Books › My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, vol 1
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, vol 1
416 pages
An obsessive, ballpoint-pen diary that uses B-movie horror tropes to explore the very real monsters of history and human nature.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like trespassing into the private, feverish diary of a brilliant, misunderstood child. The experience is visually staggering; every page is a dense, obsessive tapestry of ballpoint pen cross-hatching drawn directly onto lined spiral notebook paper. It demands a meandering pace, asking you to linger over the intricate artwork and the protagonist's frantic, intimate scrawls. The mood is gritty and haunting, steeped in the smoggy, turbulent atmosphere of late-1960s Chicago and the chilling shadows of Nazi Germany. It masterfully balances the campy comfort of B-movie pulp with the devastating weight of real-world trauma. This is a deeply empathetic, immersive masterpiece that will captivate fans of boundary-pushing graphic literature and anyone who has ever felt like a monster.
- Mood
- gritty
- haunting
- nostalgic
- feverish
- Tone
- earnest
- obsessive
- empathetic
- inquisitive
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- the sanctuary of pop culture · queer awakening · intergenerational trauma · outsider identity · human cruelty vs imagined monsters
- The writing
- The narrative is intimately scrawled across lined notebook paper, perfectly matching the obsessive, staggering cross-hatched ballpoint pen illustrations.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from a child's quirky, pulp-fueled escapism into a devastating, empathetic confrontation with the darkest realities of human history.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave dense, boundary-pushing graphic literature and deeply felt stories about marginalized outsiders finding refuge in the weird.
Content notes
- Holocaust trauma
- murder
- child abuse
- sexual assault
- homophobia
- racism
About the book
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge. Full-color illustrations throughout.
Description from Open Library.
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