My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1

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. Her people are rendered with Robert Crumb-like exaggeration and then with portraiture precision especially when it comes to Anka.

Anka lives upstairs from Karen our 10 year old narrator who lives with her womanizing brother Deeze and her mother who is in the late stages of cancer. It's 1960s Chicago but the world this 10 year old builds from the perspective of a half werewolf includes dealing with bullies at school, and changing friends, the Holocaust, child prostitution in Nazi-occupied Germany, race relations, a possible murder investigation, classic art scholarship and ruminations on love and the budding awareness of her own sexuality.

It careens all over the place and at it's heart is this 10-year old obsessed with monsters, looking for the bite that will keep her and her family together forever. There is that seeking curiosity that takes in the world around her and puts it on the page in all it's messy confusion. Where looking for a werewolf is just as important as understanding the mysterious woman upstairs and St. George and the Dragon is just as pivotal as Ghastly Issue 03.