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My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1

(My Favorite Thing Is Monsters #1)

Emil Ferris (Goodreads Author)

4.14 · Rating details · 12,201 ratings · 1,822 reviews

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 th ...more

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Paperback, 414 pages

Published February 14th 2017 by Fantagraphics

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Community Reviews

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4.14 ·

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· 12,201 ratings · 1,822 reviews

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Sep 30, 2017 karen rated it it was amazing

Recommended to karen by: Jessica T.

Shelves: youre-a-graphic-novel

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 ...more

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May 23, 2017 David Schaafsma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gn-women, chicago, gn-horror, gn-kick-ass-girl-main-characters, gn-glbt, gn-race, books-loved-2017, best-graphic-lit-ever, gn-mystery, gn-course-sum-18

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. I'll say this is the first half of the book, and the second half may be out as late as another year from now, but comics readers are used to waiting. This in part defines the serialized reading experience: Waiting (and trying to remember what happened when you first beg ...more

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Sep 15, 2017 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: comics-graphic-etc, own

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' ...more

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Apr 11, 2018 Catriona (LittleBookOwl) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, owned

Definitely a new favourite, and I plan to re-read before the second volume comes out!

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Apr 11, 2018 Samantha rated it liked it

The art is amazing but this meandered a bit more than I would have liked. I will be reading the next volume though.

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Mar 20, 2018 Joe Valdez rated it it was ok

Shelves: graphic-novel

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 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.

...more

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Jan 29, 2018 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: comicon, time-to-come-of-age

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. lite ...more

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May 18, 2017 Miriam rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, graphic

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 (view spoiler)) would have made it feel less crowded.

Although I guess on some levels it was certainly inte ...more

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Mar 11, 2017 Emily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolute-favorites, favorites

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 p ...more

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Oct 16, 2017 Melki rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-of-2017, graphic-novel

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.

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Apr 27, 2018 Sam Quixote rated it did not like it

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 “investi 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! ...more

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Jun 02, 2017 Blair rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-release, macabre-slipstream-weird, past-and-present, read-on-kindle, read-abroad, graphic-novels-comics, ghosts-and-horror

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. 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.

TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr ...more

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Oct 08, 2017 Julie Ehlers rated it really liked it

Shelves: comics-and-cartoons, free-library

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 ove 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 (view spoiler)

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, (view spoiler) stuff was bad enough, but when you add in the murder, the monsters, the horror magazines, (view spoiler), you are creating a space that I personally could probably have done without.

Of course, the book ends (view spoiler), 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. ...more

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May 27, 2018 Hannah rated it really liked it

Shelves: graphic-novel, horror

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 ...more

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Apr 03, 2018 Sadie Hartmann Mother Horror rated it it was amazing

Shelves: season-of-horror-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 ...more

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Sep 10, 2017 Char rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Char by: Ctgt

Shelves: graphic-novel, american-history, coming-of-age, historical-fiction, politics, halloween-bingo-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 ...more

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Jun 12, 2018 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-shelf, graphic-novels, horror, fanboy-goes-squee

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 monst 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. ...more

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Jan 20, 2018 Trudie rated it did not like it

Shelves: tob18, graphic-novel-comic, pictorial, read-harder-2018, art, horror, read-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 rev 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 ? ...more

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Mar 15, 2018 Matthew Hernandez rated it it was amazing

Read this book and become entranced by this graphic masterpiece...it's one of a kind. My Favorite Thing is Monsters is smart, beautifully illustrated , and thoughtfully composed novel that I have ever experienced. Karen Reyes is the best monster you'll ever read...please devour and support books like these. It's worth borrowing from the library and then purchasing right after. Add this special book to your collection. I can't hardly wait for book two.

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Sep 19, 2018 Carol Rodríguez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 ti 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. ...more

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Sep 05, 2018 Calista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, art-lovely, award-harvey, award-will-eisner, award-various, bage-young-adult, bage-mature, comics-graphic-novel, diversity, genre-coming-of-age

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 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. ...more

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Oct 08, 2017 Asghar Abbas rated it it was amazing

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 t

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. ...more

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Dec 31, 2018 Katie rated it liked it

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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Jan 17, 2018 David Yoon rated it really liked it

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. He ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Gabrielle rated it really liked it

Shelves: american, graphic-novels, horror, mystery, own-a-copy, read-in-2018, reviewed

4 and a half stars.

"I guess that's the difference... A good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they are weird and looking fangy... A fact that is beyond their control... But bad monsters are all about control... They want the whole world to be scared so that bad monsters can call the shots..."

This book is completely unlike any other graphic novel I have ever read. First off, it's huge (over 400 pages) and it is not laid out like a traditional comic book; instead, its recreates the 4 and a half stars.

"I guess that's the difference... A good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they are weird and looking fangy... A fact that is beyond their control... But bad monsters are all about control... They want the whole world to be scared so that bad monsters can call the shots..."

This book is completely unlike any other graphic novel I have ever read. First off, it's huge (over 400 pages) and it is not laid out like a traditional comic book; instead, its recreates the look and feel of someone's sketchbook, with the pale blue lines and binder holes visible through the drawings. I spent a long time on each page because this book is truly an amazingly detailed work of art.

Karen Reyes lives in Chicago, in 1968, in a semi-basement apartment with her mother and older brother. She is the quiet, loner type, with a morbid imagination and a fascination with the schlocky horror movie monsters of the era. On Valentine's Day, her beautiful but mysterious neighbor, Anka Silverberg is found dead from a gunshot through the heart, but neatly tucked away in her bed. The police rules the death as suicide, because the apartment was locked from the inside, but Karen knows this is impossible, so she decides to investigate on her own.

Karen sees herself as a monster, as a tiny werewolf with an underbite. The other kids at school make fun of her and the only people she likes and feels comfortable around are her brother, her mother and the enigmatic neighbor Anka. But during her investigation, Karen will get an unexpected glimpse into the world of adults and find out many things about her family and about Anka.

The intertwined stories of Karen and Anka touch up many complicated issues: sexual identity, abuse, bullying, racism, cancer, the horrors of WWII, the harshness of the poor Chicago neighborhoods... It would not have worked in prose: the illustrations, of varying styles depending on what's going on in the narrative, make the story that much richer and more absorbing.

This is an incredible book, the art is breathtaking, the format absolutely unique, the story complex, moving and haunting. Anyone who likes art and who ever felt like a misfit will love this book. ...more

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Apr 24, 2018 ✩ Ashley ✩ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: comics-and-graphic-novels, read-2018, love-love-love, lgbtqia, diverse-reads

✩ 4.5 Stars ✩

Wow... What an experience. What a monster of a graphic novel. I was immediately captivated and I cannot wait for the Vol. 2 conclusion.

I love Karen with every fiber of my being. She is youthful, curious, and imaginative, while being strong-willed and appropriately insightful. Finally, an author who doesn’t patronize how much a child actually understands, expecially when adults don’t want them to.

...THIS IS JUST ANOTHER REASON WHY BEING A HUMAN GIRL STINKS COMPARED TO BEING A MONS

...more

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Mar 13, 2017 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic

Set in Chicago, in the late 60s, this dazzling, graphic novel, is presented as a fictional diary, written by a ten year old named Karen. She has a devout adoration for monsters and envisions herself as a female werewolf, or were-girl, if you will. After a neighbor dies, mysteriously, Karen decided to do some sleuthing herself and finds herself navigating some dark, twisty, places, confronting the drug world, freaks and the Holocaust.
I would rather not divulge any more details but I will start hu ...more

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Aug 13, 2017 Ctgt rated it it was amazing

Never let anyone's darkness provoke you into your own midnight.

If you only read one graphic novel this year, make it this one.

Did you doodle in the margins of your notebook when you were a kid?
Yeah, me too. This book brings that memory right to the surface.

Loved everything about this book. Format, art and story all worked together to create a fantastic experience.

Format-actually looks like a notebook with wide ruled,lined paper including the hole punches.
Art-hatching and cross-hatching for very ...more

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Mar 23, 2017 Carol Tilley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: comics, childhood, horror, mystery, queer

I'll be reading this one again. Beautiful.

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Apr 20, 2018 Roberto rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novel, nord-america

Ho smesso di avere paure di essere diversa

Una ragazzina di dieci anni, Karen, un po' strana, un po' sognante, un po' disadattata; adora fumetti e film horror e scarabocchia sul suo quaderno tutte le cose che vede, immagina e pensa. Casualmente il quaderno/diario che scarabocchia è proprio il libro (librone) che abbiamo in mano. Ed è poco ordinato, con tante idee messe magari un po' a caso, visto che son scritte da una bambina. Curiosamente però richiede parecchia attenzione perché ricco di detta ...more

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Fantastična čitao...: Čitaonica - mart 2019:E. Ferris	2	5	Mar 11, 2019 06:53AM
BooktubeSFF Awards: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Readalong!	16	134	Apr 05, 2018 09:21PM
ABQ Graphic Novel...: * August 2017 DOUBLE THE COMIC FUN!	3	18	Sep 02, 2017 09:12AM

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About Emil Ferris

Emil Ferris

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Quotes from My Favorite Thing...

“Never let anyone's darkness provoke you into your own midnight.” — 5 likes

“Like I said, basements usually smell like surrealism. But kitchens and gardens almost always smell like impressionism.

Because our kitchen is part of a basement apartment, it smells like the early impressionism of Vincent Van Gogh - all big strokes of umber and ochre - a peppery greasy I-love-you smell.” — 5 likes

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