Ferris started working on the graphic novel after contracting West Nile virus and becoming paralyzed at age forty.

She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for writing and began the graphic novel to help her recover in 2010, taking six years to create 700 pages.

The French edition won the ACBD's Prix de la critique and the Fauve D'Or at the 2019 Angoulême International Comics Festival.

[3] After contracting West Nile virus at age forty in 2002, Ferris became paralyzed from the waist down and lost the use of her right hand, preventing her from drawing and doing freelance work.

The origin for My Favorite Thing Is Monsters was a screenplay Ferris wrote of "a werewolf lesbian girl being enfolded into the protective arms of a Frankenstein trans kid".

The protagonist, Karen's, portrayal as a werewolf reflects how Ferris saw herself as a child—observing the oppressive social role her beautiful mother, as well as other humans, had to play.

[3] As a child, Ferris was part of a theatrical troupe near the Graceland Cemetery—which she visited, hoping to find monsters or a ghost—and the graphic novel includes the Eternal Silence sculpture from the cemetery.

[7] Ferris gained an understanding of World War II by talking to Holocaust survivors who lived in the neighborhood of Rogers Park, which she had moved to.

[8] In terms of artistic influences, Ferris was exposed to the works of Francisco Goya and Honoré Daumier as a child, as well as Collier's illustrated Dickens.

[5] While halfway through work on My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Ferris had to find a new publisher when the first one, Other Press, said the book was too long[9] and that they could not properly market it.

While the ship was released by the Panamanian government later that month,[9] publication was still delayed due to the media campaign being pushed to February 2017, in anticipation of a required reprint.

[10] In March 2017, Sony Pictures won an auction for the film rights to the work, with Amasia Entertainment's Bradley Gallo and Michael Helfant producing.

[25][14] Douglas Wolk of The New York Times said that Ferris has a "portraitist's skill with tiny subtleties of expression and lighting and a New Objectivist's eye for the raw grotesquerie of bodies and their surroundings".

[28] Paul Tumey of The Comics Journal compared the cross-hatching used to "both vividly delineate detailed forms and evoke a wide palette of emotion" to the work of Robert Crumb and likened the graphic novel to a patchwork quilt he owns, calling it "weird, unique, [and] lovingly crafted from caring and devotion".

Club called it a masterpiece, saying that it stands out against contemporary graphic novels with its "visual splendor, narrative ingenuity, and emotional impact", concluding that "Ferris immediately establishes herself as one of the most exciting, provocative talents in the comics industry".

[29] John Powers of NPR said that "for all its stylistic tour-de-forciness, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is filled with emotion", finding that "every page feels like it's been secreted from the very core of [Ferris's] being".

[39] The French edition won the ACBD's Prix de la critique 2019[40] as well as the Fauve D'Or at the 2019 Angoulême International Comics Festival.