing that splits the difference between ten year old art journal and accomplished draftsperson and the complex layered storytelling):
*When Karen is bullied in elementary school she gives her classmates horror Valentines featuring monsters instead of the boring Cupid (and gets in a bit of trouble with the nuns).
*The “cootie step” in school everyone has to avoid.
*Deeze and all his girlfriends (that Karen sometimes walks in on, oops). Some of these girlfriends are prostitutes that he helps out when he can.
* The Vesica Piscis: http://www.halexandria.org/dward097.htm. How central this is to painting, to art, to civilization! Look it up if you don't know it! As Deeze says, most creative work starts with the Vesica Piscis. And in a couple pages of looking at a couple masterpieces at the Chicago Art Institute where Karen goes with Deeze (and us) on a regular basis, Karen shows us how it works as we view paintings.
*All the visits to the Chicago Art Institute, where some of the paintings Deeze introduces her to become some of her "best friends."
*Anka, the tragic beauty.
*Mama, who lives by crazy superstitions
*Deeze, the loverboy and devoted brother and son
*And last but not least Karen, the werewolf detective girl, one of the great characters of all comics history!
Part of my love for this book comes from the fact that it is about a time in the Midwest I also lived through: My parents took me from Grand Rapids, Michigan at least twice a year to visit the various stunning Chicago museums, and always to the Art Institute. I live here now, but even if I didn’t I would know every painting she references (and draws with special skill!), thanks to my Mom. I was in elementary school when JFK was murdered, and in high school when MLK was killed and the riots erupted all over this country in rage. So I in some ways lived this late sixties story, and yet Karen's is nothing like my staid Dutch family. If you read one comics book this year, this is the one to read.
P.S.: Just in, interview with Ferris:
http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/201...
September 16, 2017
OMG! This book is awesome! It's freaking huge too. I have a picture of it next to my pen but it still doesn't do it justice. And it's heavy! I love it =)
Karen Reyes is a little girl that is trying to figure out what happened to her neighbor. She was a holocaust survivor that was killed.
The book is written in a notebook style by Karen with drawings and stories. The artwork is totally awesome! Karen draws herself as a werewolf <-- she could really be!
The story goes through her neighbor Anka's life and Karen's own life. It seems like the kids in school were bullies to her. She did get one friend but I think she secretly had a crush on her. Until, her friends parents broke them up because of all the monster stuff.
Karen's brother Deeze bought her copies of Dread, Spectral and Ghastly. These were horror magazines and they show front covers of some of them through out the book.
I think this was a wonderful book and I really wish I could draw and write like this book was formatted because I would be filling notebooks full of this stuff! It made me so happy. I didn't understand the story all of the way but who cares, I had fun =)
I'm leaving you with some pictures in no uncertain order.
Mel ♥
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
Karen Reyes is a little girl that is trying to figure out what happened to her neighbor. She was a holocaust survivor that was killed.
The book is written in a notebook style by Karen with drawings and stories. The artwork is totally awesome! Karen draws herself as a werewolf <-- she could really be!
The story goes through her neighbor Anka's life and Karen's own life. It seems like the kids in school were bullies to her. She did get one friend but I think she secretly had a crush on her. Until, her friends parents broke them up because of all the monster stuff.
Karen's brother Deeze bought her copies of Dread, Spectral and Ghastly. These were horror magazines and they show front covers of some of them through out the book.
I think this was a wonderful book and I really wish I could draw and write like this book was formatted because I would be filling notebooks full of this stuff! It made me so happy. I didn't understand the story all of the way but who cares, I had fun =)
I'm leaving you with some pictures in no uncertain order.
Mel ♥
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
April 12, 2018
Definitely a new favourite, and I plan to re-read before the second volume comes out!
December 23, 2022
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a debut graphic novel by Chicago based illustrator Emil Ferris and it was a book I leapt into on the basis of three imaginative ingredients present in its plot description: a 10-year-old named Karen Reyes who loves horror magazines, whose upstairs neighbor is mysteriously shot, in 1968 Chicago. The presentation of the novel, which is as thick as some municipal phone books and works as a coffeetable conversation starter, is dazzling, but I was hugely disappointed by it as a whole. It's a graphic novel I think would've been better without the graphics and also needed significant editing when it came to its focus and main character.
The story tries to focus on an ostracized 5th grader named Karen who lives in Uptown Chicago with her older brother Diego "Deeze" Reyes, a ladykiller whose love of art has been passed down the family tree, and their single mother, a caring but superstitious lady. A lover of horror magazines and Saturday night creature features, Karen doodles relentlessly and handles rejection by her best friend Missy by envisioning herself as a werewolf. These diversions offer little help as Karen is drawn into the mysterious death of their upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg, a beguiling Jew who survived the Holocaust only to catch a bullet in her living room.
My first disappointment with the novel is how little it has to do with science fiction or horror fanzines of the '60s, the most influential being Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland. As boys, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King among many others devoured these slicks in an era when information about filmmaking or monsters was difficult to come by. As a boy in the last generation before the world wide web, I loved these magazines as well, but Ferris doesn't make a compelling case for why Karen would be so obsessed with them. Her knowledge of the monster genre fails to serve her in any practical way during the story. It's colorful decoration.
More than anything else, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is about slum life in the late '60s and rather than be liberated by imagination, is choking on social blight. Karen goes from fatherless to friendless and is far better off than the broken bodies she meets. In addition to a murdered neighbor, hunger, suicide, incarceration, cancer and the assassination of Martin Luther King are also dealt with. As a read, this is a feel-bad. What I disliked even more than the somber content choices was how grubby and grotesque most of the artwork was. The film monsters don't thrive as a departure from Karen's environment because her neighbors are rendered just as ghoulishly.
The bright spot of the novel is actually the backstory of the murder victim, Anka Silverberg, a German Jew in Berlin of the 1920s and '30s who survives childhood in a brothel, being sold into sexual slavery by her mother, nearly murdered two or three times and, because the book was too lighthearted up until this point, shipped to a concentration camp. As dark as Anka's backstory is, this was the one aspect of the novel where I felt Ferris' storytelling muscle flex. The author knows Anka well, her strengths and attributes, and demonstrates how she uses those to survive. In a bait and switch, it's actually Anka's profile, not Karen's, that is featured on the cover.
Karen, on the other hand, spends all but one page of the novel depicted as a werewolf, most often a dog girl wearing a trenchcoat and fedora as she investigates her neighbor's death. I thought this representation was a flagrant case of the author getting in between me and her characters. I didn't think it was clever and I didn't appreciate it. I'm enamored by the way the story is presented, notebook doodles that took me a lot longer to take in than I ever would've imagined, but other than serving as a conversation starter about monster magazines or graphic novels, I would not recommend the book itself.
The story tries to focus on an ostracized 5th grader named Karen who lives in Uptown Chicago with her older brother Diego "Deeze" Reyes, a ladykiller whose love of art has been passed down the family tree, and their single mother, a caring but superstitious lady. A lover of horror magazines and Saturday night creature features, Karen doodles relentlessly and handles rejection by her best friend Missy by envisioning herself as a werewolf. These diversions offer little help as Karen is drawn into the mysterious death of their upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg, a beguiling Jew who survived the Holocaust only to catch a bullet in her living room.
My first disappointment with the novel is how little it has to do with science fiction or horror fanzines of the '60s, the most influential being Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland. As boys, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King among many others devoured these slicks in an era when information about filmmaking or monsters was difficult to come by. As a boy in the last generation before the world wide web, I loved these magazines as well, but Ferris doesn't make a compelling case for why Karen would be so obsessed with them. Her knowledge of the monster genre fails to serve her in any practical way during the story. It's colorful decoration.
More than anything else, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is about slum life in the late '60s and rather than be liberated by imagination, is choking on social blight. Karen goes from fatherless to friendless and is far better off than the broken bodies she meets. In addition to a murdered neighbor, hunger, suicide, incarceration, cancer and the assassination of Martin Luther King are also dealt with. As a read, this is a feel-bad. What I disliked even more than the somber content choices was how grubby and grotesque most of the artwork was. The film monsters don't thrive as a departure from Karen's environment because her neighbors are rendered just as ghoulishly.
The bright spot of the novel is actually the backstory of the murder victim, Anka Silverberg, a German Jew in Berlin of the 1920s and '30s who survives childhood in a brothel, being sold into sexual slavery by her mother, nearly murdered two or three times and, because the book was too lighthearted up until this point, shipped to a concentration camp. As dark as Anka's backstory is, this was the one aspect of the novel where I felt Ferris' storytelling muscle flex. The author knows Anka well, her strengths and attributes, and demonstrates how she uses those to survive. In a bait and switch, it's actually Anka's profile, not Karen's, that is featured on the cover.
Karen, on the other hand, spends all but one page of the novel depicted as a werewolf, most often a dog girl wearing a trenchcoat and fedora as she investigates her neighbor's death. I thought this representation was a flagrant case of the author getting in between me and her characters. I didn't think it was clever and I didn't appreciate it. I'm enamored by the way the story is presented, notebook doodles that took me a lot longer to take in than I ever would've imagined, but other than serving as a conversation starter about monster magazines or graphic novels, I would not recommend the book itself.
April 27, 2018
Comics don’t take that long to read. I’ve been reading Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters now for two weeks and I’m only 162 pages deep into this 397 page doorstopper. I can’t stand it anymore so I’m making an executive decision on behalf of my sanity – I’m well and truly done with this shit!
From what I can tell going by Ferris’ feeble writing and non-existent storytelling ability, the book is about a little girl called Karen in some American city in the 1960s who’s sorta kinda “investigating” the suspicious suicide of her mentally-disturbed neighbour. I say sorta kinda because it’s actually just a small aspect of the obnoxiously huge unfocused mess that is this pseudo-narrative.
Here’s a tangent about Karen’s mother and her life story. Here’s a tangent about Karen’s brother and his life story. Here’s a tangent about one of Karen’s friends. Here’s one tangent after another after another after another that haven’t a damn thing to do with anything! Fucking hell, I get that Ferris is trying to write a convincing voice for the lonely and chatty child protagonist but these huge blocks of useless, self-indulgent text make for such an exhausting and irritating reading experience. It wouldn’t be so intolerable if the tangents were remotely entertaining but they’re the polar opposite of that.
Some of the art is skilful but I hated, utterly hated, the conceit of this being Karen’s notebook because of the blue and red notepaper lines that are a constant background to the art and words, unnecessarily interrupting and distracting all at the same time. Just don’t – just get rid of it and print your story on blank white paper, it’d look so much better without that extraneous bullshit!
Shoddy writing, rambling, nothing story, dull characters – I could probably force myself to read the remaining 250 pages but I doubt Emil Ferris is going to suddenly become a competent writer or that an interesting story will miraculously emerge after 160 pages of pointless garbage. And that’s time I could be reading something worthwhile instead of wasting it on this unimpressive drek. Don’t believe the hype – this is an insufferably tedious book and easily one of the most boring comics I’ve ever read.
My favorite thing is definitely not My Favorite Thing Is Monsters!
From what I can tell going by Ferris’ feeble writing and non-existent storytelling ability, the book is about a little girl called Karen in some American city in the 1960s who’s sorta kinda “investigating” the suspicious suicide of her mentally-disturbed neighbour. I say sorta kinda because it’s actually just a small aspect of the obnoxiously huge unfocused mess that is this pseudo-narrative.
Here’s a tangent about Karen’s mother and her life story. Here’s a tangent about Karen’s brother and his life story. Here’s a tangent about one of Karen’s friends. Here’s one tangent after another after another after another that haven’t a damn thing to do with anything! Fucking hell, I get that Ferris is trying to write a convincing voice for the lonely and chatty child protagonist but these huge blocks of useless, self-indulgent text make for such an exhausting and irritating reading experience. It wouldn’t be so intolerable if the tangents were remotely entertaining but they’re the polar opposite of that.
Some of the art is skilful but I hated, utterly hated, the conceit of this being Karen’s notebook because of the blue and red notepaper lines that are a constant background to the art and words, unnecessarily interrupting and distracting all at the same time. Just don’t – just get rid of it and print your story on blank white paper, it’d look so much better without that extraneous bullshit!
Shoddy writing, rambling, nothing story, dull characters – I could probably force myself to read the remaining 250 pages but I doubt Emil Ferris is going to suddenly become a competent writer or that an interesting story will miraculously emerge after 160 pages of pointless garbage. And that’s time I could be reading something worthwhile instead of wasting it on this unimpressive drek. Don’t believe the hype – this is an insufferably tedious book and easily one of the most boring comics I’ve ever read.
My favorite thing is definitely not My Favorite Thing Is Monsters!
February 15, 2018
the art: incredible. Ferris is able to do so much with her crosshatched ballpoint pen drawings. so many ranges of tone conveyed through color and detail. these dense and intricate illustrations were beautiful, horrible, realistic, fantastical, sweetly childlike, mournfully adult, hallucinatory, vivid, vibrant, and completely emotional. the art is so impressive! it was such a pleasure to swim in these waters. A+++++++
the story: Dickensian and therefore quite moving, but I had issues with it. literally every worst thing in the world imaginable, on the page. although I found all of it to be emotionally affecting (that rabbit scratching the corner in grief!), wall to wall misery porn is really not my thing. also reaches a bit much in its need to collect every outsider/marginalized community/vulnerable individual possible and make them a part of the book. but I don't want to truly slam the story, because I was riveted by the mystery narrative and the intriguing characters. both the story's protagonist and its murder victim are richly realized and wonderfully rendered victim-heroes with whom it is quite easy to empathize despite the extreme, never-ending tragedies in their lives. and there is such a profound synergy between art and story that the parade of horrors aren't completely off-putting when actually reading My Favorite Thing. my issues with the story came well after I finished reading the book, as I reflected on the experience and what I took from it.
je ne sais quoi : I haven't read any other work that has a protagonist with Stendhal syndrome - who also experiences synesthesia! that was fascinating.
the story: Dickensian and therefore quite moving, but I had issues with it. literally every worst thing in the world imaginable, on the page. although I found all of it to be emotionally affecting (that rabbit scratching the corner in grief!), wall to wall misery porn is really not my thing. also reaches a bit much in its need to collect every outsider/marginalized community/vulnerable individual possible and make them a part of the book. but I don't want to truly slam the story, because I was riveted by the mystery narrative and the intriguing characters. both the story's protagonist and its murder victim are richly realized and wonderfully rendered victim-heroes with whom it is quite easy to empathize despite the extreme, never-ending tragedies in their lives. and there is such a profound synergy between art and story that the parade of horrors aren't completely off-putting when actually reading My Favorite Thing. my issues with the story came well after I finished reading the book, as I reflected on the experience and what I took from it.
je ne sais quoi : I haven't read any other work that has a protagonist with Stendhal syndrome - who also experiences synesthesia! that was fascinating.
April 12, 2018
The art is amazing but this meandered a bit more than I would have liked. I will be reading the next volume though.
June 3, 2017
The art in this graphic novel is spectacular, but the story, I'm afraid, I found disjointed and at times downright incomprehensible. It's about a young girl, Karen (who's obsessed with monsters, thus depicts herself as one) investigating the mysterious death of her neighbour. But it's also about the history of that neighbour, Anka, as told by the character herself in a series of recorded interviews: she's a Holocaust survivor, but her 'saviour' forced her to become a prostitute at the age of 12. It's about Karen's family – her mom, and her brother Deeze – and her mother's illness and her brother's possible relationship with Anka. It's about Karen's friends, who appear as monsters too, and at least one of whom may not actually exist. It's about Karen's burgeoning sexuality and her complicated feelings about her ex-best friend. It's about art history and mythology. It's about the big societal events of the time (the late 1960s). It's about a bunch of Karen's neighbours. And some other people from the neighbourhood she lives in. And probably some other stuff I've forgotten as well.
At the beginning of My Favorite Thing is Monsters, I loved the look of the thing, so intricate and colourful, but couldn't get much of a handle on the story. That's okay, I thought, it'll start making sense of itself soon. But it didn't. There are so many subplots, digressions and secondary characters crammed in that it becomes confusing and exhuasting (there's also a hell of a lot of text, some of it really difficult to read). I couldn't figure out what I was meant to care about, which meant I ended up not caring about anything. Of course I know this is a collection of issues of a comic; perhaps it would have made more sense if I'd rationed it out, read one section a week. But the fact that the end of the book is not the end of any of the million plotlines is yet another thing that makes it feel unsatisfying.
I wish I could adore this like most others seem to. I just found the storytelling too messy, and I have zero desire to read future volumes. One more time, though: the art is gorgeous.
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At the beginning of My Favorite Thing is Monsters, I loved the look of the thing, so intricate and colourful, but couldn't get much of a handle on the story. That's okay, I thought, it'll start making sense of itself soon. But it didn't. There are so many subplots, digressions and secondary characters crammed in that it becomes confusing and exhuasting (there's also a hell of a lot of text, some of it really difficult to read). I couldn't figure out what I was meant to care about, which meant I ended up not caring about anything. Of course I know this is a collection of issues of a comic; perhaps it would have made more sense if I'd rationed it out, read one section a week. But the fact that the end of the book is not the end of any of the million plotlines is yet another thing that makes it feel unsatisfying.
I wish I could adore this like most others seem to. I just found the storytelling too messy, and I have zero desire to read future volumes. One more time, though: the art is gorgeous.
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January 6, 2018
First of all, that is the murder victim on the cover, not the protagonist.
I was slightly confused because her voice read so much younger than the woman depicted.
This was pretty amazing. The only criticism I have is that it was almost too much -- I felt like subtracting one issue or one character (for my choice I'd lose the ) would have made it feel less crowded.
Although I guess on some levels it was certainly intended to be crowded.
Some of my favorite parts are when she visits the museum and imagines interacting with the paintings.
I didn't realize until near the end that this wasn't a stand-alone. It was kind of disappointing not to get any resolution, but on the other hand now I can look forward to reading book 2.
I was slightly confused because her voice read so much younger than the woman depicted.
This was pretty amazing. The only criticism I have is that it was almost too much -- I felt like subtracting one issue or one character (for my choice I'd lose the ) would have made it feel less crowded.
Although I guess on some levels it was certainly intended to be crowded.
Some of my favorite parts are when she visits the museum and imagines interacting with the paintings.
I didn't realize until near the end that this wasn't a stand-alone. It was kind of disappointing not to get any resolution, but on the other hand now I can look forward to reading book 2.
May 17, 2017
Here's my spoiler free video review!
Oh. My. God. This book. THIS BOOK. I was completely blow away by this, and honestly I have a difficult time expressing in words just how much I love it.
First, the art. It's GORGEOUS. And messy. And sometimes difficult to look at. But that difficulty heightens the reading experience--you really feel like you're INSIDE our MC Karen's head (this is formatted as her journal, of sorts). The lined pages in conjunction with the art style can make reading the text portions of this book more difficult at times, but it's completely worth it.
I ADORE Karen. She is now one of my favorite characters of all time. Karen is firm in her belief that being a human is absolutely terrible and she would like to be a monster, instead. We follow her in werewolf girl form as she investigates the apparent suicide of a woman in her apartment building, who she believes was actually murdered. I mean, what a plot.
Karen's narrative voice is wonderful and hilarious. Ferris toes the line perfectly between Karen's innocence and insight--she's still just a kid, but Ferris plays with the fact that often kids are far more perceptive than we give them credit for.
Karen's monster-ness is SUCH an amazing metaphor that Ferris plays with in multiple ways, without it ever feeling like she's lost control. At times it is a representative of Karen's coming of age, of her burgeoning sexuality, of her perception of herself as "other"--non-white, queer, poor, etc.
Like any good monster story, here the real horror is found in humans.
I think this is now one of my top 3 favorite books of all time. I can't remember the last time I finished a book and IMMEDIATELY started rereading it, but My Favorite Thing is Monsters is just that good.
Oh. My. God. This book. THIS BOOK. I was completely blow away by this, and honestly I have a difficult time expressing in words just how much I love it.
First, the art. It's GORGEOUS. And messy. And sometimes difficult to look at. But that difficulty heightens the reading experience--you really feel like you're INSIDE our MC Karen's head (this is formatted as her journal, of sorts). The lined pages in conjunction with the art style can make reading the text portions of this book more difficult at times, but it's completely worth it.
I ADORE Karen. She is now one of my favorite characters of all time. Karen is firm in her belief that being a human is absolutely terrible and she would like to be a monster, instead. We follow her in werewolf girl form as she investigates the apparent suicide of a woman in her apartment building, who she believes was actually murdered. I mean, what a plot.
Karen's narrative voice is wonderful and hilarious. Ferris toes the line perfectly between Karen's innocence and insight--she's still just a kid, but Ferris plays with the fact that often kids are far more perceptive than we give them credit for.
Karen's monster-ness is SUCH an amazing metaphor that Ferris plays with in multiple ways, without it ever feeling like she's lost control. At times it is a representative of Karen's coming of age, of her burgeoning sexuality, of her perception of herself as "other"--non-white, queer, poor, etc.
Like any good monster story, here the real horror is found in humans.
I think this is now one of my top 3 favorite books of all time. I can't remember the last time I finished a book and IMMEDIATELY started rereading it, but My Favorite Thing is Monsters is just that good.
October 17, 2017
The word 'aftermath' came to mind. I guess it means the time after something terrible happens when you do the math to figure out what has been added and what's been subtracted.
Believe the hype - this is an absolutely STUNNING book, an everything-rolled-into-one book, the graphic novel that all graphic novels will be measured against.
(And they will be found lacking.)
The only bummer?
It ends with a cliffhanger.
Emil Ferris, you had better be cross-hatching your butt off, working on the next volume.
Believe the hype - this is an absolutely STUNNING book, an everything-rolled-into-one book, the graphic novel that all graphic novels will be measured against.
(And they will be found lacking.)
The only bummer?
It ends with a cliffhanger.
Emil Ferris, you had better be cross-hatching your butt off, working on the next volume.
January 20, 2018
So .... I set this graphic novel aside with a giant "thunk", waited for the circulation to return to my poor wrists, turned my "1-star" book reviewing music up and pounded out a strongly worded, grossly unfair and highly critical review. Which, read back, seemed like the incoherent ramblings of a belligerent hothead with a grudge against graphic novels.
Having calmed down since, I realise some of the responsibility has to fall on me as a reader, allowing myself to become bamboozled by glowing reviews and my head turned by colourful drawings. I thought I might be coming around to seeing the possibilities of the graphic novel art form; most recently Trinity : A Graphic history of the first atomic bomb wowed me. Unfortunately; My Favourite Thing Is Monsters has sent me scuttling back to the safety of the novel, the beauty of the word.
The curious thing is, I do like graphic art and illustrations; I knew this book had been widely and deservedly recognised as having beautiful artwork. I had somehow convinced myself that I would enjoy the visual feast and could endure whatever text accompanied it. 414 pages later, this was patently not the case. This was an unreadable, hot mess, with the occasional glimmer of lucid story poking out from behind a stunning pen and ink drawing.
This review, may partially be explained by my comic book dyslexia; I seem chronically unable to follow text in graphic novels unless there is a pathway with flares laid out for me. In this case I am sure I read 50% of the story out of order. Unsurprisingly, I lost my handle on the plot early on.
It know it starts with a murder mystery set in 1960s Chicago that is swiftly eclipsed by a backstory of wicked proportions, (prostitution, child slaves, some sort of murderous hooded druids; the usual 1930s Berlin scene). This segues awkwardly into a painful concentration camp story and then back to Chicago to briefly touch on Martin Luther King, visits to art galleries (the sole narrative purpose of which is to display lovingly recreated versions of famous paintings). If I wasn't dizzy from all this, there is cancer, an odd rabbit, a brother who is a lady magnet; we know this by the several drawings of him in seduction mode, the secondary purpose of which seems to be to draw many many breasts. It is all very diverting but advances the story not a jot.
Basically I feasted my eyes on the beautiful drawings and prayed for the end. But when it came
it brought little succour. It was the most monstrous thing of all to accept, I had "read" 414 lusciously illustrated pages and not a single thing made sense.
Did I miss a speech bubble ?
Having calmed down since, I realise some of the responsibility has to fall on me as a reader, allowing myself to become bamboozled by glowing reviews and my head turned by colourful drawings. I thought I might be coming around to seeing the possibilities of the graphic novel art form; most recently Trinity : A Graphic history of the first atomic bomb wowed me. Unfortunately; My Favourite Thing Is Monsters has sent me scuttling back to the safety of the novel, the beauty of the word.
The curious thing is, I do like graphic art and illustrations; I knew this book had been widely and deservedly recognised as having beautiful artwork. I had somehow convinced myself that I would enjoy the visual feast and could endure whatever text accompanied it. 414 pages later, this was patently not the case. This was an unreadable, hot mess, with the occasional glimmer of lucid story poking out from behind a stunning pen and ink drawing.
This review, may partially be explained by my comic book dyslexia; I seem chronically unable to follow text in graphic novels unless there is a pathway with flares laid out for me. In this case I am sure I read 50% of the story out of order. Unsurprisingly, I lost my handle on the plot early on.
It know it starts with a murder mystery set in 1960s Chicago that is swiftly eclipsed by a backstory of wicked proportions, (prostitution, child slaves, some sort of murderous hooded druids; the usual 1930s Berlin scene). This segues awkwardly into a painful concentration camp story and then back to Chicago to briefly touch on Martin Luther King, visits to art galleries (the sole narrative purpose of which is to display lovingly recreated versions of famous paintings). If I wasn't dizzy from all this, there is cancer, an odd rabbit, a brother who is a lady magnet; we know this by the several drawings of him in seduction mode, the secondary purpose of which seems to be to draw many many breasts. It is all very diverting but advances the story not a jot.
Basically I feasted my eyes on the beautiful drawings and prayed for the end. But when it came
it brought little succour. It was the most monstrous thing of all to accept, I had "read" 414 lusciously illustrated pages and not a single thing made sense.
Did I miss a speech bubble ?
October 8, 2017
Tell me, do I look different to you? That's weird, because I definitely feel different. I feel like yesterday morning I got invited to a party, and when I arrived I was shackled in a dark windowless basement where all I could hear was a scritchy noise that was probably mice or possibly rats or maybe the ghost of an Appalachian child asking for candy in a high-pitched tone that only faintly penetrated the walls of my prison. I was let out this morning. It was sunny when I went in but now it's overcast and damp, and if anyone has any good news I would love to hear it but given the state of the world these days I doubt anyone has any really good news.
So yeah, things got creepy for a while. In My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Karen Reyes's upstairs neighbor is shot through the heart and Karen thinks she can figure out who did it. As the title of this book might imply, Karen is obsessed with monsters, thinks she herself is a monster, and likes to draw her own versions of the covers of horror magazines, all of which adds an extra layer of creepiness to the murder mystery. On top of that, there's
Some people love this stuff. It doesn't just entertain them; it speaks to their very soul. I'm not one of those people. Creepy is not where I live and not even particularly where I want to visit. There's no denying that My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is masterful. Everything about it is perfect: the art, the writing, the characters, the mood it sets, the story it's telling and how it's told. But this level of creepiness perfected is not what I need in my life. I am perfectly capable of giving myself nightmares just thinking about the current state of the world; I don't need any help in this area. Sure, you could say that we need to be reminded of the horrifying events of the past to assure we don't repeat them, but I'm not one of the people who needs reminding—I'm one of the ones who, these days, has trouble forgetting for even five minutes. (And frankly, the ones who need reminding probably haven't picked up a book in years and years—that's part of the problem.) So sure, stuff was bad enough, but when you add in the murder, the monsters, the horror magazines, , you are creating a space that I personally could probably have done without.
Of course, the book ends , presumably saving all of that for volume 2. ALL RESPECT for this book and its author, but there's no way I'm losing another weekend to this level of darkness, so when volume 2 comes out I would appreciate it if someone would send me a direct message with a brief summary of what happens. For now, I'm going to try to shake the feeling that the look in my cat's eyes means that she knows things I don't and that the reflection in my glass measuring cup is a vision trying to tell me something and that the woman talking on her cell phone outside my apartment building is part of some nefarious plot I can't even imagine. If you need me, I will be lying on the couch with a cold compress covering my eyes, hoping that the sun comes out today for even a few minutes before the early dark of autumn sets in again.
So yeah, things got creepy for a while. In My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Karen Reyes's upstairs neighbor is shot through the heart and Karen thinks she can figure out who did it. As the title of this book might imply, Karen is obsessed with monsters, thinks she herself is a monster, and likes to draw her own versions of the covers of horror magazines, all of which adds an extra layer of creepiness to the murder mystery. On top of that, there's
Some people love this stuff. It doesn't just entertain them; it speaks to their very soul. I'm not one of those people. Creepy is not where I live and not even particularly where I want to visit. There's no denying that My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is masterful. Everything about it is perfect: the art, the writing, the characters, the mood it sets, the story it's telling and how it's told. But this level of creepiness perfected is not what I need in my life. I am perfectly capable of giving myself nightmares just thinking about the current state of the world; I don't need any help in this area. Sure, you could say that we need to be reminded of the horrifying events of the past to assure we don't repeat them, but I'm not one of the people who needs reminding—I'm one of the ones who, these days, has trouble forgetting for even five minutes. (And frankly, the ones who need reminding probably haven't picked up a book in years and years—that's part of the problem.) So sure, stuff was bad enough, but when you add in the murder, the monsters, the horror magazines, , you are creating a space that I personally could probably have done without.
Of course, the book ends , presumably saving all of that for volume 2. ALL RESPECT for this book and its author, but there's no way I'm losing another weekend to this level of darkness, so when volume 2 comes out I would appreciate it if someone would send me a direct message with a brief summary of what happens. For now, I'm going to try to shake the feeling that the look in my cat's eyes means that she knows things I don't and that the reflection in my glass measuring cup is a vision trying to tell me something and that the woman talking on her cell phone outside my apartment building is part of some nefarious plot I can't even imagine. If you need me, I will be lying on the couch with a cold compress covering my eyes, hoping that the sun comes out today for even a few minutes before the early dark of autumn sets in again.
June 12, 2018
This graphic novel -- and I use that in the strictest sense because it is absolutely novel-quality while being told through a graphic medium -- is one of those deeply surprising discoveries you rarely come across. It's deep, funny, disturbing, gorgeous, insightful, and if that wasn't enough, it's technically brilliant.
It's definitely not a simple tale. I mean, sure, I could break it down by saying it's about a ten-year-old girl in late 60's Chicago who identifies deeply with b-movie horror monsters but also identifies with being a private eye, who knows something fishy is going on when her neighbor, a survivor of the Holocaust is found dead after having been shot in the heart, moved from the living room to the bedroom, and being ruled as a suicide.
Duh.
But that almost misses the point. It's almost a backdrop to the real message in the art.
What? Isn't that another Duh? Kinda. The art here is explored from the cartoony to the classical masters. From B-movie homages to museum-quality love WITH a side of art theory. I mean, I'm just an amateur, but this comic is almost a master's class in the subject, ranging through almost every painstaking style I've ever seen... with care and devotion.
And yet, the quality isn't merely with the art. It's also the story.
Sadness, identity, grief, sexuality, prostitution, systematic abuse, the mob, Martin Luther King, love, madness, and mystery all play a very central role throughout the volume. And in a very serious way. I found myself staying up very late to see where it was all headed, only to break down in tears at a certain point because the novel had successfully burrowed under my skin.
Do not expect something light!
And there's also no way in hell I'll ever pass up on anything else the author creates. None. I'm a fan for life.
Oh, and it was ALSO nommed for '18 Hugos.
I would not be unhappy at all if this won the graphic novel category. As much as I LOVED Saga vol 7 and went gaga over Monstress vol 2, this one bites as deep or perhaps deeper than the rest.
I wasn't quite sure at first. It snuck up on me. Just.... wow.
It's definitely not a simple tale. I mean, sure, I could break it down by saying it's about a ten-year-old girl in late 60's Chicago who identifies deeply with b-movie horror monsters but also identifies with being a private eye, who knows something fishy is going on when her neighbor, a survivor of the Holocaust is found dead after having been shot in the heart, moved from the living room to the bedroom, and being ruled as a suicide.
Duh.
But that almost misses the point. It's almost a backdrop to the real message in the art.
What? Isn't that another Duh? Kinda. The art here is explored from the cartoony to the classical masters. From B-movie homages to museum-quality love WITH a side of art theory. I mean, I'm just an amateur, but this comic is almost a master's class in the subject, ranging through almost every painstaking style I've ever seen... with care and devotion.
And yet, the quality isn't merely with the art. It's also the story.
Sadness, identity, grief, sexuality, prostitution, systematic abuse, the mob, Martin Luther King, love, madness, and mystery all play a very central role throughout the volume. And in a very serious way. I found myself staying up very late to see where it was all headed, only to break down in tears at a certain point because the novel had successfully burrowed under my skin.
Do not expect something light!
And there's also no way in hell I'll ever pass up on anything else the author creates. None. I'm a fan for life.
Oh, and it was ALSO nommed for '18 Hugos.
I would not be unhappy at all if this won the graphic novel category. As much as I LOVED Saga vol 7 and went gaga over Monstress vol 2, this one bites as deep or perhaps deeper than the rest.
I wasn't quite sure at first. It snuck up on me. Just.... wow.
April 5, 2018
So as my good friend Jo recently stated, it's hard to review graphic novels. My normal, go-to criteria is overshadowed by the sheer fact that *most* of the reading experience is visual.
On a visual level, this is as good as it gets. The size of this thing gets special mention because it's almost like a coffee table book, in that it's HUGE (thick, weighty and oversized) which is great because Emil Ferris has museum-worthy talent. I could see the pages of this book in a gallery or traveling exhibit for pop culture-just really, really mind-blowing artwork.
The story is told as a diary-esque journal of doodles and thoughts by our young protagonist, Karen Reyes, who fancies herself as a werewolf child. She lives with her mother and brother in Chicago, 1960.
Karen seems to be a sort of outcast so lucky us, because the journal is filled with her strange observations about everyone around her. We get childish glimpses of how she entertains herself--like going to horror movies--and also standing around absorbing adult conversations and goings ons when she probably shouldn't be.
The main focus is the murder of a neighbor in Karen's building named, Anka.
I won't get into this part of the plot because this is the subject that truly gets you turning the pages to see what happens. The novel ends on a cliffhanger so I'm thrilled we get Volume 2 this Fall. I'll be asking for it for Christmas no doubt.
This is one of those graphic novels people will be talking about forever and collectors will want to have it for their collection. It's truly in a class by itself.
On a visual level, this is as good as it gets. The size of this thing gets special mention because it's almost like a coffee table book, in that it's HUGE (thick, weighty and oversized) which is great because Emil Ferris has museum-worthy talent. I could see the pages of this book in a gallery or traveling exhibit for pop culture-just really, really mind-blowing artwork.
The story is told as a diary-esque journal of doodles and thoughts by our young protagonist, Karen Reyes, who fancies herself as a werewolf child. She lives with her mother and brother in Chicago, 1960.
Karen seems to be a sort of outcast so lucky us, because the journal is filled with her strange observations about everyone around her. We get childish glimpses of how she entertains herself--like going to horror movies--and also standing around absorbing adult conversations and goings ons when she probably shouldn't be.
The main focus is the murder of a neighbor in Karen's building named, Anka.
I won't get into this part of the plot because this is the subject that truly gets you turning the pages to see what happens. The novel ends on a cliffhanger so I'm thrilled we get Volume 2 this Fall. I'll be asking for it for Christmas no doubt.
This is one of those graphic novels people will be talking about forever and collectors will want to have it for their collection. It's truly in a class by itself.
September 10, 2017
My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a gorgeously illustrated graphic novel.
Karen Reyes is a young girl coming of age in 1968 Chicago when her neighbor is murdered, her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, Martin Luther King is shot and the local mob boss goes to jail.
Peppered in between all that are Karen's notebook drawings of all kinds of things-her neighborhood, her brother and mom, and the covers of pulp magazines. She also likes to draw her version of popular paintings which her brother takes her to see at the local museums. All of her drawings are on lined notebook paper and all I can say about them is that they are stunning. All in pen, but not all in color-each and every drawing is so detailed you can stare at them for a long while and continue to find new things.
Never let anyone's darkness provoke you into your own midnight.
Tackling subjects like racism, homosexuality, the Holocaust and so much more, this graphic novel adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Highly recommended!
Karen Reyes is a young girl coming of age in 1968 Chicago when her neighbor is murdered, her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, Martin Luther King is shot and the local mob boss goes to jail.
Peppered in between all that are Karen's notebook drawings of all kinds of things-her neighborhood, her brother and mom, and the covers of pulp magazines. She also likes to draw her version of popular paintings which her brother takes her to see at the local museums. All of her drawings are on lined notebook paper and all I can say about them is that they are stunning. All in pen, but not all in color-each and every drawing is so detailed you can stare at them for a long while and continue to find new things.
Never let anyone's darkness provoke you into your own midnight.
Tackling subjects like racism, homosexuality, the Holocaust and so much more, this graphic novel adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Highly recommended!
June 16, 2018
I adored my reading experience with this. I don’t read enough graphic novels because when I do, I more often than not love every second of doing so. This one was particularly stunning
I am also struggling with reviewing graphic novels because I find describing what works for me very difficult. In this case I could not stop staring at the wonderful way it is all laid out. This is Karen’s story and she happens to tell it in a series of scribbles in her notebook and the graphic novel mirrors this. I found the art beyond perfect for the story. I especially adored her renderings of classic paintings that were just a wonder to behold. I spent hours looking up the originals and comparing them to Emil Ferries renditions. I have seen people reacting negatively to the art but I thought it was just perfect. I loved the little splashes of colour and the way different people were drawn in different styles.
Karen’s neighbour, a woman who has survived the Holocaust, has died and Karen is convinced something is amiss. So she does as one does and dresses up in classic detective gear to try and solve the case. But at the core, this book is mostly about Karen growing up and trying to find a place for herself. Her relationship to her older brother is wonderfully drawn and his character intrigues me to no end. I also found the way in which the flashbacks to Anka’s experience during World War II were incorporated, extremely well done and I thought the book dealt with this period in time that literature has used extensively in a really interesting and nuanced way.
Beware though, because this book is dark. Very very dark with themes of not only xenophobia and anti-semitism but also of sexual assault and forced prositution and homophobia and everything else nasty. But if you can stomach these things, this is well worth your time. I cannot wait for the next book in the series.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog
I am also struggling with reviewing graphic novels because I find describing what works for me very difficult. In this case I could not stop staring at the wonderful way it is all laid out. This is Karen’s story and she happens to tell it in a series of scribbles in her notebook and the graphic novel mirrors this. I found the art beyond perfect for the story. I especially adored her renderings of classic paintings that were just a wonder to behold. I spent hours looking up the originals and comparing them to Emil Ferries renditions. I have seen people reacting negatively to the art but I thought it was just perfect. I loved the little splashes of colour and the way different people were drawn in different styles.
Karen’s neighbour, a woman who has survived the Holocaust, has died and Karen is convinced something is amiss. So she does as one does and dresses up in classic detective gear to try and solve the case. But at the core, this book is mostly about Karen growing up and trying to find a place for herself. Her relationship to her older brother is wonderfully drawn and his character intrigues me to no end. I also found the way in which the flashbacks to Anka’s experience during World War II were incorporated, extremely well done and I thought the book dealt with this period in time that literature has used extensively in a really interesting and nuanced way.
Beware though, because this book is dark. Very very dark with themes of not only xenophobia and anti-semitism but also of sexual assault and forced prositution and homophobia and everything else nasty. But if you can stomach these things, this is well worth your time. I cannot wait for the next book in the series.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog
Read
April 10, 2024Este libro es una obra monumental, una de esas rarezas que llegan a una industria para revolucionar las reglas del juego. La autora, Emil Ferris, ha sido capaz de llevar a cabo una labor ingente, extraordinaria, que sin duda pasará a la historia del género.
Técnicamente “Lo que más me gusta son los monstruos” es un auténtico deleite, un acto artístico obsesivo, metódico, irreverente y casi ajeno a la tradición del tebeo. Es como si crease una nueva forma de hacer cómics.
La protagonista es magnífica: una niña encantadora y soñadora obsesionada con los monstruos y los detectives, que se enfrenta a su situación social y familiar desde la imaginación desbordante y los bondadosos deseos. Pero también es cierto que esta obra es tan desmesurada que en ella entran demasiados personajes secundarios que no terminar de entenderse bien, demasiadas historias paralelas que no se cierran y demasiadas líneas argumentales difíciles de seguir.
Aún así es una obra digna de leerse y disfrutarse en el más amplio sentido de la expresión.
Técnicamente “Lo que más me gusta son los monstruos” es un auténtico deleite, un acto artístico obsesivo, metódico, irreverente y casi ajeno a la tradición del tebeo. Es como si crease una nueva forma de hacer cómics.
La protagonista es magnífica: una niña encantadora y soñadora obsesionada con los monstruos y los detectives, que se enfrenta a su situación social y familiar desde la imaginación desbordante y los bondadosos deseos. Pero también es cierto que esta obra es tan desmesurada que en ella entran demasiados personajes secundarios que no terminar de entenderse bien, demasiadas historias paralelas que no se cierran y demasiadas líneas argumentales difíciles de seguir.
Aún así es una obra digna de leerse y disfrutarse en el más amplio sentido de la expresión.
September 20, 2018
Qué maravilla. Decidí leer un cómic para sobrellevar mi crisis lectora y me decanté por este, ya que lo tenía desde hacía varios meses en la recámara. Y definitivamente me ha curado y me ha renovado las ganas de leer, porque es tan maravilloso, aúna tantas cosas y tiene un dibujo tan original que sin duda es de lo mejor que he leído en su género (y de lo mejor que he leído en general).
La protagonista es Karen Reyes, una niña de once años a quien apasionan las películas de terror y los cómics tipo pulp. Karen vive con su madre y su hermano mayor en un "piso" en el sótano de un edificio, en el Uptown de Chicago de finales de los años 60. Un día, Anka, la vecina un tanto extraña del piso de arriba, muere en extrañas circunstancias; la causa de la muerte es tan poco clara que la policía cierra el caso como suicidio y se lava las manos, pero Karen cree que ha sido un asesinato y decide investigarlo. Durante sus pesquisas se dará cuenta de muchas cosas, descubrirá otras tantas y también se irá descubriendo a sí misma.
Históricamente es fascinante, porque se enseña el Chicago de esa época desde un barrio conflictivo, pero también con ello la historia de ese momento de todo Estados Unidos: mafia hereditaria de los tiempos de Al Capone, prostitución, droga, pobreza, segregación racial y racismo en general, homofobia, violaciones, machismo, la Guerra de Vietnam en marcha, el asesinato de Martin Luther King cuando todavía pesaba en la sociedad el de Kennedy... Completito; la falta de esperanza que se transmite es total. Pero además, uno de los personajes (Anka) cuenta su pasado, que acontece en la Alemania nazi previa a la Segunda Guerra Mundial y también en los inicios de este conflicto.
El dibujo es fascinante. Todo está contado por Karen y como le gustan tanto los cómics, en lugar de escribir un diario, lo dibuja. Y esa es básicamente la presentación de esta novela gráfica: está toda dibujada a boli en una libreta de anillas y líneas. Me pareció muy original y muy único. Además, Karen copia cada mes la portada de la revista de terror y erotismo que suele leer, y con ello vamos entendiendo un poco el transcurrir del tiempo dentro de la novela. Me gustó mucho ver la evolución de Karen, cómo al principio expone las cosas de forma más inocente o disfrazada y poco a poco el cómic se va volviendo más crudo a la par que ella misma va dejando atrás su niñez y entrando en la adolescencia, con su despertar sexual y una conciencia más firme de todo cuanto la rodea. Además, está convencida de que es una mujer lobo, así que se dibuja como tal en todo momento.
Otra cosa a destacar de esta obra es la cantidad de referencias artísticas que hay. El hermano de Karen es pintor (o un intento de ello) y siempre la ha llevado mucho al Instituto de Arte de Chicago, el museo de arte más importante de la ciudad. Durante la novela se reproducen pinturas de las que hay en el museo, pero también las podemos ver de forma disimulada en escenas de vida cotidiana que dibuja Karen, ya que su visión artística es muy amplia.
Los personajes secundarios son todos para tener en cuenta. Hasta el más pequeño matiz tiene algo que ofrecer sobre cada uno de ellos, y especialmente interesante me ha parecido el hermano de Karen, tan confundido, tan chungo como entregado a lo que queda de su familia, un personaje atormentado y con una dualidad muy importante. Las amigas más cercanas de Karen, la madre, la propia Anka, que aunque fallecida está presente en toda la novela... Un elenco donde no sobra nadie y mediante el cual conocemos los diferentes perfiles que pueblan la ciudad y los barrios más sórdidos.
En fin, como decía, es tanto lo que ofrece este cómic a nivel cultural, histórico, psicológico y personal... Es enorme en todos los sentidos y estoy deseando leer la segunda parte, que sale el año que viene. Esta es una historia que puede resultar dura, es triste, es un retrato de la más pura soledad, pero para mí es ya imprescindible. Sé que voy a volver a sus páginas una y otra vez.
La protagonista es Karen Reyes, una niña de once años a quien apasionan las películas de terror y los cómics tipo pulp. Karen vive con su madre y su hermano mayor en un "piso" en el sótano de un edificio, en el Uptown de Chicago de finales de los años 60. Un día, Anka, la vecina un tanto extraña del piso de arriba, muere en extrañas circunstancias; la causa de la muerte es tan poco clara que la policía cierra el caso como suicidio y se lava las manos, pero Karen cree que ha sido un asesinato y decide investigarlo. Durante sus pesquisas se dará cuenta de muchas cosas, descubrirá otras tantas y también se irá descubriendo a sí misma.
Históricamente es fascinante, porque se enseña el Chicago de esa época desde un barrio conflictivo, pero también con ello la historia de ese momento de todo Estados Unidos: mafia hereditaria de los tiempos de Al Capone, prostitución, droga, pobreza, segregación racial y racismo en general, homofobia, violaciones, machismo, la Guerra de Vietnam en marcha, el asesinato de Martin Luther King cuando todavía pesaba en la sociedad el de Kennedy... Completito; la falta de esperanza que se transmite es total. Pero además, uno de los personajes (Anka) cuenta su pasado, que acontece en la Alemania nazi previa a la Segunda Guerra Mundial y también en los inicios de este conflicto.
El dibujo es fascinante. Todo está contado por Karen y como le gustan tanto los cómics, en lugar de escribir un diario, lo dibuja. Y esa es básicamente la presentación de esta novela gráfica: está toda dibujada a boli en una libreta de anillas y líneas. Me pareció muy original y muy único. Además, Karen copia cada mes la portada de la revista de terror y erotismo que suele leer, y con ello vamos entendiendo un poco el transcurrir del tiempo dentro de la novela. Me gustó mucho ver la evolución de Karen, cómo al principio expone las cosas de forma más inocente o disfrazada y poco a poco el cómic se va volviendo más crudo a la par que ella misma va dejando atrás su niñez y entrando en la adolescencia, con su despertar sexual y una conciencia más firme de todo cuanto la rodea. Además, está convencida de que es una mujer lobo, así que se dibuja como tal en todo momento.
Otra cosa a destacar de esta obra es la cantidad de referencias artísticas que hay. El hermano de Karen es pintor (o un intento de ello) y siempre la ha llevado mucho al Instituto de Arte de Chicago, el museo de arte más importante de la ciudad. Durante la novela se reproducen pinturas de las que hay en el museo, pero también las podemos ver de forma disimulada en escenas de vida cotidiana que dibuja Karen, ya que su visión artística es muy amplia.
Los personajes secundarios son todos para tener en cuenta. Hasta el más pequeño matiz tiene algo que ofrecer sobre cada uno de ellos, y especialmente interesante me ha parecido el hermano de Karen, tan confundido, tan chungo como entregado a lo que queda de su familia, un personaje atormentado y con una dualidad muy importante. Las amigas más cercanas de Karen, la madre, la propia Anka, que aunque fallecida está presente en toda la novela... Un elenco donde no sobra nadie y mediante el cual conocemos los diferentes perfiles que pueblan la ciudad y los barrios más sórdidos.
En fin, como decía, es tanto lo que ofrece este cómic a nivel cultural, histórico, psicológico y personal... Es enorme en todos los sentidos y estoy deseando leer la segunda parte, que sale el año que viene. Esta es una historia que puede resultar dura, es triste, es un retrato de la más pura soledad, pero para mí es ya imprescindible. Sé que voy a volver a sus páginas una y otra vez.
September 6, 2018
I think this is a fantastic book. What I like about this book is that it reminds me of being in those teenage years. So much is going on in your life, family, friends, enemies, life around you, things you like and are into and figuring out who you are going to be. Mysteries abound. Everything is in this book just about. All this is happening for Karen through her eyes and it's pretty big stuff.
Karen loves Monsters and sees herself as a monster. She wants to be turned into one to save her mother. The artwork here is beautiful. There are pieces of artwork from galleries drawn in like Karen did a sketch of them. There are magazine covers for each would be issues and sketches all over the place. It is made to look like notebook paper that Karen is sketching on.
She tells the story her way through her experience. There is also a neighbor how loses his wife and she has made tapes of what happened to her in the past. The husband can't listen to them and Karen wants to know what happens, so she draws the story for us in her pages. We get 2 or so episodes. The story is about Anka, a jew back in Germany during the 40s. It is not an easy story. May terrible things happen. We do not finish Anka's story. There is more in the next Vol. 2 coming out 2019 it says right now.
The is a massive graphic novel that tells a big story. Karen deals with pain by being a monster or wanting to be. Her brother is going through something big too. We do get the answer to that at the end of the book.
My rationale for giving a book 5 stars is that I want to read it again. A really great book can be 4 stars and it was great, but I don't need to read it again. I'm positive I could pick up more things by reading this work of genius again. It is a work of genius in my opinion and that still doesn't change the fact that I don't really want to read this again. I want to read the next one, instead. I do want to continue on with it. So I gave this 4 stars instead of 5, which is probably more like 5 stars accept for what I just discussed.
This is worth the read. It is long and it is very well done. It is unique and I haven't seen anything out there like this before.
Karen loves Monsters and sees herself as a monster. She wants to be turned into one to save her mother. The artwork here is beautiful. There are pieces of artwork from galleries drawn in like Karen did a sketch of them. There are magazine covers for each would be issues and sketches all over the place. It is made to look like notebook paper that Karen is sketching on.
She tells the story her way through her experience. There is also a neighbor how loses his wife and she has made tapes of what happened to her in the past. The husband can't listen to them and Karen wants to know what happens, so she draws the story for us in her pages. We get 2 or so episodes. The story is about Anka, a jew back in Germany during the 40s. It is not an easy story. May terrible things happen. We do not finish Anka's story. There is more in the next Vol. 2 coming out 2019 it says right now.
The is a massive graphic novel that tells a big story. Karen deals with pain by being a monster or wanting to be. Her brother is going through something big too. We do get the answer to that at the end of the book.
My rationale for giving a book 5 stars is that I want to read it again. A really great book can be 4 stars and it was great, but I don't need to read it again. I'm positive I could pick up more things by reading this work of genius again. It is a work of genius in my opinion and that still doesn't change the fact that I don't really want to read this again. I want to read the next one, instead. I do want to continue on with it. So I gave this 4 stars instead of 5, which is probably more like 5 stars accept for what I just discussed.
This is worth the read. It is long and it is very well done. It is unique and I haven't seen anything out there like this before.
March 30, 2024
I LOVED THIS. I am completely blown away by the incricate and varied art in this graphic novel, which is all done with ballpoint pen! It's unbelievable! And the story is similarly impressive, with multiple plotlines happening for tween Karen who's growing up poor in 60s Chicago. Lots of tough stuff in here: sexual assault (not pictured), death from cancer, the Holocaust, and forced prostitution. But even though it had a dark feel (sometimes in fun, campy old horror movie way and sometimes in a very real way), it didn't make me feel dark. A really incredible work of art. I can't wait to read volume 2.
PS: Karen is a little baby dyke. For that reason and many more, she is very lovable.
Reread:
My second time reading this complete masterpiece. Just stunning art and story. This is one of the best books I've ever read. As Alison Bechdel says: "A baroque mystery whose plot pulls you forward as insistently as the images demand you linger." Presented as the graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, growing up poor in 60s Chicago, as she investigates her upstairs' neighbour's possible murder, connected to her youth in Nazi Germany. At the same time, Karen is dealing with realizing she's gay, her beloved brother's potential for violence, and her mother's illness. All the content warnings for this. Vol 2 is out in May!!
PS: Karen is a little baby dyke. For that reason and many more, she is very lovable.
Reread:
My second time reading this complete masterpiece. Just stunning art and story. This is one of the best books I've ever read. As Alison Bechdel says: "A baroque mystery whose plot pulls you forward as insistently as the images demand you linger." Presented as the graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, growing up poor in 60s Chicago, as she investigates her upstairs' neighbour's possible murder, connected to her youth in Nazi Germany. At the same time, Karen is dealing with realizing she's gay, her beloved brother's potential for violence, and her mother's illness. All the content warnings for this. Vol 2 is out in May!!
August 15, 2022
Just finished this huge monstrosity of a book (and it's only the first of three!). Seriously, it's the size of an old school phone book for those of you old enough to know what that is. Emil Ferris even puts Dave Sim and his Cerebus phone books to shame with the size of this thing. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the graphic diary of a 12-year old girl set in the late sixties who is obsessed with monster movies. It covers issues of class, color, LBGTQ+, the holocaust, familial loss, and murder. Therein lies some of the problems I had with the book. It tries to do too much. By cramming all of these issues in, the book lacks a story. It feels like a bunch of random events thrown together in one book. It definitely meanders through long stretches of nothing. I was also confused by the panel structure at times, of which way to read. I often found myself reading out of order. The book definitely could have used an editor.
What kept me reading was the art. Ferris uses this strangely beautiful cross-hatching technique throughout using ball point pens. It gave the book the real feeling that it was created by a 12-year old, doodling in her notebook in the back of the class or alone in her room.
What kept me reading was the art. Ferris uses this strangely beautiful cross-hatching technique throughout using ball point pens. It gave the book the real feeling that it was created by a 12-year old, doodling in her notebook in the back of the class or alone in her room.
December 4, 2017
My favorite thing is Monsters, too. It really is. Monsters, left all alone with my own kind, it's the only thing that keeps me going, you know. That and this new harvest moon, it is so lovely. It's a favorite as well, but not the girl who has a little bit of the moon still left in her name. Still that's not wrong. She's not a favorite. Not anymore. Nope. She's still cute though, but not my favorite.
I suppose I should thank Jeff Vandermeer for giving me the heads up for this graphic novel. But that wouldn't be accurate. He was just a constant reminder that I wanted to get this book. And a constant reminder of Something Else too. No, that honor belongs to someone else, someone dear, truly. I want to eat deer too.
So I want to give a shout out to a dear friend, one of my favorite people here who makes people here a little less monstrous. Thank you, Miriam for telling me about this wonderful book. It was everything I needed but didn't know I wanted. It's interesting because I had vowed, actually vowed not to get any new books, a promise we never keep I know, but I did make this vow. I have tons and tons of unread books and getting new books always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. That's not really good. Unread books are like kisses that are never stolen. Which is seriously not cool at all.
This book was amazing, I love it! I love this so much. As much as the Girl who Left Herself in August had loved me. Far greater and much more selfless than her love for me was her complete understanding of what I wanted from her. And that's what completely resonated with her. What I wanted from her and for her, was for her to leave. She did.
Back to this book, the fresh creativeness in it is something I haven't seen in a long while. It's the kind of creativity that fuels my own.
Though
It is rather unfortunate that the humans are the only monsters I know of. I need to know the real ones but ultimately they are the only real ones here.
However, there is only one Monster I care about. Too bad she isn't a monster, not even close, not even a little bit. Not even monstrous. But she is still my favorite thing.
What remains to be proven, but is not unknown. Monsters. Girls. All of them are monsters. And, I love them all.
January 30, 2020
Siento prácticamente que todo lo que diga se quedará corto para intentar hablar de Lo que más me gusta son los monstruos.
Es una historia de misterio a primera vista. Parece que no se trata más que de la inocente investigación de una niña peculiar sobre el asesinato de su enigmática vecina. Pero pronto se convierte también un retrato de infancias complicadas y un vistazo a dos épocas históricas oscuras como la Chicago de los 60 y la alemania nazi. Y tampoco diría que se queda ahí. Es tal la avalancha de temas que va tocando durante estas 416 páginas que es harto imposible hablar de todos ellos.
Como del apartado narrativo, donde una sucesión de historias sucede dentro de historias. A modo de diario, bajo el punto de vista de la protagonista, vemos como su historia y la de su vecina asesinada parecen ir encadenando a la vez que se detiene y deambula por diferentes momentos de su vida. Es verdad, Lo que más me gusta son los monstruos carece absolutamente de ritmo, pero encuentra su belleza en un deambular libre e hipnótico de reflexiones y momentos de una niña que está a punto de ser adulta.
Y si hablamos del apartado artístico... es demoledor. Unico. Inigualable. Cada página acapara tal variedad de técnicas, estilos y composiciones que sería imposible pararse a describirlos uno por uno. Es toda una experiencia, repleta de estructuras absolutamente libres y que solo tienen en común esos trazos a bolígrafo repletos de colores fríos y líneas agudas sin difuminar.
Uno de esos títulos imprescindibles, de los que es difícil hablar y hacerles justicia, que pasará a la historia de las viñetas.
Reseña extensa en el blog: https://boywithletters.blogspot.com/2...
Es una historia de misterio a primera vista. Parece que no se trata más que de la inocente investigación de una niña peculiar sobre el asesinato de su enigmática vecina. Pero pronto se convierte también un retrato de infancias complicadas y un vistazo a dos épocas históricas oscuras como la Chicago de los 60 y la alemania nazi. Y tampoco diría que se queda ahí. Es tal la avalancha de temas que va tocando durante estas 416 páginas que es harto imposible hablar de todos ellos.
Como del apartado narrativo, donde una sucesión de historias sucede dentro de historias. A modo de diario, bajo el punto de vista de la protagonista, vemos como su historia y la de su vecina asesinada parecen ir encadenando a la vez que se detiene y deambula por diferentes momentos de su vida. Es verdad, Lo que más me gusta son los monstruos carece absolutamente de ritmo, pero encuentra su belleza en un deambular libre e hipnótico de reflexiones y momentos de una niña que está a punto de ser adulta.
Y si hablamos del apartado artístico... es demoledor. Unico. Inigualable. Cada página acapara tal variedad de técnicas, estilos y composiciones que sería imposible pararse a describirlos uno por uno. Es toda una experiencia, repleta de estructuras absolutamente libres y que solo tienen en común esos trazos a bolígrafo repletos de colores fríos y líneas agudas sin difuminar.
Uno de esos títulos imprescindibles, de los que es difícil hablar y hacerles justicia, que pasará a la historia de las viñetas.
Reseña extensa en el blog: https://boywithletters.blogspot.com/2...
January 17, 2018
What Emil Ferris manages to do with a handful of colored pens is nothing short of incredible. Laid out on spiral bound notepaper it's a sprawling novel that does away with the traditional comic conventions of contained boxes and defined gutters. Words crawl up the sides of pages, images bleed into each other and carry across the persistent wire-bound fold. The way Ferris renders classic paintings in ink is jaw-dropping and she transitions to pulpy, classic monster comic covers just as easily. Her people are rendered with Robert Crumb-like exaggeration and then with portraiture precision especially when it comes to Anka.
Anka lives upstairs from Karen our 10 year old narrator who lives with her womanizing brother Deeze and her mother who is in the late stages of cancer. It's 1960s Chicago but the world this 10 year old builds from the perspective of a half werewolf includes dealing with bullies at school, and changing friends, the Holocaust, child prostitution in Nazi-occupied Germany, race relations, a possible murder investigation, classic art scholarship and ruminations on love and the budding awareness of her own sexuality.
It careens all over the place and at it's heart is this 10-year old obsessed with monsters, looking for the bite that will keep her and her family together forever. There is that seeking curiosity that takes in the world around her and puts it on the page in all it's messy confusion. Where looking for a werewolf is just as important as understanding the mysterious woman upstairs and St. George and the Dragon is just as pivotal as Ghastly Issue 03.
Anka lives upstairs from Karen our 10 year old narrator who lives with her womanizing brother Deeze and her mother who is in the late stages of cancer. It's 1960s Chicago but the world this 10 year old builds from the perspective of a half werewolf includes dealing with bullies at school, and changing friends, the Holocaust, child prostitution in Nazi-occupied Germany, race relations, a possible murder investigation, classic art scholarship and ruminations on love and the budding awareness of her own sexuality.
It careens all over the place and at it's heart is this 10-year old obsessed with monsters, looking for the bite that will keep her and her family together forever. There is that seeking curiosity that takes in the world around her and puts it on the page in all it's messy confusion. Where looking for a werewolf is just as important as understanding the mysterious woman upstairs and St. George and the Dragon is just as pivotal as Ghastly Issue 03.
September 16, 2017
This a borderline one-star book for me, but I'm going to let the fascinating artwork slightly outweigh the incredibly awful writing. Talk about an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to writing; we've got adolescent angst, murder, suicide, monsters, horror comics, horror movies, museums, fine art, family drama, weird neighbors, mobsters, affairs, private detectives, cancer, imaginary friends, street people, prostitutes, child sex slaves, pedophiles, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, racism, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., race riots, talking rabbits and on and on. (At times I got the impression that many of the pictures were drawn randomly over time and then the creator just collated them and scribbled words all over them in an attempt to connect them.) And hey, this is just volume one, so nothing is resolved.
Getting to the last page of this book was a miserable and pointless slog for me.
Getting to the last page of this book was a miserable and pointless slog for me.
April 13, 2023
Une lecture pas comme les autres. Il est impossible qu’elle vous laisse indifférente : l’intrigue mystérieuse, les personnages qui cachent des parties d’eux mêmes qu’ils devront aussi découvrir, un style de dessins et d’écriture mordant qui nous pousse aux frontières de nos limites. Mon seul reproche à ce roman graphique porte sur la complexité du début de l’histoire, c’est-à-dire qu’on peut avoir de la difficulté à bien comprendre le récit avant plusieurs pages. La preuve : j’ai du m’y prendre à 2 fois pour l’entamer. Cependant, quand ce fût le bon essai, cela ne m’a pas pris moins de 3h pour me l’enfiler! Le livre nous garde sur le bord de notre chaise tout au long et les orteils qui dépassent sur le bord d’un abysse. On ne sait pas du tout ce qu’on va y découvrir… un monstre peut-être??
On aime la touche queer et on a plus que hâte de lire la suite!!
On aime la touche queer et on a plus que hâte de lire la suite!!
July 30, 2020
De los mejores libros que he leído.
No sólo la historia, sino su estructura, el arte, las ilustraciones, las referencias visuales a otras obras plásticas, la historia de Karen es preciosa pero dolorosa. Una mezcla de monstruos reales e imaginarios.
Una niña de 10 años Karen sobrevive en el Chicago de los 60's a su contexto violento, a la precariedad y su crecimiento que parece le llegará de golpe. Después de que asesinan a su vecina, Karen se vuelve una detective de sus propias memorias pero también de las de Anka, la mujer que terminó con un balazo en el corazón.
Librazo en todos sus sentidos, no puedo dejar de admirarlo.
No sólo la historia, sino su estructura, el arte, las ilustraciones, las referencias visuales a otras obras plásticas, la historia de Karen es preciosa pero dolorosa. Una mezcla de monstruos reales e imaginarios.
Una niña de 10 años Karen sobrevive en el Chicago de los 60's a su contexto violento, a la precariedad y su crecimiento que parece le llegará de golpe. Después de que asesinan a su vecina, Karen se vuelve una detective de sus propias memorias pero también de las de Anka, la mujer que terminó con un balazo en el corazón.
Librazo en todos sus sentidos, no puedo dejar de admirarlo.
January 1, 2019
3.5/5 - The artwork was beautiful - particularly the fake book covers dispersed throughout. However the story itself had trouble holding my attention.
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