My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

I read My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris and it was a pretty intense read to be honest. The story has so many layers! It draws you in and hooks you to the point that you can’t stop reading it. The style was super interesting too, with the ball point pen illustrations on lined paper. I also liked how a lot of the pages didn’t have borders or panels and one thing sort of blended into the next. I think showing things bleed into one another on the page really helped reflect how things bleed into one another in the story itself. It’s not only about her childhood and viewing herself as a monster of sorts; it’s about her mother’s cancer, her brother’s anger and lies, her sexuality, being bullied, her dad leaving, discrimination, and so many other issues all surrounding the one main storyline of Anka’s mysterious death and her horrible past, having experienced the Holocaust. It’s so crazy to me that there is so much going on in the story, yet it’s still so clear and enticing. I looked it up because I figured it had to have been based on a true story and I read that Emil Ferris did base it off of her childhood. I don’t know how much of it is her life and how much is fiction but the story just feels so real. The amount of depth in it makes you feel like you are Karen. It’s so immersive and personal and I think the style in which it’s drawn really adds to that. Like I said, the ballpoint pen and lined paper is just something you never really see. But it really makes it feel like you’re reading someone’s journal. Like you’re directly connected to the thoughts and experiences of Karen. It really helps set this apart from other graphic novels and I find it really inspiring when it comes to experimentation in comics.

Buddha by Osamu Tezuka

 I read the first volume of Buddha by Osamu Tezuka and it was a really interesting story. I want to read the rest of it eventually, because I think you don’t fully get it with just the first volume. Since it ends with Chapra and his mother dying, two of the main characters, I think the series must be about more than just their storylines and you probably have to read them all to understand it completely. It kind of reminded me of Game of Thrones and how (spoiler alert) the main character is killed at the end of the first book, and if you continue the series you realize the story goes far beyond him. I think also the fact Siddhartha was just born near the end of this volume shows that this whole book was probably just to setup the real story. But I could be totally wrong! I really enjoyed reading it though, even if it could be just exposition. I found almost all of the characters to be really original and interesting. Especially Tatta, who I hope doesn’t get killed off in the other volumes! I find the contrasting aspects of his character really appealing. It was funny to me how in the beginning he wouldn’t return what he stole to Chapra but he was willing to put his life on the line to help his mother. He’s this super selfless and caring character who will share his last bit of food with the animals around him but who will also pee and curse at people like the little boy that he is. The dichotomy between this holy being the monk lifts him up as and this immature little boy was hilarious and made me want to keep reading.

Ranxerox by Tambourini and Liberatore

I ended up reading Ranxerox and it was startling how different it is from most popular American comics. It definitely reminds me of underground comics with how graphic and sexually explicit it was, but it’s funny to think that this was probably widely circulated in Europe whereas over here this sort of content would be limited and niche. I think the assumption that the graphic novel audience in Europe is mostly adult allows the story to go to crazy places that most American comics don’t. Honestly, this made the story kind of hard to follow for me. A lot of it seemed to be sexual or violent just for the sake of being sexual or violent. It seemed like a lot of it didn’t actually add to the story at all. Ranxerox would randomly murder people for no reason and although it is part of his character as an impulsive robot without remorse, it was so excessive that it just came off as the artist goofing around just because they could. There were also a lot of random circumstances that didn’t line up and made the whole comic seem like a dream or someone’s fantasy rather than a clear story. For example, Lubina is captured and then a lot of crazy things happen and Ranerox kills some people and then they end up in New York somehow and Ranxerox gets caught up in a race to the death after becoming a taxi driver. It’s so out there that it seems like the artist just threw caution to the wind and made whatever they felt like without any regards to believable characters with clear goals and experiences that link together to create a clear story with a clear message. It could be argued that Ranxerox’s goal is to please Lubina and Lubina’s goal is to get money and drugs and that all their experiences are a result of trying to attain that goal, but the story is still so incredibly far-fetched that I couldn’t connect to it. It was still a super interesting read though and I enjoyed the art style a lot. I just couldn’t really get into it and connect to the characters on an emotional level. It could be because of cultural differences in media and the fact that I’m not used to content like this. But I still thought it was interesting and something different to read; it was refreshing compared to the usual standard American story structure of the good guy fighting the bad guy and saving the day. It inspires me to break away from what a standard story is supposed to be. I don’t think I’d go as far out of the box as Ranxerox does, but it’s something I’d like to keep in my when coming up with my own stories.