Moi ce que j’aime c’est les monstres

Chicago, late 1960s. Ten-year-old Karen Reyes loves ghosts, vampires and the undead. She even imagines herself to be a werewolf: easier, here, to be a monster than to be a woman. On Valentine’s Day, her neighbor, the beautiful Anka Silverberg, commits suicide by shooting herself in the heart. But Karen doesn’t believe it and decides to solve the mystery. She soon discovers that between Anka’s past in Nazi Germany, her own neighborhood ready to burst into flames and the secrets lurking in the shadows of her daily life, monsters, good or bad, are beings like any others, ambiguous, tortured and fascinating.

A diary of a prodigious artist, Moi, ce que j’aime, c’est les monstres,is a brilliant kaleidoscope of energy and emotion, the beautifully told story of a fascinating child. In this masterful work, part investigation, part family drama, part historical account, Emil Ferris weaves an infinitely personal link between fierce expressionism, the cross-hatching of a Crumb and the world of Maurice Sendak.

Through this book, Emil Ferris weaves courage, strength, resilience, the banner of those who survive, of those who rise up and no longer want to be silent. And if this is not an autobiographical work, it is nevertheless true. The key to this project is difference, and Emil Ferris wrote it for minorities, drew it for the freedom to be what you want, humanly and intimately, and carried it against all odds for the right to be the woman you want. And that’s whyMoi, ce que j’aime, c’est les monstres hits us so hard today, because it speaks to us, to our problems, to our world.

PRIX DU MEILLEUR ALBUM / FAUVE D’OR ANGOULÊME 2019, GRAND PRIX DE LA CRITIQUE 2019, PRIX BDGEST’ ARTS COMICS 2018