This comic grew on me. At first, it felt very edgy for edgy's sake. Crude jokes and nasty language was used left and right, and it felt like it was just trying to appeal to a younger audience's shock factor appeal. However, as I learned more about the characters and read more of the comic, the story felt like it was evening out. The jokes felt less crude because it became more about the story rather than about trying to appeal to some certain audience from the get-go. I also was not sure how to feel about the art style at first, but that grew on me as well as I kept reading. The shaped are very simple and really reflect the characters, and the designs of the characters are simple but appealing. The diversity in cast and body types is refreshing after having spent the semester reading comics where there is not much of that. I would say the biggest off-putting this about this comic is how it feels like it does not try to take a stance. It shows the ridiculous in things like veganism and smoking weed, but then it also shows characters that are both this and appealing. It becomes confusing to me on the stance of the creator on these things. It seems to me like it is a wishy-washy approach that wants to hate on these things because that stance follows the crowd, but immediately disproves this stance because, hey! the people that are/ do these things aren't actually that bad. Overall, I think the comic is enjoyable after the first couple chapters.
For the week that we read these, we were asked to discuss whether the comics we read should be considered literary or not. My first reaction was to break down what made something 'literary'. I was inclined to say that as long as something had words and was telling a story with some amount of depth, then that was what I considered literary. However, I realized while talking with team members about this question that I had a new consideration of literary comics. I like to think of comics the same way I think about art, and that is that anything can be art. I do not think that we have to tie down the constraints of what is and is not literary because that can put writers who just want to create into a bubble. Whether I used my old definition or my new definition, I think My Favorite Thing is Monsters is definitely a literary comic. It masterfully uses its media to tell a fantastic and relatable story. Everything about the comic felt real and was very engaging, the art felt in sync...
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