This week we were supposed to run a review of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, a graphic novel by Chicagoan Emil Ferris about a precocious ten-year-old who becomes embroiled in the political turbulence of late 1960s Chicago as she tries to investigate the murder of her Holocaust-survivor upstairs neighbor. The reason we are not is because Fantagraphics, Ferris’s publisher, informed us last week that the entire print run of the book, 10,000 copies, is stranded on a cargo ship that has been seized at the Panama Canal.
Monsters is Ferris’s first book, and Cohen says Fantagraphics has been doing its best to reassure her that it will be published. “No one wants to hear their books have been lost at sea,” says Cohen. “But we’ve been in touch with Emil by e-mail almost every day and she feels supported.”
Update 10/27: The books have been found! Or, rather, the Panamanian government decided to release them. They arrived in New York on Wednesday and are now en-route to the distributor.
