Eliza and Her Monsters

Eliza Mirk, 18, has a secret—one that only her immediate family knows: she is LadyConstellation, the creator of the hugely popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza’s plan is to quietly finish high school (and the comic), then head off to college where she won’t be known as the weird, friendless girl. Things don’t go as planned after she meets Wallace, a diehard fan of Monstrous Sea and an equally broken fan fiction writer. Zappia (Made You Up) uses her own illustrated Monstrous Sea panels to punctuate elements of the narrative and to show how Eliza and Wallace find solace in fandom. LadyConstellation is eventually outed, painfully and publicly, causing Eliza to spiral into depression, self-harm, and thoughts of suicide. Zappia’s lighter approach to these topics doesn’t diminish the strength of this sensitive and compassionate story or the message mirrored in the themes of the webcomic: there are monsters in the world, both real and imaginary, and without support systems, those monsters can cause great harm. Ages 14–up. [em]Agent: Louise Fury, Bent Agency. (May) [/em]