My Favorite Thing Is Monsters 2
Jul. 1st, 2024 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraMy Favorite Thing Is Monsters 2, Emil Ferris, 2024 graphic novel. I've been waiting for this (and sometimes not believing I would ever see it) since I read the first one six years ago. I definitely still recommend them both (and not just because I would like someone to book-club them with me, although, *please*), and would specifically recommend re-reading the first one before diving into this one - I did and was very glad I did, there's a *lot* going on here, and you'll want as much of it fresh in your mind as possible.
Spoilery discussion behind the cut.
So, big picture thoughts. The art continues to be amazing, and the whole conceit of it, the idea that this is Karen's journal, continues to be clever and powerful and effective.
Plotwise it is... less conclusive than I might have hoped, and I'm still working through how I feel about that. This is Difficult Art in the way Boy and the Heron was Difficult Art (actually a great deal like Boy and the Heron, like what I said here about the fantastic as a way to approach the traumatic). There are a *lot* of threads here, like I said, and some of them seem like they're going to go somewhere and then don't (unless they do; I suspect there's stuff here that very close-reading and puzzle solving might reveal that I didn't get on this pass). There's definitely stuff going on here having to do with multiple versions of a single story, which seems related to some of the lack of resolution, or the way what resolution there is is implied rather than explicit. Insofar as this was never a story about who did what specific thing, but a story asking the question "what would you do to survive, what would you do to protect someone else", the end we get is unarguably answering back to that question. But some of the big final scenes felt rushed, and some of Ferris's choices just didn't quite add up for me (like why be so solidly in the detective trope if you weren't actually crafting puzzles you intended to solve... or maybe that was the point, that life doesn't actually work like that, and the idea of detectives, clues, and answers is as much fantastical as werewolves...).
I also struggled with some minor continuity-type questions, like, how old is Franklin/Françoise, at the start of book one they seem to be in Karen's class but by the end of book two they seem to be more like an adult or an older teen (unless that's a commentary on Black children being perceived as older? or maybe I'm the one perceiving them as older, although, like, if you look at the scenes in their apartment where they're in full drag/femme attire, that just does not look like the face and body of a child, to me). Or, where exactly did Shelley come from - she does seem to be real, unlike Sandy (or, uh, visible all the time to others) - but felt awfully wish-fulfilly.
But, okay, here are some of my unanswered questions, if anyone would like to have opinions.
1) Is Sam Silverberg Herr Schutz? I flipped back and forth between the faces a lot in book one and I don't think he definitely is but I'm not convinced he definitely isn't.
2) Is the drunk actually Karen's father or is it significant that the very lovingly-portraited gangster in the Mill Club also seems to be named Franky?
3) Why keep Victor a secret from Karen? Why the continued dodginess about when it happened? I'm tempted to say "what even was the point of that whole thing", but, I don't know, what is the point of any of it, it's just all a bunch of weird details exploring the ways that people are complicated and very little is straightforwardly good/bad or normal/monstrous. A bunch of *amazingly drawn* weird details.
Also a different kind of question - given the incompleteness, do I think there's stuff here that would be interesting to explore in fanworks? They would obviously have to be really different, like, I don't know what kind of format or medium would be satisfying. Maybe not just text. But maybe some kind of... something... to play in some of the loose ends or open spaces. Hm.
Spoilery discussion behind the cut.
So, big picture thoughts. The art continues to be amazing, and the whole conceit of it, the idea that this is Karen's journal, continues to be clever and powerful and effective.
Plotwise it is... less conclusive than I might have hoped, and I'm still working through how I feel about that. This is Difficult Art in the way Boy and the Heron was Difficult Art (actually a great deal like Boy and the Heron, like what I said here about the fantastic as a way to approach the traumatic). There are a *lot* of threads here, like I said, and some of them seem like they're going to go somewhere and then don't (unless they do; I suspect there's stuff here that very close-reading and puzzle solving might reveal that I didn't get on this pass). There's definitely stuff going on here having to do with multiple versions of a single story, which seems related to some of the lack of resolution, or the way what resolution there is is implied rather than explicit. Insofar as this was never a story about who did what specific thing, but a story asking the question "what would you do to survive, what would you do to protect someone else", the end we get is unarguably answering back to that question. But some of the big final scenes felt rushed, and some of Ferris's choices just didn't quite add up for me (like why be so solidly in the detective trope if you weren't actually crafting puzzles you intended to solve... or maybe that was the point, that life doesn't actually work like that, and the idea of detectives, clues, and answers is as much fantastical as werewolves...).
I also struggled with some minor continuity-type questions, like, how old is Franklin/Françoise, at the start of book one they seem to be in Karen's class but by the end of book two they seem to be more like an adult or an older teen (unless that's a commentary on Black children being perceived as older? or maybe I'm the one perceiving them as older, although, like, if you look at the scenes in their apartment where they're in full drag/femme attire, that just does not look like the face and body of a child, to me). Or, where exactly did Shelley come from - she does seem to be real, unlike Sandy (or, uh, visible all the time to others) - but felt awfully wish-fulfilly.
But, okay, here are some of my unanswered questions, if anyone would like to have opinions.
1) Is Sam Silverberg Herr Schutz? I flipped back and forth between the faces a lot in book one and I don't think he definitely is but I'm not convinced he definitely isn't.
2) Is the drunk actually Karen's father or is it significant that the very lovingly-portraited gangster in the Mill Club also seems to be named Franky?
3) Why keep Victor a secret from Karen? Why the continued dodginess about when it happened? I'm tempted to say "what even was the point of that whole thing", but, I don't know, what is the point of any of it, it's just all a bunch of weird details exploring the ways that people are complicated and very little is straightforwardly good/bad or normal/monstrous. A bunch of *amazingly drawn* weird details.
Also a different kind of question - given the incompleteness, do I think there's stuff here that would be interesting to explore in fanworks? They would obviously have to be really different, like, I don't know what kind of format or medium would be satisfying. Maybe not just text. But maybe some kind of... something... to play in some of the loose ends or open spaces. Hm.
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