As drawing directly on notebook paper made corrections difficult, Ferris used a drawing layer over a notebook layer. Slowly, Karen works to unravel the mystery of Anka’s death while learning about her tragic life, coming face to face with the darkest aspects of the world and trying to transcend the true horrors in life through art. Karen requests a detective hat and coat from her brother, Deeze, and begins an investigation into what she believes is a murder. Art Spiegelman told The New York Times that Ferris is "one of the most important comics artists of our time" and that she "uses the sketchbook idea as a way to change the grammar and syntax of the comics page".

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 2 by Emil Ferris | Goodreads

Losing your humanity and all the pain that comes with it when changing into something fierce and strange enough to scare away everything that once terrified us. Quite simply, no other comic this year has come close to what Emil Ferris has accomplished in these pages. A single mom, firm, compassionate deeply superstitious and possessed of an inner strength to be awed. Presented as the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes as she tries to solve the murder of her beloved and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters takes place in 1968 Chicago and centers around the life of 10-year-old Karen Reyes. One thing we can know for sure, Ferris has been working on this book for a long, long time – and it shows.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Art, Mystery, and Identity My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Art, Mystery, and Identity

Karen Reyes wants a monster to bite her, thereby turning her into a monster, so that she can bite and transform her family into monsters as well. Please note that the graphic novel addresses potentially triggering issues that include child abuse, trafficking, murder, and other instances of violence. But above all, the process of creating and analyzing art gives both the character of Karen and the reader the ability to process a dark world and choose a path forward for themselves. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, believe it or not, has much more to offer than what I've described in this review.And yet to talk about the book in this way is to do it an injustice because it is not a political tract. My friend lent me his entire collection: all the Nightmare on Elm Streets, all the Halloweens, all the Friday the 13ths, all the vampires and werewolves and zombies.