My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Two by Emil Ferris

It took a few years longer than original expected, but the second half of Emil Ferris's major debut graphic project came out this summer: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Two. (I wonder if, like Maus, there will eventually be a one-volume edition - my sense is this is all one story, and would read best straight through.)

The first Monsters was a complex evocation of a time and place - late '60s Chicago - from the point of view of ten-year-old Karen Reyes, who it's clear was informed by the life of her creator but is not just a fictionalization of Ferris's life. Karen's mother had died recently; her father was absent - we learn more about him in this second book - and she was in the care of her older brother Diego, aka "Deeze," an aspiring artist and a low-level local organized crime soldier.

We see all of this through Karen's eyes: she's smart and inquisitive and a budding artist herself but also prone to flights of fancy and self-delusional in the way of a child trying not to think about things that are too big to handle. She thinks of herself as a detective, and sets off in the first book to solve the death by gunshot of an older woman, Anka Silverberg, who lived in the same apartment building and was a friend of Karen's.

The first book introduced all of that - plus a bit, not very much, of Karen interacting with other kids around her age, finding other oddballs and quirky people she could connect with. This second book is a continuation, very much the back half of the same story, and Ferris doesn't spend time recapping for new or forgetful readers. (Another reason I think the books will be better when read straight through.)

There's a lot of material here, a lot of things the reader has to realize - most of which, though possibly not all, that Karen realizes herself. Endings are always more difficult than beginnings: I thought Book Two worked well, and Karen is still compelling and unique, but I don't think the Anka flashbacks quite end as I hoped. (I kept waiting for one last Anka section that never came.) The very end, though plausible and reasonable, also runs away from a lot of what Karen has learned and done over the course of the two books.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, the two books together, is still a massive achievement, my minor quibbles aside. As a debut, it's astonishing: Ferris came out of essentially nowhere with this fully-formed, deep, thoughtful story, presented brilliantly in a style that mimics what Karen would have created herself at the time. I don't think we'll get a third Monsters, but I'm very interested to see what Ferris does next, what other kinds of comics stories she might have in her.