The Comics Artist Who Sees Monsters in Museums, and in the Mirror

By Sam Thielman and Gabriel Gianordoli

Oct. 3, 2025

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The illustrated book covers for volumes 1 and 2 of Emil Ferris’s graphic novel “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters” are seen against a white background along with pages from the books. One of the book covers shows a small werewolf-like creature with fangs coming up from its bottom lip while the other shows a woman with a blue face.

The artist Emil Ferris loves to explore the idea that everyday people might be as frightening and unusual as a monster out of an old horror movie.

The idea runs like a refrain through both volumes of her graphic novel, “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.”

The focus shifts to just one of the book covers depicting the young werewolf-like creature.

A boxed set of the books, which was released September 30, tells the story — so far — of Ferris’s adolescent protagonist, Karen Reyes, who worries that she’s different in ways that make her monstrous.

A page from one of the books appears just below the book cover, depicting a woman with short hair.

In the books, Karen discovers that she’s attracted to girls, which sets her apart from the straight-laced authority figures who seem to be in charge of everything in 1960s Chicago.

Finding a new way to understand the world is essential to her survival.

On side-by-side pages made to look like entries in a notebook, a person is seen from behind speaking in front of a lion statue at a museum. On the other, the young werewolf-like creature is wearing a fedora.

Her journey leads her to The Art Institute of Chicago, where she tries to get to know herself with the help of the sympathetic demons, zombies and hobgoblins she can find in comics, movies and in classical artwork.

A painting depicts a man giving a harsh look to an angel with red hair.

In both volumes of the graphic novel, Ferris uses the full width of the oversize pages to explore classical paintings in her vibrant colored ballpoints.

In pages made to look like a spiral-bound notebook, an illustrated version of the painting “The Nightmare” by Henry Fuseli, which shows a woman laying on a couch with a gremlin-like creature sitting on her..

The explorations play out in the pages of Karen’s notebook. And even when she’s borrowing the composition of famous paintings, she changes their colors and renders their shadows in intricate patterns of pen-lines.

The focus shifts to just the left-side of this version of “The Nightmare,” showing in detail the faces of the reclining woman and the gremlin.

In the first volume of “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” her version of Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” is awash in purples and blues …

The illustration is replaced with the same scene in the actual painting of the reclining woman and the gremlin.

… that are absent from the original 18th century oil painting.

The focus returns to the illustrated version of the painting.

The painting reminds Karen of Anka, her upstairs neighbor, whose murder sets the story in motion. Anka suffered from nightmares.

The frame pulls out, with the illustrated version of the painting shrinking while a page from the book is added below it showing a woman with a blue face.

The cool tones in Ferris’s version tie the picture to Karen’s memory, where Anka is blue — both because Karen thought of her as sad and, of course, because she is dead.

The original Fuseli painting returns.

Karen’s brother Deeze tells her Fuseli’s painting inspired Mary Shelley to write “Frankenstein,” and that it is “history’s first horror comic cover.”

A political cartoon style version of the same painting is shown with a reclining woman who has a man in a red jacket sitting on her in place of the gremlin.

Riffing on famous paintings is a long tradition, and Ferris is not the first to explore the work of Fuseli in this way.

In 1816, the cartoonist George Cruikshank made his own version of “The Nightmare” to depict Matthew Wood, Lord Mayor of London.

A movie still of a similar scene is shown, with a naked man in place of the gremlin.

And Ken Russell’s horror film “Gothic” included a nightmare staged like the painting in 1986.

The focus returns to Ferris’s illustrated version of the painting.

Like Cruikshank, Ferris is changing the context of “The Nightmare,” and like Russell, she is evoking not just the composition but the texture of a different medium.

An illustrated magazine cover has a title of Ghastly and depicts the gremlin and the woman from “The Nightmare” painting in a different context, with the gremlin holding the woman’s arm.

In volume two of “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” Ferris expands on the thought, letting the figures from Fuseli’s painting move beyond the constraints of the original artwork.

Here, they serve as cover artists for “Ghastly,” a fictional horror comic created in the pages of Karen’s notebook.

Two illustrated magazine covers are shown, with one labeled Terror Tales showing multiple zombie-like faces and one labeled dread showing a woman with her eyes closed about to attacked by a vampire-like creature.

Ferris has cited horror magazine covers from the 1960s as inspirations for her work, and she creates her own imaginary horror magazines here. (“Ghastly” shows up most often.)

The two illustrated magazine covers shift to the left and are joined by the actual magazine covers that inspired them.

There are horror comics that consciously evoke fine art, and Ferris avoids them completely — instead, she reanimates the over-the-top covers of downmarket magazines slathered in gore and painted with eccentric palettes.

The focus zooms in on the illustrated magazine called Dread, of a woman being attacked by a vampire

Karen’s fanciful horror magazines aren’t recreations like her sketches of paintings, but rather homages to the magazine racks of Ferris’s own childhood.

In two illustrated frames, a tall male character stands behind a small werewolf-like creature wearing a fedora.

Monsters are omnipresent in both volumes of the book, and that is because Ferris sympathizes with them.

The focus pulls in on the bottom right frame of the tall male and the small werewolf. The man says “Look at yourself Kare”

Karen Reyes, who is ostensibly a normal young girl, is depicted throughout the story as a small werewolf in a noirish trench coat and fedora.

Ferris has said that “I drew her the way I saw myself, the way I felt I was. I drew her the way I wanted to be.”

In an illustrated version of the Mona Lisa, her hair is replaced by snakes and there is a tile of “Tales of the eldritch and the arcane.”

Ferris’s attachment to monsters started in her childhood. She considered the way gender roles seemed to imprison both the women and the men she knew, and has said that “being a monster seemed like the absolute best solution.”

In a page meant to look like a spiral-bound notebook, a woman with short hair is seen against a purple background with a label of Shelley.

In Karen’s world, she imagines the people important to her as wonderful monsters, too — to her, they are both a classical painting and a satisfyingly gory horror comic.

An illustration of a woman with long dark hair has a snake-like green tube coming out of her throat, drawings of stick figures sitting in a wheel chair and a chair, and the text “it turned out my daughter was right.”

Ferris published the first volume of “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters” in 2017, earning immediate acclaim for her debut. Her sudden emergence was a surprise: She was in her fifties and severely disabled after surviving both childhood scoliosis and a more recent West Nile virus infection.

An illustration of a woman with long dark hair has a snake-like green tube coming out of her throat, drawings of stick figures sitting in a wheel chair and a chair, and the text “it turned out my daughter was right.”

She described the experience in “The Bite That Changed My Life,” an appropriately monstery autobiographical short story.

In two illustrated pages, a woman with blue skin is seen in front of a large crowd of people who appear to be naked.

While recovering from West Nile, Ferris began working on what would become the two-volume graphic novel that plays out over more than 800 pages.

In the canons of fine art and old comics, she found a common thread: violence and extraordinary bodies.

The focus pulls in on the left page, which shows the woman with blue skin who is holding a cigarette.

Coupled with her devotion to portraiture, these influences became her tools for talking about everything from disability to atrocity.

A huge man looms in the night sky. His torso is covered in eyeballs and he appears to be reaching down toward a small werewolf-like creature.

The second volume of “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters” seems to suggest there is more to come. Deeze in particular is a complicated character, and of course Anka’s life and death remain shrouded in mystery.

The focus pulls in to the small werewolf-like creature with the hand above it.

A prequel, “Records of the Damned,” is planned. But what monsters can we hope to find lurking there? We don’t yet know. Except for Karen. And Ferris herself, of course.

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