Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: a Graphic Novel Masterpiece

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
by Emil Ferris
Fantagraphics

It’s late sixties Chicago, and Karen Reyes is a monster, or at least she imagines herself to be. In her mind’s eye, she’s a werewolf, a beetle-browed, hairy wolf-girl with a prognathous jaw rimmed with jutting teeth. No one believes her, though. No one believes in monsters: a misconception that infuriates her: “The truth is that there are a lot of things we don’t see everyday that are right under our noses — like germs and electricity and just maybe — monsters are right under our noses too…”

Karen is different from the other girls in school: biracial, with family roots in Appalachia instead of the city, and a dawning attraction to the same sex. Being a monster has its benefits for a girl like Karen: It’s better to be scary than to be scared — a dangerous outsider than a hurt reject — and a werewolf is all of things. Plus, there’s one other advantage a monster has over human beings: She can see the other monsters — the ones right under everyone else’s noses.

When a beloved neighbor — a holocaust survivor — is found shot in the heart on Valentine’s Day, the cops write it up as a suicide. Karen the werewolf suspects foul play, and doffing a new disguise — a private detective — she sets out to unmask the murderer.

A story about a girl on the cusp of adolescence who thinks she’s a werewolf comes prepackaged with sexual symbolism: puberty is lurking in the shadows, with all of its commensurate transformations and alien impulses. It is there, in spades. Creator Emil Ferris acknowledges the elephant in the room rather humorously within the opening pages of the book. It comes off as a concession to the reader (Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…) but just like the horror comics that Karen loves, it is a bit of a misdirection: a way to get the reader off guard for a much deeper dive into a story of sex and violence that begins soon thereafter.

The act of involuntary physical transformation is something that Ferris is intimately familiar with. According to interviews she’s done in support of the book, she began working on it while recovering from severe West Nile virus. The mosquito-borne illness manifests in different ways. some people are infected with it and never experience any symptoms at all. Others experience a fever, body aches, and other symptoms, and then recover with little to no lingering effects. An unlucky few, like Ferris, are inflicted with devastating neurological damage: brain-swelling, convulsions, and paralysis.

Betrayed by her own body, Ferris’ work was painstakingly slow. She worked with a quill taped to a finger while regaining the use of her hands. Her dedication reaped beautiful results. The book is illustrated with gorgeous and delicate crosshatching that produces a painstakingly precise chiaroscuro effect in mostly black and white. As Ferris’ protagonist is an artist as well, the book is presented as pages from her own college rule, spiral-bound notebook, with chapters bookended by Karen’s copies of monster comic covers.

I can’t help but to think that by committing the cardinal sin of using lined notebook paper as a format, Reyes was freed to abandon other conventions of the graphic novel, among them a total dependence on panels. Channeling Karen, Ferris fill page after page with free-flowing drawings that go where they will. The art, in turn, supports a story that is as freely unbound by convention as it is engaging. Original, beautiful, and full of surprises, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is sure to be one of 2017’s most talked-about works.