In this debut, which takes the form of a fictional graphic diary, a 10-year-old girl tries to solve a murder.
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.
Industry Reviews
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters feels to me like a once-in-a-generation debut -- a vision so clear and original that it will change the course of cartooning.-- "The Seattle Review of Books"
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters has all of the complexity of the finest literary fiction and breathtaking art. For what more could we ask?-- "The Austin American-Statesman"
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is not only Ferris's first graphic novel but also her first published work. ... Yet her mastery of comics, her pyrotechnic drawings, and her nested narratives are already placing her among the greatest practitioners of the form.-- "The New Yorker"
An ambitious, emotional, beautifully illustrated exploration of a 10-year-old girl's experience growing up late '60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an astounding debut, weaving an intricate web of plot threads that keeps the reader compelled from beginning to end.-- "The A.V. Club"
Ferris' work fuses the style and atmosphere of noir godfather Raymond Chandler with the passionate moral intensity found beating beneath a good episode of Tales from the Crypt.-- "Paste"
No one has ever made a comic like Emil Ferris's assured, superhumanly ambitious two-part debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. ... It threatens not merely to exceed established standards of excellence, but to set new ones.-- "The Guardian"