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https://vimeo.com/84936829

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The third episode of Rad Queers delves into the ornately patterned worlds of brilliant Chicago artist Edie Fake. Through comics like Gaylord Phoenix, a long-running series about an anthropomorphic bird on a fantastical quest for self-discovery, Fake explores issues of his own trans identity and sexuality. In his solo show at Thomas Robertello Gallery, Memory Palaces, the artist investigates historical Chicago queer and feminist spaces and resurrects them with a Utopian spin!

http://radqueers.com
http://ediefake.com
http://ediefake.tumblr.com

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How to Draw - Kevin Zyych https://linktr.ee/kevinzych

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How to Draw - Kevin Zyych https://linktr.ee/kevinzych

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8 page zine - Chris Piascik https://www.chrispiascik.com/

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8 page zine - Chris Piascik https://www.chrispiascik.com/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9hgESl_WFI

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MAKING AN 8 PAGE ZINE WITH 1 SHEET OF PAPER!

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Art21 is a celebrated global leader in presenting thought-provoking and sophisticated content about contemporary art, and the go-to place to learn first-hand from the artists of our time. A nonprofit organization, Art21’s mission is to inspire a more creative world through the works and words of con…

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Contour Drawing | Step by Step Art Tutorial

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https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static3.mixam.com/dist/templates/pdf/usstandard_portrait_ss_us.pdf

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https://mixam.com/comicbooks

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Art. Action. Adventure. Comic books to spark your readers' imaginations.

A great comic book is driven by tight dialogue, striking artwork and inspiring character design to make your storytelling a truly immersive experience.

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Comic Book Printing - The Best Price & Quality

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A great comic book is driven by tight dialogue, striking artwork and inspiring character design to make your storytelling a truly immersive experience. Whether your comic book is black and white or full color, a single issue or a large collection, a US size or a Japanese Manga, we have all the options you need - including stapled or perfect binding, as well as a wide range of paper types, weights and laminations.

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https://www.grekoprinting-comixwellspring.com/

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Comic Book Maker

Comic book creators work hard to draw and write their final product, and you deserve a comic book printing service that brings your story to life. Book printers need specialized knowledge and experience in printing comics in order to deliver high-quality books. Unlike regular textbook printing, comic books need high-definition images, even when they're printed in black and white.

At Comix Well Spring, we print custom books on high-quality comic paper with a variety of binding and gloss options available. We are a leading comic book maker for perfect bound and saddle-stitched softcover books in full color. We are a specialized comic print store that can answer any questions you have about digital printing and book publishing.

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self-publishing graphic novel. self publish comic book

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Comic Book Maker - Make your own Comic Book - Comix Well Spring

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Comic book creators work hard to draw and write their final product, and you deserve a comic book printing service that brings your story to life. Book printers need specialized knowledge and experience in printing comics in order to deliver high-quality books.

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https://sachachua.com/blog/2013/07/sketchnote-lessons-drawing-emotions/

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Posted on by Sacha Chua
More posts about: drawing, sketches, visual Tags: drawing, emotions, sketchnote-lessons, sketchnoting //

Want to make your drawings more interesting? Add emotions! Drawings of emotions can communicate so much more than words describing emotions, and they do so in an immediate, visceral way. For example, consider the list of words below, and the faces beneath them.

Even if you don't think you're an artist, you can draw basic emotions easily. Simple combinations of eyebrows and mouths say a lot. You can show different degrees of emotions by emphasizing parts.

You can combine emotions, too. For example, angry eyebrows + happy smile = evil overlord plotting to conquer the world. >=)

Play around, and you'll find even more emotions that you can express with small changes to the face. For inspiration, you can look at smileys and emoticons.

Icons and symbols let you be even more expressive. You can pick these up from comics and smileys.

Emotions aren't just expressed with the face. Posture can communicate emotions powerfully too. Explore the physicality of emotions by looking at how actors show feelings, or by imagining yourself feeling those emotions.

You can also show emotions in how people relate to each other.

Metaphors are fun to play with, too.

Learning how to draw emotions isn't just useful for sketchnoting. You can draw emotions in order to understand other people better. Mindmaps or empathy maps can help. You can draw your own emotions, too. When I'm faced with a difficult situation or a confusing tangle of emotions, I try to break down the different emotions I feel and the reasons why I feel that way. When you understand why you're happy and sad and worried and excited all at the same time, it's easier to move forward.

Want to learn more about drawing emotions? The best resource I've found so far is the Bikablo Emotions book, which has a lot of full-body emotions. Here's a sample of the drawings I made based on part of the Bikablo Emotions book. (There are even more emotions in the book - check it out!)

Children's books are a good source of emotions. I remember loving the Mr. Men and Little Miss series when I was growing up, and I look forward to discovering other wonderful illustrations as I go through the library's collections. =)

Comics are another great way to learn more about expressing emotions, from the concise forms of newspaper strips to more elaborate drawings in comic books.

And then there's learning about all these emotions in the first place, because it helps to be able to recognize the emotion and give it a name. Wikipedia has a few good pages: Contrasting and categorization of emotions, Emotion classification. HUMAINE proposes a classification of 48 emotions (see Wikipedia for an easier-to-read list) The Center for Nonviolent Communication lists 259 emotions in their feelings inventory.

I'm thinking of going through those lists and practising drawing all these different emotions. Want to join me? I'll post stuff here once in a while, and I'd love it if you sent me links to your drawings!

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Posted on by Sacha Chua More posts about: drawing, sketches, visual Tags: drawing, emotions, sketchnote-lessons, sketchnoting // Want to make your drawings more interesting? Add emotions! Drawings of emotions can communicate so much more than words describing emotions, and they do so in an immediate, visceral way.

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https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/riyl/episode-346-edie-fake-WG9nUZEMDz8/

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SEARCH PAST EPISODES

Search past episodes of RiYL.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brian Heater, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

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Search past episodes of RiYL. Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brian Heater, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

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https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/edie-fake/

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Near the start of Edie Fake 's newest comic collection there are a series of instructional cooking illustrations: a chicken being bound, a ball of dough being pounded, a pastry being twisted and then cut. Sentences like "Fuck me like this" hover over the drawings in hot pink all-caps.

And so the tone is set for a collection that's mischievous and playful; at times very naughty and unhinged, and at other times raw, personal, and poignant. Until now, Fake's shorts have only appeared in underground magazines and zines, making them somewhat of a rarity. This month though, Little Stranger, released by Secret Acres, finally brings his shorter works into wider circulation.

Fake has garnered a reputation for his award-winning comic series Gaylord Pheonix, which follows the epic adventures of a sexually non-binary hero, who makes their way through a universe dotted with playful creatures and intricate, geometric architecture on a quest of sexual awakening and transformation. Fake is a trans artist, and the series can be read as an allegory for navigating the world as a queer person. In this new collection, Fake's short comics similarly carve out distinctly queer spaces, and explore themes like the malleability and slipperiness of gender.

Some of the shorts are rendered in simple, sketchy lines; others are heavily inked, with meticulous detailing and ornamental patterning-attesting to Fake's fluid sensibility as an artist. In "Foie Gras," Fake makes explicit the suggestiveness of food preparation, swapping cooking steps for sexual acts. In "Anal Sex for Perverts," the words "Before I ask say yes" are placed under a shell's soft, pink opening. In "Farmboy Tales," an illustrated Fake lovingly milks a cow (you can tell it's the author when a character has long black hair). Here, we catch up with Fake to discuss his newest release.
What are you able to explore in a short comic that you might not otherwise in a series like Gaylord Phoenix, where you're perhaps more invested in world and character building?
The short pieces in Little Stranger represent a lot of experimentation and playing around. While the language in Gaylord Phoenix is very consistent, the language in these stories is much more all over the map. Emotionally, I think that while Gaylord is all about love and transformation, these stories are spaces where I can be raunchier, angrier and scarier... and also goofier, things can fall apart a little more. Collectively, the short work stretches my emotional range in comics. It's squirrelier, and I think it brings more chaos to the table, which I appreciate.
Why have you found the short comic form useful for articulating and exploring gender identity and queerness?
I'm most adept at visual communication, so comics has always drawn me in because you can supplement the language you use with the complexities and ambiguities of drawing.

I think there's a lot about specifically trans and non-binary experience, especially bodily experiences that I feel are currently ineffable-there's not words yet. So comics has also helped me weasel into those places. My own personal places, and also, I hope, places that the larger culture needs to figure out.

Comics has always drawn me in because you can supplement the language you use with the complexities and ambiguities of drawing.

This collection is filled with brilliantly surreal sex scenes, and its rich with symbolism and analogy. Could you expand on your approach to the erotic, and the way that you articulate your own experiences, in relation to one of your stories?
Part of all this sexy horror in Little Stranger is trying to touch the spots in my mind and memory that I can't see. There's a lot of blank space in there, somehow. I know I've done a lot of living, and yet I have almost no cohesive timeline for it, or memory of it. What's in those blank spaces?

As a culture we need more language to articulate the sexuality and experience of trans and non-binary bodies, and that's where most of the stories in Little Stranger have their root. I think about the erogenous parasites in the "Nightcrawlers" story-I wanted to draw how raw and creature-like my genitalia feels like. Also, I had been obsessed with the tongue-eating louse, a parasite that devours-and then lives as-the tongue of its host fish. It felt like my body and that louse were singing a duet, which is what I tried to get into that story.

As a culture we need more language to articulate the sexuality and experience of trans and non-binary bodies.

The "Foie Gras" trilogy is also very evocative and suggestive. Where did you get the idea for this set?
Ha ha. Foie Gras comes out of a deep love for cookbooks, cooking shows, and all types of food preparation. It comes from seeing the gestures of food preparation as suggestive... and then trying to figure out "suggestive of what?"
Little Stranger is made up of stories that have appeared in various zines and magazines. As you went over your oeuvre from the last years, what did you learn about your personal development as a comic artist that you didn't realize before?
For a while I was really nervous that I was making the same comic over and over again, thinking I was doing something new. With collecting these little pieces I'm still haunted by the idea that I am indeed making the same comic over and over again, but I also see that sometimes I am able to find new and exciting things within familiar structure and territory.
The stories are illustrated using such a breadth of styles and devices. Some of your stories are organized by panels for example, but then eschew conventional speech bubbles. Other stories have no panels at all. What is important to you when considering the pacing and layout of a story? Do you begin with sketching and a story follows, or do you always have the idea in mind before you pick up a pencil?
Panels aren't intuitive to me, and some of this work quite literally involves me trying to teach myself to use panels. Ultimately, I don't care about panels. The language and the visuals balance a piece for me. It has to look compelling and say something. Knowing the visual look of a piece is easy for me, and that seems to dictate how pacing and language can work. I'm not a formalist wonk about comics at all.
And what draws you to the world of self-publishing and zine making more generally?
I usually start with one or two beautiful things I want to draw-things that I know mean something to me but are still sort of undefined. I make very tiny and loose sketches and write out phrases that come to me and then start with drawing what seems like the truest page. Once that page is sorted out I shape the rest of the story or zine around it.

Lots of things keep me coming back to zines. I like the small, intimate format. I like that it can be easily shared, traded and gifted. I like the freedom to experiment and try stuff out, the culture of small press and zines has really shaped me and my work.

Edie Fake was born in Chicago in 1980, and has lived between New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Baltimore. He was one of the first recipients of Printer Matter's Award for Artists, and in 2011, he helped found the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE). His stories have appeared in Lumpen Magazine and the New York Times. Today, Fake lives and draws in the California High Desert.

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Ever Get Turned on by Cooking Instructions? Comics Artist Edie Fake's Personal + Playful Exploration of Sexuality

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Near the start of Edie Fake's newest comic collection there are a series of instructional cooking illustrations: a chicken being bound, a ball of dough being pounded, a pastry being twisted and then cut. Sentences like "Fuck me like this" hover over the drawings in hot pink all-caps.

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https://www.spitandahalf.com/product/gaylord-phoenix-by-edie-fake/

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"[...] [C]omics has always drawn me in because you can supplement the language you use with the complexities and ambiguities of drawing.

I think there’s a lot about specifically trans and non-binary experience, especially bodily experiences that I feel are currently ineffable—there’s not words yet. So comics has also helped me weasel into those places. My own personal places, and also, I hope, places that the larger culture needs to figure out."

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/edie-fake/

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"During the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, some artists confronting the ravages of the disease and examining other aspects of LGBTQ life camouflaged their messages via abstraction because of the controversial nature of the subject matter. Though one would hope our society has advanced enough that such disguising is no longer necessary, “queer abstraction” remains a potent means for investigating complicated issues."

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/edie-fake-62593/

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The dozen gouache-and-ink compositions in Edie Fake's recent show (all 2018) were somewhat deceptive. Semiabstract images bearing electric colors, geometric patterns, and push-pull dynamics, they suggested art for art's sake. But they were layered with allusions to the transgender artist's explorations of sexuality and identity. Such combinations of eye-catching designs and personal and political concerns place Fake in the tradition of the 1970s and '80s Pattern and Decoration artists-a connection also claimed in "Surface/Depth: The Decorative after Miriam Schapiro," a group exhibition held earlier this year at New York's Museum of Arts and Design that delved into the influence of one of the movement's pioneers and included Fake's work.

The Evanston, Illinois, native, who now lives in the California High Desert just outside of Joshua Tree, has something of a double career. He is probably best known as a force in the alternative comics scene, with Gaylord Phoenix, his 2011 book about a nonbinary humanoid on a journey of self-discovery, winning the Ignatz Award for outstanding graphic novel. At the same time, he is an up-and-comer in the art world whose work not only was included in "Surface/Depth" but also will be featured in the Des Moines Art Center's 2019 show "For Today I Am a Boy: Contemporary Queer Abstraction." During the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and '90s, some artists confronting the ravages of the disease and examining other aspects of LGBTQ life camouflaged their messages via abstraction because of the controversial nature of the subject matter. Though one would hope our society has advanced enough that such disguising is no longer necessary, "queer abstraction" remains a potent means for investigating complicated issues.

Fake's latest body of work follows from his "Memory Palace" series of drawings, which reimagine the facades of Chicago-area gay and lesbian venues (bars, nightclubs, bookshops) as elaborate structures. While architectural references are often evident in the new work, they are less overt than in the previous series. In Tangles, a showy polka-dotted stairway is tucked into the center of a busy, fantastical space with an off-balance perspective. Boxes with gridded patterns on their ends jut forward, and curving brown stripes weave in and out of the foreground.

A gallery statement suggests that these works should be considered self-portraits of sorts, the images "referencing elements of the trans and non-binary body through pattern, color and architectural metaphor." While Fake does not seem interested in conveying definite meanings in them, he does explore particular themes and motifs, as titles like Center Part or Neutralities might indicate. In The T Room, eight colorful, patterned squares form a central "T," which likely stands for "testosterone" or "transgender." Four of the squares contain the letters "F" and "T" interlocking in such a way that they produce an "M," evoking the notion of female-to-male (FTM). In a Chicago Tribune interview, Fake alluded to doing a painting about binding his chest and eventually undergoing what he called "masculinizing chest surgery." That work is clearly The Bindery, one of the most explicit images in the show, with its convoluted interplay of floating red, white, and blue bandage-type strips unspooling from five rolls. Even in the less direct works, however, Fake's overall intent seems clear: to conjure a vibrant space where freedom of gender expression can reign.

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The dozen gouache-and-ink compositions in Edie Fake's recent show (all 2018) were somewhat deceptive. Semiabstract images bearing electric colors, geometric patterns, and push-pull dynamics, they suggested art for art's sake. But they were layered with allusions to the transgender artist's explorations of sexuality and identity.

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My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

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My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

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https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters

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On sale date: February 14, 2017

In this debut, which takes the form of a fictional graphic diary, a 10-year-old girl tries to solve a murder.

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.

"Drawn with Bic pen on lined notebook paper, this moody and ravishing graphic novel takes the form of a sketchbook diary. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, 10-year-old Karen Reyes investigates the suspicious death of her glamorous neighbor and finds troubling clues lurking close to her own home. ... An eerie masterpiece of the monsters around and within us." - The New York Times - Critics' Pick

"My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is not only Ferris's first graphic novel but also her first published work. ... Yet her mastery of comics, her pyrotechnic drawings, and her nested narratives are already placing her among the greatest practitioners of the form." - The New Yorker

"This extraordinary book has instantly rocketed Ferris into the graphic novel elite alongside Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware. You see, she's produced something rare, a page-turning story whose pages are so brilliantly drawn you don't want to turn them." - Terry Gross - NPR: Fresh Air

"A thrilling and surprisingly profound novel ... The book is a fine balance of stunning artwork and terrific writing." - Chicago Tribune

"One of the most profound, ambitious and accomplished creative works to appear in any medium this decade. ... Rarely have words and pictures worked together so seamlessly in service of such a complex narrative." - Forbes

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In this debut, which takes the form of a fictional graphic diary, a 10-year-old girl tries to solve a murder. 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.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch_NJ4LsUaw/?hl=en

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View this post on Instagram

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Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

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Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

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https://smarthistory.org/goya-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters/

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A dark vision

In this ominous image, we see the dark vision of humanity that characterizes Goya's work for the rest of his life.

A man sleeps, apparently peacefully, even as bats and owls threaten from all sides and a lynx lays quiet, but wide-eyed and alert. Another creature sits at the center of the composition, staring not at the sleeping figure, but at us. Goya forces the viewer to become an active participant in the image--the monsters of his dreams even threaten us.

Los Caprichos

On 6 February 1799, Francisco Goya put an advertisement in the Diario de Madrid. "A Collection of Prints of Capricious Subjects," he tells the reader, "Invented and Etched by Don Francisco Goya," is available through subscription. We know this series of eighty prints as Los Caprichos (caprices, or follies).

Los Caprichos was a significant departure from the subjects that had occupied Goya up to that point--tapestry cartoons for the Spanish royal residences, portraits of monarchs and aristocrats, and a few commissions for church ceilings and altars.

Many of the prints in the Caprichos series express disdain for the pre-Enlightenment practices still popular in Spain at the end of the Eighteenth century (a powerful clergy, arranged marriages, superstition, etc.). Goya uses the series to critique contemporary Spanish society. As he explained in the advertisement, he chose subjects "from the multitude of follies and blunders common in every civil society, as well as from the vulgar prejudices and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or interest, those that he has thought most suitable matter for ridicule."

The Caprichos was Goya's most biting critique to date, and would eventually be censored. Of the eighty aquatints, number 43, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," can essentially be seen as Goya's manifesto and it should be noted that many observers believe he intended it as a self-portrait.

Imagination united with reason

In the image, an artist, asleep at his drawing table, is besieged by creatures associated in Spanish folk tradition with mystery and evil. The title of the print, emblazoned on the front of the desk, is often read as a proclamation of Goya's adherence to the values of the Enlightenment-without Reason, evil and corruption prevail.

However, Goya wrote a caption for the print that complicates its message, "Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders."

In other words, Goya believed that imagination should never be completely renounced in favor of the strictly rational. For Goya, art is the child of reason in combination with imagination.

The beginnings of Romanticism

With this print, Goya is revealed as a transitional figure between the end of the Enlightenment and the emergence of Romanticism. The artist had spent the early part of his career working in the court of King Carlos III who adhered to many of the principles of the Enlightenment that were then spreading across Europe--social reform, the advancement of knowledge and science, and the creation of secular states. In Spain, Carlos reduced the power of the clergy and established strong support for the arts and sciences.

However, by the time Goya published the Caprichos, the promise of the Enlightenment had dimmed. Carlos III was dead and his less respected brother assumed the throne. Even in France, the political revolution inspired by the Enlightenment had devolved into violence during an episode known as the Reign of Terror. Soon after, Napoleon became Emperor of France.

Goya's caption for "The Sleep of Reason," warns that we should not be governed by reason alone-an idea central to Romanticism's reaction against Enlightenment doctrine. Romantic artists and writers valued nature which was closely associated with emotion and imagination in opposition to the rationalism of Enlightenment philosophy. But "The Sleep of Reason" also anticipates the dark and haunting art Goya later created in reaction to the atrocities he witnessed-and carried out by the standard-bearers of the Enlightenment-the Napoleonic Guard.

Goya brilliantly exploited the atmospheric quality of aquatint to create this fantastical image. This printing process creates the grainy, dream-like tonality visible in the background of "The Sleep of Reason."

Aquatint

Although the aquatint process was invented in 17th century by the Dutch printmaker, Jan van de Velde, many consider the Caprichos to be the first prints to fully exploit this process.

Aquatint is a variation of etching. Like etching, it uses a metal plate (often copper or zinc) that is covered with a waxy, acid-resistant resin. The artist draws an image directly into the resin with a needle so that the wax is removed exposing the metal plate below. When the scratch drawing is complete, the plate is submerged in an acid bath. The acid eats into the metal where lines have been etched. When the acid has bitten deeply enough, the plate is removed, rinsed and heated so that the remaining resin can be wiped away.

Aquatint requires an additional process, the artist sprinkles layers of powdery resin on the surface of the plate, heats it to harden the powder and dips it in an acid bath.

The acid eats around the resin powder creating a rich and varied surface. Ink is then pressed into the pits and linear recesses created by the acid and the flat surface of the plate is once again wiped clean. Finally, a piece of paper is pressed firmly against the inked plate and then pulled away, resulting in the finished image.

Additional resources:
Goya and the Spanish Enlightenment on The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Goya on Times Topics

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Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

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In this ominous image, we see the dark vision of humanity that characterizes Goya's work for the rest of his life. A man sleeps, apparently peacefully, even as bats and owls threaten from all sides and a lynx lays quiet, but wide-eyed and alert.

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https://www.npr.org/transcripts/522034367

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Chicago illustrator Emil Ferris has always be fascinated by monsters. As a kid, she would watch werewolf movies and find herself sympathizing with the wolf. Now 55, she's recently published her first graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.

"I always felt like [monsters] were kind of heroic because they were facing something," Ferris tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Becoming a monster sometimes isn't a choice that you have. We're all that; we're all 'the other' in one way or another."

Set in 1968, Ferris' novel is rendered as a sketchbook that belongs to a 10-year-old girl, Karen, who loves horror movies and who thinks of herself - and draws herself - as a werewolf. The novel deals with the figurative and literal horrors of Karen's life, including the murder of her elderly neighbor, Anka, who was a Holocaust survivor.

Ferris began writing and drawing My Favorite Thing Is Monsters after she was bitten by a mosquito that infected her with West Nile virus. The virus left her paralyzed, but eventually she regained some use of her right hand and learned to draw again by duct-taping a quill pen to her hand. Ferris now walks with the help of a cane.

Looking back, she says the book never would have been written had she not contracted West Nile. "The experience really coalesced my ferocity around regaining the ability to draw and walk and live and create," she says. "It became clear to me that it was much more important ... to do the best that I could and give something to the world."

Interview Highlights
On why she chose to draw and write about dark subjects
There's the way that light shows in darkness and it is extremely beautiful. And I think it essentializes the experience of being human, to see light in darkness. ...

For me, the moments of beauty [were] when I duct taped a quill pen to my hand and I'm shaking, knocking the bottles of ink, and my daughter steadies my hand and helps me put the quill down. ... Then she's with me. She's standing beside the drafting table and I'm drawing and I draw a wheelchair and I think she's going to draw me sitting in the wheelchair, but she draws me standing up out of it. And she says, "Mama, I know that they told you you're not going to walk again, but I really believe you will." It's in those moments when everything seems so dark that the most beautiful things happen.
On the hallucinations she had while she was in the hospital
One of the hallmarks of West Nile virus is that, because you get encephalitis and meningitis, there are so many delusions, illusions and hallucinations that are part of this fever and chills that build up to your final destination, which is ultimately, in the mind of the virus, death, but for me was paralysis - and, of course, a rich panoply of remembered delusions and hallucinations.

The angel of death came to visit and the angel of death as I saw it in my fever was a very big, 1940s kind of a gray/teal/blue filing cabinet, and it was sort of a bureaucrat and it just came into the room and spoke. One of the drawers slightly opened and there was this sort of glowing light inside of it and it said, "Are you in or are you out? We need to know for our records." And I thought of my daughter and I said, "Yeah, I'm in. I gotta stay. I got to finish this," because she was only 6 at the time.

Then I saw this enormous rock and ... there was something inside of the rock, and it was ... gold. And what was said to me is, "There's a very hard path for you, since you've decided to stay, but there's something beautiful inside of the difficulty and you're going to have to chip through this rock to get to it."
On her early exposure to the horror films produced in the 1950s and '60s by Hammer Film Productions
Death was really sexy in the Hammer films because you got to wear a really nice negligee, you got to sleep in these beautiful coffins, maybe it was very ornate. The mold in these places was obviously there and a problem, but since you were undead, it didn't bother you, which was always convenient. ... There's this unearthly glow to you. I think the Hammer films really made death quite sexy.
On growing up around sexual violence and abuse
Sexual violence was something that was very prevalent in the area that I grew up [in] and it was something that we [dealt with], especially as girls, but also boys who were exposed to it by virtue of being in organizations and institutions that allowed children to be abused. It was very much a part of our lives, and as children we would talk about "leave the room when this person asks you to sit on their lap." Those were the kinds of cues you'd give other children. And there was not really protection. ...

When you're a kid, you're trying to figure [out] what's really happening to you, and real violence happens on this tremendously deep level. ... It's so psychic in a way, it's so psychically damaging. And it's also a way of connecting with something that is true in the world, very primal and true. ... I experienced violence and knew that in those moments I was being opened up to a world that had all kinds of things in it.

I get afraid of the dark if I'm in a great deal of dark, and I have to move around inside of that fear. ... But there is a chance that something ... will talk to me from the dark, so I have ... to be prepared for that communication, which has happened. I've had things in the darkness speak to me, not audibly, but certainly in my soul, and they've enriched the book. ... I'm not sure if they're on my team or not, but they have helped.

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In 'Monsters,' Graphic Novelist Emil Ferris Embraces The Darkness Within

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Chicago illustrator Emil Ferris has always be fascinated by monsters. As a kid, she would watch werewolf movies and find herself sympathizing with the wolf. Now 55, she's recently published her first graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. "I always felt like [monsters] were kind of heroic because they were facing something," Ferris tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

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https://www.npr.org/2018/08/03/635407169/every-full-moon-we-can-howl-at-is-a-victory-says-emil-ferris

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‘Every Full Moon We Can Howl At Is A Victory,’ Says Emil Ferris

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Ferris’ graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters won three Eisners, the highest award in mainstream comics, and it celebrates the things that make us all monsters — because monsters are cool.

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"The bad monsters want the world to look the way they want it to. They need people to be afraid…They don’t live in their lair and mostly mind their own biz… I guess that’s the difference… A good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they’re weird looking and fangy… A fact that is beyond their control… But bad monsters are all about control… They want the whole world to be scared so that bad monsters can call the shots…"

https://www.avclub.com/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-is-a-brilliant-eye-openi-1798258797

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Every two weeks, focuses on a newly released comic-book issue of significance. This week, it's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book One. Written and illustrated by Emil Ferris, this graphic novel is a stunning debut that introduces a major new talent to the comics scene. (This review reveals major plot points.)

Let's get right to the point: Emil Ferris' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a masterpiece. It's hard to think of a debut graphic novel in recent memory that has the visual splendor, narrative ingenuity, and emotional impact of this 413-page tome, and with this book, Ferris immediately establishes herself as one of the most exciting, provocative talents in the comics industry. Heavily inspired by Ferris' own experience growing up as a monster-obsessed, alienated child in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, MFTIM follows a 10-year-old girl, Karen Reyes, as she tries to uncover the mystery of her upstairs neighbor's death, which is declared a suicide by the police despite signs that suggest murder. That's the general thrust of the graphic novel, but it's just the starting point for a story that is massive in scope, moving from Uptown to Weimar-era Germany to explore the coming-of-age of two girls living in separate times of intense social and political turmoil.

In the original submission package for MFTIM, Ferris breaks down the individual elements that make up the book: mystery, memoir, historical fiction, humor, urban grit, romance, biting social commentary, and supernatural thriller. There's a lot going on here, but Ferris gracefully blends everything together into one cohesive, riveting read. The mystery of Anka Silverberg's death provides a starting point that branches out in all sorts of directions, and the book becomes more and more substantial as it delves into Karen's relationship with the deceased. That relationship gains considerable depth when Karen learns about Anka's past in Germany, a tragic tale of an abused Jewish girl who eventually finds her way to happiness and stability, which is taken away from her when the Nazis come into power. Karen and Anka's stories weave together to form a rich narrative tapestry, one that is given greater impact thanks to Ferris' mesmerizing visuals.

MFTIM is presented as Karen's sketchbook, which tells the story with intricately crosshatched ballpoint pen illustrations on lined spiral-bound notebook paper. Ferris does astonishingly innovative work with this format, and while it's highly unlikely that a 10-year-old would have Ferris' skill with a pen, the sketchbook conceit gives the book a youthful spontaneity and emotional rawness. Ferris isn't working within a traditional comic structure, often eschewing panels in favor of more fluid, expressive layouts that draw the reader deeper into the individual experiences of the characters. Environments are rendered with meticulous detail that makes each setting distinct, and the characters are overflowing with personality thanks to Ferris' slightly exaggerated, highly specific facial expressions and body language. There are also moments when the exaggeration disappears to ground these characters in reality, and there's an especially powerful transition late in the book where Karen reveals herself as she actually appears rather than the cartoonish version she puts on the page.

The technical prowess on display in MFTIM is incredible, and the materials Ferris uses send a message that says its possible to create fine art with everyday resources like ballpoint pens and notebook paper. Some of the images in this book could easily compete with pieces hanging in museums and galleries, and throughout the story, Ferris replicates major works of art to bring a completely different texture and dimension to the source material. Karen and her brother Deeze's early trip to the Art Institute of Chicago is an opportunity for Ferris to show off this talent for duplication. Her versions of classic pieces like Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte" and Bernat Martorell's "St. George Killing The Dragon" reflect Karen's distinct interpretation of the artwork, and Karen occasionally finds herself fully immersed in these works, exploring them from new angles that are dictated by her individual perception.

Originally set for release on Halloween of last year, the initial 10,000-book print run of MFTIM was seized at the Panama Canal on the way from South Korea after the shipping company filed for bankruptcy. It forced Fantagraphics to delay the book's release, but it proved to be a serendipitous turn of events. MFTIM is even more relevant after the election of President Donald Trump, and it speaks to the current political climate in chilling ways. In the wake of increasing anti-Semitism in the United States, the flashbacks to Anka's life during the rise of the Nazi party play like a terrifying vision of what could happen in the U.S. if a hate-mongering government goes unchecked. The bigotry experienced by Karen, her family, and her friends hasn't disappeared, and the vernacular and policies of the current administration are fueling prejudice and fear rather than diminishing it.

The big thesis statement of MFTIM comes toward the end of the book as Karen considers the different kinds of monsters that exist in the world. Karen has idolized monsters for her entire life, specifically the strange, mutated outsiders that appeared in the late-night horror movies she catches on TV and the horror comics she reads voraciously, and she draws herself with werewolf-like features in her sketchbook. Karen considers herself and other misfits to be good monsters, people who don't fit socially constructed views of what is normal and simply want to live their lives without hurting others. The bad monsters are the people who want to oppress, control, and/or destroy people that challenge their ideas, and this dichotomy is especially clear to Karen after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

The bad monsters want the world to look the way they want it to. They need people to be afraid...They don't live in their lair and mostly mind their own biz... I guess that's the difference... A good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they're weird looking and fangy... A fact that is beyond their control... But bad monsters are all about control... They want the whole world to be scared so that bad monsters can call the shots...

This sentiment was true in Nazi Germany, it was true in 1968 America, and it's true right now. The bad monsters have a fundamental lack of empathy for people outside of their own experience, which motivates behavior that causes significant damage to individuals and communities that are deemed "other." MFTIM is a book steeped in empathy and the need to understand the complexities of people and their specific experiences. A big part of Karen's growth involves the realization that the world is made up of shades of gray. Few people (if any) are wholly good or bad, and each person has their own personal baggage that they carry through life. Understanding this makes Karen both extremely compassionate and curious, and she wants to know about personal struggles because it helps her make stronger connections with the people around her.

MFTIM has gotten lots of attention from major news outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and NPR over the last few weeks, and some of the biggest names in the industry have voiced their support of Ferris and her work. The front and back covers of MFTIM have pull quotes from Chris Ware and Allison Bechdel, and Art Spiegelman told The New York Times, "Emil Ferris is one of the most important comics artists of our time." She's not only important; she's an inspiration.

Fourteen years ago, Ferris suffered a mosquito bite that gave her the West Nile Virus, paralyzing her from the waist down and causing major nerve damage in her right hand, which now shook and was too weak to hold a pen. Despite being told by doctors that she would not walk again, Ferris held on to hope thanks to the encouragement of her friends and family, and enrolled in the Art Institute Of Chicago's M.F.A. program. She began classes in a wheelchair but graduated walking with two canes, and she attributes her recovery to the healing power of art. It's a powerful story (which she turned into a for Chicago Magazine), and MFTIM is all the more impressive considering what Ferris had to overcome in its creation. She's an amazing talent, and readers won't have to wait long for another huge helping of Ferris' work because the second book of MFTIM is slated to hit stands in October of this year, ideally hitting the release date that this first half was denied.

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My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a brilliant, eye-opening graphic novel debut

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Every two weeks, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic-book issue of significance. This week, it's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book One. Written and illustrated by Emil Ferris, this graphic novel is a stunning debut that introduces a major new talent to the comics scene. (This review reveals major plot...

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https://www.pastemagazine.com/comics/emil-ferris/the-holocaust-art-chicago-sickness-a-3500-word-int/

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The first volume of Emil Ferris' debut comic, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, was scheduled for release last October, timed to coincide with Halloween. But the company that owned the ship carrying the printed books went bankrupt, leaving its cargo in a terrible limbo that delayed the book until this month. In some ways, the hiccup was fitting. Ferris' book has been anticipated for much longer and undergone multiple iterations. It's the sort of achievement that requires a certain sense of mission to complete. But it's here now courtesy publisher Fantagraphics, and it is well worth the wait.

Oversized with a paper binding, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters feels heftier than if it had a board cover, yet ephemeral at the same time. The story draws on EC Comics, Holocaust literature, detective fiction, monster movies, children's literature à la Harriet the Spy and more, weaving a complex tapestry through the 1960s that surprisingly parallels our current era. Are its monsters a metaphor or a reality? And are the people in it who look like monsters the ones we need to fear? Ferris doesn't supply simple answers. Instead, her work fuses the style and atmosphere of noir godfather Raymond Chandler with the passionate moral intensity found beating beneath a good episode of Tales from the Crypt. She agreed to unpack some of her book's themes in an email interview that lasted through multiple back and forths.

Paste: I've read that you don't like to get out much. Is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window an influence on My Favorite Thing in Monsters?

Emil Ferris: That's interesting. From the perspective of a disabled recluse, I definitely identify with the voyeuristic approach inherent to the James Stewart character. Not a parallel I'd ever considered but very apt.

Paste: How much time do you spend watching your own neighbors and trying to figure out their stories?

Ferris: While creating the book, I had a studio a while back that was a dozen yards from an el platform. Having no television, I'd regularly take my work breaks at the window and while monitoring the passengers embarking/disembarking, I assigned names and stories to them based on their mien, carriage and general demeanor. There was Colonel Archibald Shlump, Mr. Fast Pants, Circus Sue and Dino the Behemoth, Ronnie Rabblerouser and many, many more.

Paste: Did you base any characters in the book on folks you saw from your window by the el?

Ferris: Apologies! I was so snarky to mention those silly reductive names for the characters I saw. I really did know that there was much more to them than the goofy names I gave them. No, not really based on the el travellers, per se, in terms of characters. This is the part where I'm supposed to say that my characters are not based on anyone in real life...yeah. (Heh!) I read a quote to the effect that we are always writing about ourselves no matter what we're doing. That may be so.

Paste: What is that amazing textile in the background of your press photo?

Ferris: It's a vintage silk embroidery made by the Uzbek Suzani from Samarkand. I have a profound interest in embroidery as I have female ancestors on both sides who embroidered their way through great trials. On my mother's side was a Sephardic Jewish ancestor who, in flight from the Inquisition, created a Colcha (still held by a family member) in the hull of a ship traveling from Spain to the New World (Mexico City/Taos, New Mexico). On my father's side was my 18-year-old Lebanese grandmother who created vast images in thick lace in order to endure her unhappy and non-voluntary arranged marriage to my 56-year-old grandfather. Sewing a drowning self to the intimate details of a thing in order to be bound to the buoyant greater whole seems to be a familial bent. I think working on this book represented my salvation as an artist and a person.

Paste: Can you talk to me about why you're only making your debut as a comics artist now? It sounds like it might have something to do with it being your "salvation as an artist and a person."

Ferris: I'm in my 50s, and I've been making stories with pictures all my life, but this is the first one I've shown anyone. Yes, doing a work, telling a story very much represents a way to save my own life and on so many levels. Not sure if I told you about being disabled (profoundly bad scoliosis), and because I couldn't run I discovered the value of telling stories (ghost/horror stories) in order to have any kids around me during recess. Essentially making this book was the way a very isolated/reclusive person sought to engage with the world and offer something of value.

Paste: So what gave you the kick in the pants to start drawing this book?

Ferris: As a seriously disabled person who had tried again and again to enter the job market and was rebuffed regularly, I knew I would have to create my own way to survive. (While applying for an ad agency job, I was asked-in the event of a fire-if I thought I could carry a computer down a half-dozen flights of stairs and this "saving the life of a computer" was actually implicitly posited as a mandatory ability for an employee!)

So I knew I needed to create something that satisfied my desire to have a positive impact and at the same time might be appealing to an audience. I had studied under Anne Elizabeth Moore, who is a solid believer in the power of comics as a catalyst for social change, so it seemed like a no-brainer. The response I got to the first 24 pages of the book-I was honored by being made a Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artist Fellow-seemed to confirm to me that this was the correct way to go.

Paste: Talk to me more about your disability. Scoliosis plus West Nile Virus, right?

Ferris: I was born with fairly serious scoliosis and I did not walk at all until I was about two-and-a-half years old. At 10, after years of extreme pain (my crooked spine made my legs different lengths, breathing difficult and it was literally very close to running into my heart) I had corrective surgery that required my being in a body cast for nine months. When I gave birth to my daughter my spine was further damaged.

As a consequence of the birth I had some spina bifida occulta and that was like a restaurant "We're Open" sign to West Nile virus. So that when I got bitten, the virus hunkered down to dine on my spine. The result was not only encephalitis, but also meningitis and, of course, lower body paralysis and partial paralysis of my right hand. I have recovered from some of it, but not all of it.

Paste: Did you make comics growing up and, if so, did you use a lined-paper notebook like the one this book mimics?

Ferris: I did. I began to suspect that I could communicate this way when my classmates in grammar school and high school, kids who did not like to read, would hijack and pass around my notebooks/sketchbooks for long periods of consideration.

Paste: Did you choose the lined-paper background to evoke childhood?

Ferris: Exactly so! But also to offer a structure against which I could rebel. I received a book as a kid from my aunt (a fabulous New Mexican embroider by the name of Ann Spiess Mills). The book was called My Name is Lion. It was about a Navajo boy who is given a lined notebook and says in response that he is going to defy the lines and draw against them. I loved that when I was a kid, and [ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters protagonist] Karen loved it, too.

Paste: Did you draw in those lines? Use a computer? Surely you didn't work on actual notebook paper?

Ferris: Every drawing is hand drawn with ballpoint pen and the text is made with felt tip pens. This is appropriate to the year which is meant to be 1968. Very quickly I realized that lines would make corrections nigh on impossible, so I created a drawing layer which was set over a notebook layer.

Paste: What brand of ballpoints/felt tips?

Ferris: Bic pens for images. Paper Mate Flair pens for text.

Paste: How did you develop your cross-hatching-heavy style? And why did you stick with it for this (extremely long) book? Doesn't it take forever?

Ferris: Yes, Hillary. It really does make a case for me being a lunatic. But I love the sculptural possibilities. I love the way each line on its own means something and is loaded with its own expression-full and unique-but the confluence of the lines en masse brings out an even more poignant vision and, hopefully, a truth. I thought about this while viewing the recent Women's March.

Paste: So is it almost a devotional practice? Like the way Lynda Barry encourages people just to keep the pen/pencil moving?

Ferris: I think I'm a sculptor at heart. I define space, find form, using these swaths of arching lines. That's the joy of it. Carving out form from the flat page. Creating textures and shadows that simultaneously harbor dark, faintly seen things and expose other things to scrutiny. The technique has a parallel-not just within the historic context of horror comics-but within the very nature of monsters as beings who must remain occult (hidden) and disguised, and yet also fluidly transformative.

Paste: Why veer away from a more traditional panel structure and opt for a more free-form, full-page composition in this book?

Ferris: When I sat down to figure out how to make this story, I knew there were things that I required as an artist/author and things I felt my readers required. It was a matter of freedom and generosity. I needed freedom and I wanted to give the reader the most expanded, articulated and visually dense experience I possibly could. So many things that wouldn't fit into boxes. Also I sat down to do this and this was the only way I could do it. I knew what the canon was, but it was somewhat hard for me to be that constrained.

So, in a weird act of "faith" or something, I imagined I was in constant communication with my future readers. I was opening worlds that I saw in my head for them and hoping that the visions would catch hold, engage and communicate the story, even though (and maybe even because) it was getting created very much against the lines.

Paste: What's your favorite medium to work in (i.e., pencils vs. oil vs. whatever; not so much comics vs. animation)?

Ferris: I love oil and in some ways that's a part of my process with the book. The glazing of a painting in successive applications creates evocative contours, darkness loaded with barely perceptible mysterious images. I can spend great long hours decoding the secrets and hidden symbols embedded in Renaissance oil paintings. I knew Karen felt the same way. I wanted her book to express that love of the occult and arcane things that are all around us.

Paste: Some of my favorite parts of the book are the visits to the Art Institute of Chicago. What are your favorite works in its collection?

Ferris: One that was meant to be in the book but that I did not get permission to use was called, "The Village of the Mermaids" by surrealist Paul Delvaux. So many hidden treats! The other collection that absolutely enticed and engaged me as a kid was also my first lesson in sequential art. It was a wonderfully gory devotional series by Giovanni di Paolo. It traces the imprisonment and execution of St. John the Baptist in stages. Of course I was entranced by the painting of his headless body spraying a mute arc of blood into the pristine city of his martyrdom. (I've included those here for your ghoulish viewing pleasure.)

There is a recent acquisition by one of my fave artists, Otto Dix, that I'm scrounging around to find a copy of so that I can show you. It absolutely evokes the whole experience of living in Nazi Germany and does so via a landscape with not a single human form in sight. It is brilliant.

Paste: Did you grow up in Chicago (and visiting the Art Institute)?

Ferris: Yes, my parents met there as art students and got together and made me and then decided they ought to marry. In a way-considering that my parents weren't exactly religious or church-attenders-the Art Institute was the high church of their faith. The Louvre was Vatican City for two people whose religion was art, but the Art Institute was definitely their Notre Dame.

Paste: Do you feel like Chicago's having a cultural moment right now (Kerry James Marshall, Obama, Chance the Rapper, way more)?

Ferris: Absolutely. Chicago has always been an idiosyncratic wonder of a city. Established by a person of color, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, we know that in its history Chicago has often been the seat of commerce for the entire country, but it's also been the conscience and the catalyst of the nation. This is an extremely hard-working city, so it is no wonder that artists-such as those you mention-who are capable of full-tilt shlepping distinguish themselves.

Chicago always amazes. Being a Chicagoan is like being loved deeply and loyally by your broke-nosed uncle whose business dealings you must never examine too carefully. I love this city like no other.

Paste: Not only is this book set in the 1960s, but it also feels very '60s, like the underground comics of the era. And at the same time not (it's neither sexist nor doped out!). Discuss?

Ferris: The sexism of the 1960s (and the sexism of its cultural producers within the world of comics) really bummed me out when I was a kid. Inherent in the sexism I sensed this implicitly held belief that women had very little of value to contribute, other than their bodies as objects of male desire or (in Karen's eyes) as voluptuous sacrifices to monsters.

I knew there was so much more to this that as a child I couldn't quite grasp yet. Book 2 deals with that much more. It also explores Karen's confusion around these ardently objectifying portrayals of female beauty as beheld by a feminist-leaning child who knows herself to be lesbian.

Paste: You grew up reading some of those underground comics, right? Which ones? Do you think there are any comics artists that are particularly influential on your work or is that more a role for fine art?

Ferris: I had very liberal parents-exceptionally so, I think. I saw [Ingmar Bergman's] The Virgin Spring at seven. So I read The Fabulous Furry Freak Bros, Fritz the Cat and other things. I loved the illustrative chops of Robert Crumb and his contemporaries, but I was often dismayed by the spirit of misogyny in the work. I think it was honest, though, an honest telling of what it felt like to be a man in the 1960s, a person with foibles, insecurities, libido and anxieties, and out of regard for that honesty it was possible to see the misogyny in context. It was most understandable when it was confessional, although I could see how the objectification of women's bodies and the minimization of their personhood was relatively standard fare in comics. I think everyone-men, women, boys, girls-were subtracted from as a result of that misguided social arithmetic.

I remember being utterly engaged with Burne Hogarth's drawings of Tarzan, Edward Gorey and Aubrey Beardsley (who enjoyed renewed attention during the late '60s) all things EC and Mad Magazine. Of course I spent cumulative years of my childhood standing in front of the work of the great masters of etching and lithography. Among them were artists whose work leant, in varying degrees, towards caricature, such as Goya, Dürer, Rembrandt, Daumier and Grosz.

Paste: The print-makers you mention tend to focus on war and the terrible things we humans do to one another. Do you think the role of art is to help lead us out of that darkness? To expose the terrors of the world?

Ferris: Painter Susanna Coffey said "Beauty is the thing that allows us to wrap our minds around even the worst." I would add that the generosity of our artists is to robe our most difficult truths in palatable beauty. The catharsis and empathy possible within fiction are potentially life-saving on every level. Often while I was making the book I thought about the role of storytelling in Anka Silverberg's endeavor to rescue children from a concentration camp and get them to the freedom beyond Hitler's Germany.

In My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Anka uses myths and stories to equip these children to understand the evil around them and to survive it. I think that humanist/benevolent storytelling is such a willing participant in the effort to rescue the human soul. (It can carry that computer to safety down innumerable flights of stairs!) And that is exactly what we as creative people-as artists, as writers, as thinkers, as whole humans, are able to do when we wish to.

Paste: Part of what makes your work feel like the '60s to me is its focus on World War II and the aftermath. It has a more immediate connection to that war and the Holocaust that's palpable, as opposed to most work made now about that era. Can you talk to me about your own family's engagement with World War II?

Ferris: To my knowledge, I have two uncles who served in the US military and in some capacity fought in World War II. I was not close with either of them and noted how damaged they both were, ostensibly from their war experience, although I'm not certain of it. No, the real understanding that I personally gained of the war was the result of living in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park, wherein a great number of Holocaust survivors lived. I actively pursued their stories and was fortunate when a few of them opened up to me. I then made it a course of study to research all that I could about the time they'd lived through.

Paste: We haven't talked about monsters too much. Is that Goya print ("The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters") an important touchstone for you? Do monsters just work as a complex metaphor?

Ferris: Exactly! Yes! Goya was very important to me as a child. This was before I even knew that my family had a connection to the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition or that my grandmother was essentially a Crypto-Jew. I was awed by his work and understood that it was his way to speak truth to power.

I felt a profound empathy in regards to what I call the "personal monster dilemmas" of each creature within the monster pantheon, but this was especially true regarding the Wolf Man. The 1941 movie The Wolf Man was written by Curt Siodmak. Siodmak was a German Jew who left Europe. It's important to note the use of the pentagram in the movie. The pentagram appears in Larry Talbot's hand as an evocation of the Star of David. Of course Siodmak had experienced the forcible "branding" and registry of Jews under Hitler. The implication is clearly that the mark indicates an "accursedness" that brings about suffering and even death.

It is extremely interesting to note that the December 9, 1941 opening of the movie was bracketed by two other significant dates. December 8, the first killing operations at Chelmno in occupied Poland; and December, when Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. I'd really been moved by the plight of the Wolf Man and carried that throughout my childhood, but while researching the book I was amazed to discover the close association between the movie's creator and the Holocaust.

Paste: What percentage of Karen would you say is autobiographical/based on you?

Ferris: Like the saying goes, "These things never happened, but the story is true." In this case though, there are a great many things within My Favorite Thing is Monsters that are TRUE and DID HAPPEN. How much is me? A great deal. Karen is very much an honest part of me. All I wanted to be as a child (and still want to be) was/is a monster.

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500-word interview with my favorite thing is monsters mastermind emil ferris

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The Holocaust, Art, Chicago & Sickness: A 3,500-Word Interview with My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Mastermind Emil Ferris

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The first volume of Emil Ferris' debut comic, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters was scheduled for release last October, timed to coincide with Halloween. But the company that owned the ship the printed books were on went bankrupt, leaving its cargo in a terrible limbo that delayed the book until this month.

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https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/making-comics/

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https://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/

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http://onesixcomics.com/

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https://cartoonistsofcolor.com/search

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https://queercartoonists.com/search

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https://www.disabledcartoonists.com/search

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https://www.thekao.net

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The homepage of The Kao Studios. A place where you’ll find all things created by The Kao, an illustrator and comic artist. Creator of Magical Boy and Mondo Mango comics.

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https://youtu.be/3sPuXmTLBj4

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Quickly Inking and Coloring comics in Illustrator CC

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https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/ahh-queer-monsters-/list?title_no=526723

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Ooky spooky kooky gay goodness! we've got monsters and witches, boys in jockstraps, drag queens, and maybe some demonic possessions for good measure. At its heart, this series is about the relationship between these 3 queer monster dudes who live together and deal with the highs and lows of gay life. Regardless of if they always get along or not, They're going through it together!

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Ooky spooky kooky gay goodness! we've got monsters and witches, boys in jockstraps, drag queens, and maybe some demonic possessions for good measure. At its heart, this series is about the relationship between these 3 queer monster dudes who live together and deal with the highs and lows of gay life.

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https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/1208174-queer-comics---gutters-transitions-and-the-monstrous-reality-of-everyd

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https://www.readbrightly.com/how-to-make-zine/

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How to Make a Zine: A Kid-Friendly DIY Guide | Brightly

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Follow along with these simple instructions and you’ll be creating a zine in no time — the perfect project for children looking to express their creativity!