A review by trin
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris

3.0

This was...okay. It's possible all the hype raised my expectations too high, and thus dampered my enjoyment. Ferris' art is beautiful, but the story was overloaded with characters and plot elements -- it could have really used some focused editing. Also, it was often really difficult to navigate the movement of the panels and dialogue; I got lost and read the wrong way not just once or twice, but with extreme frequency. And I say this as someone who reads a lot of comics and graphic novels, and is therefore pretty darn familiar with the usual structural conceits. There were places where the House of Leaves-style textual manipulation worked, but many many others where it seemed like Ferris wanted to have the reader proceed in a somewhat linear fashion...except it was nearly impossible to tell what that was.

Also on the subject of expectations: I'd been led to believe that this was mostly a story about a girl obsessed with monsters and how she views the world. Actually, a solid third or more is a Holocaust narrative filled -- even before the Nazis show up! -- with graphic and brutal sexual violence. I understand the links Ferris is drawing between different kinds of monsters, but there was one I thought I was signing up for here, and one I wasn't.