#My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

[whilereadingandwalking]

More than 5 years after my partner first gave me My Favorite Thing is Monsters as a Christmas gift, Volume 2 is finally here: the conclusion of Emil Ferris's epic coming-of-age story featuring young werewolf Karen Reyes. Her quest to solve the mystery of her neighbor's death continues. She discovers more family secrets, gets closer to her new friends, and wrestles with her sexuality and adoration of women. (Some spoilers ahead for Volume 1—if you haven't read it, you absolutely have to!)

The art is as impossibly gorgeous as ever, inked on composition paper, lines peeking through the frenzied storytelling, like a packed notebook you discover on the L, textured and smelling strongly of ink. Karen copies paintings from the Art Institute into the pages. The green lions of the museum come to life, her stuffed animal companion comments snarkily on her choices. She copes with her grief over her mother's death, is able to finally get her brother to tell her the full truth about his past, finishes the tapes chronicling Anka's story of surviving the Holocaust, and discovers much more about her queerness with the help of friends new and old.

This raw, beautiful book captures the urgency of Karen's teenage years, from her own self-discovery to the intense, dangerous dramas happening around her. The ending is a little abrupt, but perhaps it just felt that way because of how long I've been anticipating this story, and how much it sucked to see it end! Karen Reyes is an all-time character, and Ferris an all-time storyteller.

Content warnings for anti-Semitism, grief, domestic abuse, trafficking/implied sexual assault, racism, homophobia.

[brokehorrorfan]

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris will be published in paperback and e-book on May 28 via Fantagraphics. The 412-page graphic novel is the conclusion to 2017's award-winning My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.

Its presented as a diary of a 10-year-old girl as she attempts to solve the murder of her Holocaust survivor neighbor, illustrated with ballpoint pen. An excerpt can be read at The New Yorker.

Dark mysteries past and present continue to abound in the tumultuous and violent Chicago summer of 1968. 10-year-old Karen Reyes attends a protest in Grant Park and finds herself swept up in a police stomping. Privately, she continues to investigate her beloved and enigmatic upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg’s recent death and discovers one last cassette tape that sheds light upon Anka's heroic activities in Nazi Germany. She wrestles with her own sexual identity, the death of her mother, and the secrets she suspects her brother Deez of hiding. Ferris's exhilarating cast of characters experience revelations and epiphanies that both resolve and deepen the mysteries visited upon them earlier. Visually, the story is told in Ferris's inimitable style that breathtakingly and seamlessly combines panel-to-panel storytelling and cartoon montages filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster mag iconography.

Pre-order My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two.

[copcomco]

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Two

by Emil Ferris

The wait is over! The looooong delayed release of the much anticipated second half of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters has finally arrived.

NOW available HERE.

[thefailurecult]

[dirtyriver]

My Favorite Thing is Monsters, 2017, by Emil Ferris

[filmnoirsbian]

A series 6 of pages from the graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

Page one: Karen (stylized as a werewolf girl) and Missy are two young girls watching a horror movie. Karen's narration says "Horror Theater played this movie 'Dracula's Daughter' and there was this one part where Countess Dracula kidnaps this woman named Janet..." Missy says "I think that the countess almost..." Karen finishes "...kissed her..."

Karen's narration says "That was the night we cut our fingers and became...blood sisters" and then "As I hung up my detective coat in the cloak room I remembered how I'd waited till Missy was asleep. I'd said, "You are beautiful" and then..."

A sleeping Missy says "...I love you Kare...I love you so much..." as Karen kisses her hand. Countess Dracula looks on and says "Oh Karen, you are far braver than I ever was!" Karen's narration says "I think she meant it because she said it from her asleep self not her awake self..."

Page two: The Next Morning. Missy and Karen are eating cereal. Missy says "Karen, do you think that a girl could become the bride of dracula's daughter?" Karen says "If they love each other then why not?"

Karen's narration says "I think Missy went home and asked her mom the same question because later Missy's mom called and demanded to know what we'd seen on TV..."

Karen's mom on the telephone says "Just some old Creepshow is all..." Missy's mom from the telephone says "That junk! I really should not be surprised as people of your class never protect their kids from bad influences!" She hangs up.

Karen's narration says "As I sat in school (getting my daily doses of paper airplanes) I thought about how that had been the last sleepover we ever had. Over the next few weeks I heard that all of Missy's monster magazines got replaced by hair and beauty mags. Her boardgames, like 'Haunted House' got replaced with, 'The Mystery Date Game'..."

Page 3: Karen's narration says "But we are still blood sisters, so no matter how mean Missy is, I can't be mean back. Her blood is inside of me. Sometimes I think if you were to put one of those x-ray machines up to me, you would see the old Missy, the Missy from when we used to love monsters together and I have to protect that part of her..." Karen gives a thumbs up to this x-ray picture of old Missy.

Page 4: Karen's narration says "...Because inside of Missy that part is in a coffin, in a crypt, staked, and hungry and all alone..." Missy gives a thumbs down to her x-ray self. Missy says "Only 3 things matter! What you wear how you do your hair and...the boy that you date!"

Page 5: Werewolf Karen and Vampire Missy embrace in a stairwell. Karen thinks "I don't care if it turns out that this was all a mean prank...for right now I get to hold her in my arms and stroke her hair." Missy says "The times when I'm with you are the only ones when I'm...myself."

Page 6: Missy's mother calls down the stairwell and says "Missy! What are you doing in the stairwell? Come back to your guests!" Missy tells her "So the neighbors don't see Karen getting on at our floor, she's taking the elevator at the floor below ours." Missy's mother says "Finally you're being sensible about that...girl!"

Still embracing, Karen says "Missy, you sure your mom won't come down here and catch us?" Missy says "She never walks down the stairs in high heels when she's been drinking. She'll be passed out by ten tonight. Horror Feature is playing 'Carnival of Souls' tonight...um...wanna call me and we can watch it over the phone together?"

Karen says "Sure."

[rubyvroom]

It's Here!

Waited seven years for this one, and it's out just in time for my birthday @thartist72 hint hint

Order it from Fantagraphics I command you

[ferdifz]

Once in a blue moon aka. survivorship bias...

But still though. My congratulations to her for (quote-unquote) 'making it' despite being so late in her life. Her lifetime of hard work makes it so that she does deserve it. And having the talent and practice from early in life does help, yes.

[rock-a-noodle]

[flintandpyrite]

Huh. So I read the sequel to My Favorite Thing Is Monsters today. The first book came out in 2017 and felt like such a revelation. The art! The main character, a little girl who has internalized her queerness as so monstrous that she imagines herself as a werewolf. The story-within-a-story of the holocaust survivor and the way survival changes you, permanently. The murder mystery and discovery of her world! Just amazing. And now the sequel feels totally flat. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve changed or if it was just not good, but the pacing felt so off to me. And the end was completely rushed. Really strange.

[whilereadingandwalking]

“Me and Caravaggio are telling you to find your f*cking Pope.”—Emil Ferris telling the artists in the audience to pursue their passions & find a way to get paid tonight at the book launch of My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book 2 at Chicago Public Library.

“I still don’t feel like a woman”—Ferris shared that she’s never fit into either binary, and that she feels like protagonist Karen: “She’s not a girl, not a boy, just a detective.” She wanted to write a book where queerness was there but was still enough under the radar that young girls like Karen, or like young Emil, could read it even if their parents didn’t support them.

She was ready to write Karen once she had her own daughter and “remembered being a child.” But she struggled after her 1st book deal fell through, dealing with hunger and suicidal thoughts. It was her now good friend, a fellow artist she met on Facebook, who saw her work and said he would give her $20 whenever she needed it so she could keep working.

She was inspired by the big thick books of fantasy films and witchy tomes, and by the fresh clean notebooks that were beautiful to her as a young kid in a poor family. (All her childhood notebooks, tragically, were thrown away, a major heartbreak.) She wanted this book to be like a packed notebook you find on the L and want to give back but you can’t stop reading, and every last page is full.

The night also featured a howl: Emil and the audience howled spectacularly. I can’t wait to read the conclusion to Karen’s story!

[juliaanoia]

Just finished book 2 of My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris. What a truly beautiful, unbelievable, horrifying, funny, queer, human, monstrous beast of a comic. Mind blowing piece of art. If you get a chance go and read it, look at it, crawl inside the drawings and crawl back out changed and richer in experience, I'm not even kidding.

[graphicpolicy]

Around the Tubes

Some comic news and reviews from around the web to start the day #comics #comicbooks

The weekend is almost here! What geeky things are you all doing? Sound off in the comments below. While you wait for the weekend to start, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web to start the day. Comicbook – Activist Investor Nelson Peltz Sells Disney Stock After Losing Proxy Battle With Bob Iger – That’s a shame… not really. The Beat – Warner Bros. Japan announces Batman Ninja…

[hyenafan]

MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS 2 IS OUT FOR PRE-ORDER!!!!

[dirtyriver]

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two, by Emil Ferris