New!Websites for Authors
Tertulia Logo
New!Websites for Authors
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: How to Make a Monster: Ugly Memories of Chicago from a South Side Escapee, Casanova Frankenstein

How to Make a Monster: Ugly Memories of Chicago from a South Side Escapee

Casanova Frankenstein

Paperback
Regular price$29.99With free membership trial$14.9950% off your first book+ Free shipping
In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

No

Conveyed as a bleak first-person narrative with darkly humorous overtones, Casanova Frankenstein reveals how real life experience shaped his hard-bitten, survivalist view of life. His was a world of fear and isolation punctuated by bullying thugs, the stifling atmosphere of the Lutheran school on the South Side of Chicago, racial segregation, unapproachable girls, and a home life consisting of an emotionally distant and unsupportive mother and an violent, alcoholic cop father who was not above giving his son a good thrashing now and again while preaching Christian family values. It is a searing portrait of an unbearably painful upbringing.

How to Make a Monster is illustrated by Australian outsider artist Glenn Pearce in a rare creative symbiosis in which Pearce captures Frankenstein's inner turmoil using a variety of stunningly realized artistic approaches from naturalistic portraiture to outrageously inventive phantasmagoric imagery. A seamlessly contrapuntal balancing act between Frankenstein's raw, unadorned writing and Pearce's stunningly detailed drawing.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
  • Publish Date: Sep 6th, 2022
  • Pages: 224
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 11.21in - 8.05in - 0.68in - 1.85lb
  • EAN: 9781683965718
  • Categories: • Nonfiction - Biography & Memoir• Literary• General

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Our Little Secret, Emily Carrington
Book Cover for: Factory Summers, Guy Delisle
Book Cover for: The Third Person, Emma Grove
Book Cover for: Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Kate Beaton
Book Cover for: Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century, Youssef Daoudi
Book Cover for: Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@ [Squiggle] [Star]!, Art Spiegelman
Book Cover for: A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings, Will Betke-Brunswick
Book Cover for: Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi
Book Cover for: Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir, Denise Dorrance
Book Cover for: The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir, Riad Sattouf
Book Cover for: Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, Edwidge Danticat
Book Cover for: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Art Spiegelman
Book Cover for: I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi, Gina Siciliano
Book Cover for: Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, Robert Stone
Book Cover for: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel

About the Author

Pearce, Glenn: - Born in 1975 Glenn Pearce, INFJ and animal and human rights activist, has been an Australian underground comic artist since 1990.
Frankenstein, Casanova: - Casanova Frankenstein was a Gen-X latchkey-kid, raised on the incongruous influences of '70s-era Chicago UHF TV-programming and American-hypocrisy. He earned degrees in Fine Art and Metaphysics and produced art, poetry, and comics (In The Wilderness, which he wrote and drew, was published by Fantagraphics in 2019). He worked a 25-year string of Kafkaesque day jobs while maintaining a strict personal code. Retiring early in 2016 due to health issues, he remains a combination of James Baldwin, Charles Bukowski, and Mad Max -- but 20-years ahead of his time.

More books by Casanova Frankenstein

Book Cover for: In the Wilderness, Casanova Frankenstein

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics
@fantagraphics
2 years

Publisher of the World's Greatest Cartoonists Since 1976.

Upside Dawn by Jason, Keeping Two by @Jordan_Crane, How To Make A Monster by Casanova Frankenstein and Glenn Pearce, and Detention #2 by Tim Hensley made the list! https://t.co/o8bbc8QhdS

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: Domino Books
Domino Books
@DominoComics
2 years

Comics Publisher/Distributor/Polemicist. Co-Managing Editor @ComicsJournal Curator of The New York Comics and Picture Story Symposium with Ben Katchor

We currently have 3 incredible books by Casanova Frankenstein in stock, including his brand new book How To Make A Monster https://t.co/qjn2Ox3Ele https://t.co/rjLQOsEsO9 https://t.co/4SWUSVa8al https://t.co/DRX36GNQb6

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: THE COMICS JOURNAL
THE COMICS JOURNAL
@ComicsJournal
2 years

The Magazine of Comics Journalism, Criticism and History https://t.co/NWkG5U9RnS

Ryan Carey @fourcolorryan reviews How to Make a Monster, an autobiographical project from alt comics veteran Casanova Frankenstein and artist Glenn Pearce: “a leap in confidence on the part of both creators…” https://t.co/PBJgfzYDhJ https://t.co/54qHB3Bxtz

twitter.com

Praise for this book

In this sublime collaboration, Frankenstein and Pearce manifest into comics an excoriating, bleakly poetic memoir of Frankenstein's hard-knock life in early 1980s South Side Chicago. ... Pearce's wonderfully fluid, ever-morphing underground comics art captures the nuance of Frankenstein's plight.-- "Publishers Weekly, starred review"

What people are saying

See more