Some of these threads resolve by the end of the first book, while others linger at the end, hopefully to wrapped up in the future. and react with a mix of shock and despair for their community and futures. Karen obsesses over this quest as a way to ignore the issues in her own life, including her attraction to another girl, Missy, her wayward brother Deeze, her mother’s failing health, and growing racial tensions that are ever-present-at a key moment in the narrative, characters learn of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Karen explores Anka’s life and death, discovering a trove of recordings that establish a harrowing account of her time in Germany between the wars, including being sold into a child prostitution rings and ultimately being sent to a concentration camp. In this guise, Karen sets out to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, the woman whose apprehensive face appears on the cover of Book One (a prospective second volume is still forthcoming). Emil Ferris’ astounding graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book One (Fantagraphics, 2017) is a densely layered narrative, drawn primarily in pen on notebook paper, telling the story of Karen Reyes, a ten-year-old outcast in 1968 Chicago, who imagines herself as a monster detective (a play on Art Spiegelman’s “ Ace Hole: Midget Detective”).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |