Hers was a dark and traumatic life of exploitation in Nazi Germany that by contrast makes Karen’s look self-pitying. Most especially the mystery focuses on the death of her neighbor Anka Silverberg, and the unexpected opportunity to really explore Anka’s past, which allows Ferris to devote a good-sized chunk of Karen’s story to the retelling of Anka’s. This sees Karen giving back stories to neighbors and attaching mysteries to their lives that demand she solve them, including some that wrap around her brother and her mother.
In covering the intricacies of her day-to-day life, you are not only party to the inner workings of Karen’s mind, fumbling alongside her to interpret what in the world all this reality really means, you are also sucked into the her mysterious, almost conspiratorial view of the small world around her. She is struggling with her sexuality at a time she is only just becoming aware it even exists, and as she creeps into the world of adults, is also become more clearly aware of the lives of her older brother, Deeze, and her mother.īut that makes the book sound awfully basic, and it’s anything but. On the surface, it’s a monologue by young Karen Reyes, obsessed with monster movies and visualizing herself as a werewolf girl in order to rationalize the difference in her that the world perceives and acts on. So sprawling is Ferris’ book that it’s actually hard to pin down the story in any satisfying way - that is, a way that actually captures what the book is about.
It’s her first graphic novel and given the reception, not her last, and you can only hope that the quality that makes this book so mesmerizing - simply put, that of an energetic outsider - is retained. Ferris is a Chicago-based artist who had worked in illustration and toy design, but after a debilitating battle with West Nile Virus, went back to art school and redirected her energy to this graphic novel that reads like a memoir, though my understanding is that it is at best based on her childhood, with a biography hidden inside. It’s fair to say that Emil Ferris’ sprawling My Favorite Thing Is Monsters - volume one of a two volume work - came out of absolutely nowhere for many people.
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