#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

[littleeyesofpallas]

Oh hey, what a great little mini-doc on a really awe-inspiring story. Emil is a friend of mine, between having worked with her boyfriend for a while ironically in the brief period where the publication of the first book was being delayed, and then professionally having worked with her as a local comic store in the time since. (she was nice enough to come in and spend a day signing our like 50+ copies of book 2 for release day. For a hot second there we could proudly say we had the only signed copies sale.)

If you've never heard of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters before, I really can't recommend it enough.

And although I'm not exactly qualified to get into the details of it, I do sort of take issue with that thumbnail. That she sold $5M worth of comics might well be true, but that's a measure of market value on what her publisher Fantagraphics was pulling in as revenue, not as measure of net profit, and certainly not her personal paycheck in the whole endeavor. Particularly given that there was a long and drawn out series of legal disputes between the first and second book's publication where Fantragraphics had a pretty substantial advantage in being able to leverage weighty legal fees in trying to coerce her into a settlement. But that's a whole other thing...

[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]

[daataa]

[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!

[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!!!!

[smashpages]

Second volume of ‘My Favorite Thing is Monsters’ by Emil Ferris will arrive next year

Fantagraphics will publish book two of the critically acclaimed, award-winning graphic novel series.

[dirtyriver]

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two, by Emil Ferris