Pink Monsters

by Claus Daniel Herrmann

Frank è un ragazzino timido come tanti altri. Trascorre le giornate dedicandosi alla pallavolo e alla sua grande passione, il disegno. Un giorno il compagno di squadra per cui ha una cotta gli chiede di disegnare qualcosa per lui e i suoi amici. Anche se non ha ancora detto a nessuno di essere gay, in quel gesto Frank intravede una prima scintilla di felicità. A casa, però, i mostri sono altri: il padre soffre di una profonda depressione e la madre, disperata, decide di affidarsi a Thea, una carismatica guaritrice esoterica. All'inizio, Thea sembra innocua, ma poi scopre uno dei disegni di Frank e lo usa per instillare il dubbio che l'origine del malessere del padre risieda nelle energie negative che il ragazzo porterebbe in casa. Schiacciato dall'insicurezza e dai sensi di colpa, Frank si trova di fronte alla decisione più difficile: come trovare la propria strada e accettare la propria identità senza mettere a rischio il rapporto con i genitori?

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, LGBT, Graphic Novels Comics, Contemporary

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2024

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Selling Pitch:
A queer coming of age graphic novel.

Pre-reading:
The cover kinda reminds me of Less.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
Is this predatory crystal healing gonna piss me off? (Yes.)

That is NOT your task as a wife. Women are not free therapy for men.

Fuck this lady.

Man, fuck homophobes. No hate like Christian love. Religion is a poison.

Post-reading:
It’s a cute graphic novel, but I think you’re gonna finish it and still be a little irritated because Frank deserves better. I don’t think the book is claiming that Michael is his happily ever after, it’s more about illustrating a first romance, but I think you’re gonna sit there and side eye it because he’s actually fucking mean to him! Lol but not lol! Religion in all its shades is once again a poison, and this storyline will unfortunately be pretty relatable to a lot of queer youth. If you see your parent in this book, I hope you know how much of a loser they are. The art’s cutesy and appealing for YA readers. I think it’s a fine read, but I probably won’t think of it again now that I’ve finished it.

Who should read this:
Queer kids
Family drama fans
Religious commentary fans

Ideal reading time:
Anytime

Do I want to reread this:
No

Would I buy this:
No, I’d get this one from your library

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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Ileana (The Tiniest Book Club) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In diesem eindrücklich gezeichneten, queeren Coming-of-Age-Debüt erzählt Claus Daniel Herrmann autofiktional von einer prägenden Begebenheit in seiner Jugend.

Protagonist ist der 14-jährige Frank, mitten in der Pubertät inklusive Türenknallen und Ins-Kissen-Heulen, dem langsam aufgeht, dass er sich für Jungs interessiert. Frank lebt mit Mutter und Vater in einer sehr bedrückenden Situation. Sein Vater ist depressiv, die Mutter versucht allein, Lohnarbeit und Haushalt zu stemmen. Die Einstiegsszene schafft es perfekt, uns den Alltag von Frank nahezubringen: auf dem GameBoy daddelnd (es sind die 90er) kommt der Junge von der Schule nach Hause, setzt sich an seinen Schreibtisch, seinen Safe Place, Take That dröhnt aus dem CD-Player. Franks Vater sitzt im abgedunkelten Zimmer, seine Mutter räumt dem Teenager hinterher. Es gibt kaum Dialog, nur Geräusche wie das Klackern und Piepen des GameBoys zerschneiden die Stille. Die Zeichnungen sind ganz und gar in Bleistiftgrau gehalten.

Dann tritt Thea in das Leben der Familie und mit ihr ein erster Hauch von Pink. Thea ist eine esoterische Heilerin, die der Mutter von einer Kollegin empfohlen wurde als alternative Lösung für die Depression ihres Mannes. Thea verbreitet Hoffnung mit ihrem „alten Wissen“, schleppt die gesamte Familie in einen Edelsteinshop, damit sich alle einen Stein gegen „negative Energien“ aussuchen können („139,90, bitte!“). Als Thea jedoch Franks Monsterzeichnungen mitverantwortlich für die Krankheit seines Vaters macht und dem Jungen auch wegen seiner sexuellen Orientierung Schuldgefühle einredet, muss sich Frank aus ihren Fängen lösen, notfalls auch gegen den Willen seiner Eltern…

Eso- und Schwurbelkritik, dazu eine herzerwärmende queere Liebesgeschichte und eine Mom, die unterstützend auf das Coming-out ihres Sohnes reagiert: „Pinke Monster“ ist, vor allem auch optisch, ein durch und durch gelungenes Comicdebüt.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Positive Energy Has Rarely Looked So Menacing
“Pink Monsters” understands that the softest voices in the room can still be the ones doing the most damage, especially when they arrive carrying certainty, sympathy, and a very portable moral universe.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 7th, 2026

In a house living on fumes, nerves, and habit, the first explanation often outranks the facts. Claus Daniel Herrmann’s “Pink Monsters” knows this with sharp, low-voiced precision. Inside its quiet shell sits a nastier problem: when a family is too tired, rattled, or hopeful to resist a tidy answer, who gets to do the naming? Who names the depression, the drawings, the desire, the cure?

That sounds severe. The comic itself is not. It is hushed, observant, and unusually alert to the small humiliations of adolescence: being useful before being understood, being watched before being known, being old enough to feel the falseness in adult reassurance and young enough to want it anyway. Frank, fourteen, is talented, timid, and popular in the sideways way a gifted boy can be popular when his gifts are useful to other people. At school his monster drawings circulate like contraband with good manners. The cool boys want originals for their rooms. Art gives him a social use before it teaches him how much use can cost.

At home, things are dimmer. Frank’s father, George, is deeply depressed. Sandra, Frank’s mother, has reached the point at which desperation starts dressing itself as practicality. So she brings in Thea, a healer with crystals, certainty, and the brisk, upholstered calm of people who never seem to doubt the sales pitch hidden inside their serenity. Doctors, Thea says, have tidied the symptoms. The real trouble begins exactly where proof gives out and dissent can be made to sound petty. What this house has is bad energy. What it needs is healing.

What follows is plain in shape and stubborn in aftereffect. Thea arrives with the kind of order panic mistakes for wisdom. She talks about balance, auras, positivity, protection stones, proper thinking. George seems briefly brighter in her presence – or at least easier to flatter into the idea of improvement. Sandra clings to that possibility. Frank does too. He wants, badly, for someone to tell him what the world means.

Herrmann handles this stretch with impressive control. Thea does not arrive twirling nonsense. She arrives polished, calm, and useful.

Harmful systems rarely enter a household yelling.

They come in with a low voice, a plan, and tea.

That is the book’s first major strength, and still its most underappreciated one. “Pink Monsters” does not dramatize belief as an abrupt fall into delusion. It shows how a family under strain begins borrowing a vocabulary before it has measured the cost. Thea’s rhetoric starts with George and then annexes the rest. It moves room to room. It sticks to lamps, doorframes, moods, routines, faces. Then it reaches Frank. His drawings, once prized, become suspect. The monsters exude negative energy, Thea says. No wonder George cannot recover with such images in the house. The family sits down with brushes and whitewashes the pages with piety and panic in a ritual meant to “seal” them with positivity. The scene is comic for half a second, then vile. A child’s imaginative life is being recast as contamination, and the recasting arrives dressed as care.

Once that move has been made, the next one comes quickly. If drawings can poison a room, if moods can be moralized into fields of energy, then queerness is not far behind. When Frank’s growing attachment to Michael comes into view, Thea’s logic simply claims one more province. That act of relabeling is where “Pink Monsters” bares its teeth. This is not finally a book about whether Frank discovers himself. It is a book about whether he can stop other people from discovering him incorrectly and calling the result truth.

Herrmann’s slyest move is to show how explanation starts posing as evidence. “Positive energy,” “balance,” “healing,” “darkness,” “holy love” – these phrases spread through the story like a scented haze. They flatter. They soothe. They spare everyone the vulgarity of uncertainty. Before long they become the family’s shared idiom, then its reflex. Sandra begins echoing the language. Frank does too. The book understands something ugly and exact about coercion: by the time it starts sounding punitive, it has usually already spent a long while sounding helpful.

The prose does not show off; it corners. That is not faint praise. Herrmann is not after lush sentences or ornamental wisdom. The language works by register, repetition, and pressure. Sandra speaks in the practical syntax of someone trying to break life down into tasks. George’s lines are sparse, dulled, often reactive. Frank begins in half-statements, evasions, embarrassed detours; only later does he grow blunt. Thea is the crucial voice. Her diction is a sunny slurry of uplift terms – energy, aura, positivity, healing, sensitivity. She repeats them just often enough that they stop sounding like jargon and start sounding like weather. Soon the family is breathing them too.

That plainness is one reason the book works. Another is that Herrmann never asks the words to do work the art can do better. “Pink Monsters” is a comic in which the pictures do not merely illustrate the story but keep revising it. The limited palette – greys, blacks, whites, and that mischievous, accusatory pink – changes the meaning of whatever it touches. At first the color seems to belong mostly to Thea, to the field around her: charisma, promise, spiritual branding with a faint whiff of boutique nonsense. Then it bleeds outward. It clings to rooms, objects, nerves. Later it gets tangled up with attraction, embarrassment, concealment, self-consciousness, and queer wanting. Herrmann understands that symbols pick up fingerprints. Pink never means one thing for long. The same color can suggest allure, coercion, ridicule, and self-recognition almost at once.

The monsters keep changing jobs.

First they mark Frank’s talent and social usefulness. Then Thea recasts them as a source of harm. Then Frank begins to wonder whether they really do expose something shameful in him. By the time the book reaches its sharpest confrontations, the monsters look less like symptoms than like dumping grounds for everyone else’s fear. Herrmann does not build the comic by introducing fresh symbols every twenty pages. He takes a few and ratchets the pressure. That discipline gives the unchaptered structure its force. No chapter break arrives to hose the feeling down. The same rooms return. The same phrases return. The same color returns. Each time, something has shifted. The book’s suspense is not built on concealed information so much as on creeping jurisdiction. What, exactly, will this vocabulary try to seize next?

That question is the small, nasty motor under the whole book. We can see soon enough that Thea’s worldview is dangerous. What keeps the pages moving is the slow annexation of blame: first George’s depression falls under her authority, then the house, then the drawings, then Frank’s friendships, then his sexuality. The reader keeps asking not “what is the secret?” but “how much more of life will this lexicon try to own?” It is a quieter form of suspense than the genre usually advertises, but a potent one.

That slow annexation also lets Herrmann tighten feeling without sweetening it. Frank’s relationship with Michael matters for more than warmth. Michael is not a saintly corrective beamed in from a healthier comic. He is funny, impatient, a little cocky, capable of teasing Frank out of solemnity without denying the seriousness of what Frank is facing. More importantly, he works from a rival way of reading experience. Where Thea filters everything through invisible energies, Michael drags things back to bodies, jokes, embarrassment, desire, daily decisions. He punctures the pomp. He gives Frank a way of feeling seen without first being interpreted. That distinction matters. Michael is not the answer. He is the first person in the book who does not arrive already carrying one.

This is where “Pink Monsters” stops being merely shrewd and becomes exact. Plenty of stories can identify a bigot. Herrmann does something trickier and meaner. He shows how a rhetoric of care, healing, and positivity can become an elegant delivery system for shame. The book’s best scenes understand that domination often arrives in the key of reassurance. The brush ritual is one such scene. The late gathering in which Thea’s talk of light and love finally reveals its punitive edge is another. Frank’s outburst there lands because it is not simply a declaration of identity. It is a refusal of terminology. He stops consenting to the whole aura-and-energy lexicon through which he has been managed. That is the book’s real drama: not self-discovery as inspirational milestone, but the more difficult task of refusing a false explanation of yourself when the people you love have already started repeating it.

If the book has kin, they are “Blankets” by Craig Thompson, for the knotting together of adolescence, desire, and belief, and “Spinning” by Tillie Walden, for the hush and slow pressure of shame. Herrmann’s comic is tighter than the first and less fluid than the second. It is also more interested in the household life of phrases – in the way certain words move from one mouth to another until they start sounding like common sense. The resemblance scarcely needs ushering. Herrmann never turns the material into easy mockery of crystals and wellness shops. He is after something meaner and harder to wash off: the appeal of systems that explain suffering too neatly and then excuse themselves when they fail. If the cure does not cure, perhaps someone nearby thought the wrong thought. Very convenient. Also, one suspects, not bad for business.

The book does pay for some of its formal neatness. Thea is powerful as a presence, a voice, even a color scheme; she is less persuasive as a person. Herrmann knows precisely what she is for, and that purpose gives her force. It also leaves her a touch too sleek. She rarely frays. One wants a little more contradiction in her, a little more vanity, appetite, pettiness, or panic – some rougher human grain to complicate the clarity of the critique. George’s depression presents a different but related limit. It is felt in every room, yet George himself remains more climate than character. These are not fatal flaws. Frank is rightly the center of gravity. But they do explain why “Pink Monsters,” for all its precision and formal cunning, stops short of the very top band. Its symbolic system is richer than its secondary psychology.

Still, what keeps the book from congratulating itself is its refusal to tidy damage into a lesson. Sandra does not become a different mother overnight because she finally snaps at Thea. George does not stride back into wellness once the borrowed language loses its grip. Frank does not emerge from shame gleaming with self-knowledge. What changes is smaller and more believable. The house is no longer governed by borrowed language. Frank has not solved himself, and Herrmann is too wary to confuse injury with wisdom. He has simply taken back the right to remain unreadable on other people’s terms.

My final rating for “Pink Monsters” is 84/100, which translates to 4 stars on Goodreads’s whole-star scale: a clearly strong, memorable comic whose palette, recurring monsters, and steady relabeling of reality do far more than decorate its concerns. What really sticks is not only the pink, or the crystals, or even the suffocating tidiness of Thea’s explanations. It is the quieter horror beneath them: how quickly a family can let borrowed language dry on the walls and call that truth. Frank’s small, hard-won victory is not that he uncovers some radiant final self waiting underneath. It is that he stops letting other people paint over what he made and call the result light.

[Elaine White · Rating 3 out of 5]

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley

~

Pink Monsters, by Claus Daniel Hermann, Thomas Mauer
★★★☆☆
216 Pages
Content Warning: on-page bullying, mentions of depression, coming out



This was a really hard book to review. I can see the potential of what it *could* have been, and what it was probably aiming to do/be, but I also see SO many problematic issues that I just can't look past. I say this as someone who has a relative with depression, I've also been in a doctor's care for decades for a different illness, and I've been on medication to treat/handle that illness for over 20 years. I was also falsely diagnosed with depression and treated for it for months, until they realised it was something more serious, so I've experienced the stigma and the negative side of being treated for depression myself.

Personally, I felt this book was extremely judgemental about various topics. There was a lot of bias *against* certain things, that really rang loud and clear throughout the book. Most books try to sit in a middle ground – you can show that something is bad or weird to you, without making it seem ludicrous or harmful, but this book has no middle ground. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that it felt like this book successfully managed to do one thing : demonise a lot of different things in some quite damaging ways.

Right from the start, there's a judgement about doctor's prescribing antidepressants. I can get that it's frustrating when they don't help, but there was a very heavy emphasis on everyone coming together to say that doctor's shouldn't be prescribing drugs for “every little problem”. I might have accepted it had they left it at “this isn't working for him” without implying that doctor's were just handing tablets to anyone and everyone like they were sweeties.
I also notice that, while the crystal healing aspect is the main part of the plot, the story really doesn't pain alternative healers in a good light either. In fact, they come off VERY cult-ish, like they're trying to brainwash the father. Thea very much comes across as a scam artist, almost from the start. But the story becomes progressively aggressive towards this practice as time goes on. Thea actually becomes a bully towards Frank, who is just 14, to the point where she practically demonised him in his own home.

That's a word that I felt a lot, throughout this book – demonising. It really encapsulates the sense I got that everything and everyone was a demon and a threat to the father, by Thea's standards, and that anything other than her cult-y healing group was sinful. I get that I was probably supposed to feel that way, to an extent, but it didn't have to be so negative and aggressive. It is so severe that it will alienate ANY reader who actually has faith in crystals, alternative healing, and makes it come across as shameful. People find different things helpful, and that's only a problem when it harms other people around them – such as it does in this case.

When it comes across to the characters, Frank really comes across as someone who is quite selfish, but not excessively for a 14yo. He's also very lonely, with his father checked out and isolating himself most of the time. Similarly, his father comes across as a selfish, assh*le who can't think about anyone else in his family. He was an absent father for about 99% of the book. The only time he ever did anything fatherly was to berate Frank. Meanwhile, the mother is stressed out from pressure at work, but she's trying hard to keep her family together. But she still goes along with things that are harmful to Frank, without actually thinking about the consequences or his feelings until it's too late.

For Frank, I did like that we saw his slow dawning realisation that Thea wasn't really helping anyone, but it also came across that he only felt that way because of how it impacted him and his life. If it hadn't done that, I'm not sure he would ever have come to that thought alone. And, at one point, it feels like he only changed how he felt about the whole process, and Thea, when it involved Michael.
Speaking of Michael, he was an odd character. In one way, he came across as a bully, forcing his ideas/opinions onto Frank, even more aggressive about it when Frank resisted. On the other hand, he was one of the few positive forces in Frank's life, when it came to coming out and opening up to the world. He's pretty much a realistic 14yo, who is sometimes rude, angsty, makes fun of people and thinks it's nothing. In that regard, he was one of the few realistic characters in the book.

Then, on top of all of that, we were left with this uncertain ending. All of Frank's problems were solved – except for the one that started it all. His father wasn't cured or even doing better. He was obsessed with Thea and her healing, to the point where they had to ban Thea from the house.

I find it quite a strange and unusual book. In my experience, people who are into alternative therapies, crystals etc, as often queer or queer-accepting, whereas Thea was extremely homophobic. The father wanted to get better, but wasn't doing anything to actually help himself until Thea gave him a method that comes across more as an easy-out rather than a treatment. It's implied that Thea's methods are a cure that will only work as long as the father keeps following her rules, like a little bit of meditation and carrying a crystal will cure him. Alternative therapies are far more nuanced than that, particularly when it comes to healing/managing conditions. In most cases, they can't work alone to solve a health issue, but they can be helpful in managing the mental turmoil and uncertainty that comes with having a condition like depression. For Frank, Thea's minimal practices – including putting money in her friend's pocket, as well as her own – came across as an instant cure. In reality, all she did was give him an excuse for his behaviour.

By the time I was done, all I really felt was sad. The book somehow manages to demonise antidepressants, doctors, alternative therapies, spiritual healing, and make the one character with depression part of the problem, if not an outright villain.

While I can see the message it was trying to portray – a positive coming out, the struggle of queer people within medicine/alternative therapies, dealing with a member of the family with a mental health issue – I can't look past the firm negative light it chose to shine on almost every aspect of the story. In making Frank some sort of hero – trying to help his father, even by making personal sacrifices – it failed to acknowledge the nuances of what made this a family and their struggle. There was no attempt to make this a happy family, because it feels like all that mattered was giving Frank a happy ending, regardless of anyone else.

[Adele Lostinaclassicworld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank è un ragazzino che ama disegnare e giocare a pallavolo. A casa, però, sta attraversando un periodo difficile: il padre soffre di una profonda depressione che non accenna a migliorare. I medici non riescono ad aiutarlo e così la madre chiede aiuto a Thea, una guaritrice che si affida ai cristalli e alle energie positive.
Tutto sembra procedere bene, finché Thea non scopre i disegni di Frank e lo accusa di portare energie negative in casa, ostacolando così la guarigione del padre.

Frank è timido, buono e sempre ben disposto verso gli altri. Accetta senza ribellarsi le parole di Thea, ma è proprio da questo momento che inizia il suo vero percorso di crescita e scoperta. Mi è piaciuto vederlo prendere forza, trovare il coraggio di dichiarare alla madre di essere gay e iniziare finalmente a decidere da solo cosa sia davvero il meglio per sé.

I percorsi di consapevolezza, però, non riguardano solo i ragazzi ma anche gli adulti che soffrono e che non sanno più cosa fare, e che di fronte alle cattiverie e alle ingiustizie esplodono e fanno vedere la propria forza.
E la madre di Frank fa proprio un percorso del genere.

E poi c'è Thea, talmente sicura delle proprie convinzioni da non lasciare spazio agli altri, quasi soffocandoli.
È un personaggio che non mi è piaciuto perché credo che l'apertura al dialogo e il rispetto delle idee altrui siano fondamentali, e lei sembra esserne completamente priva.

È un graphic novel che arriva dritto allo stomaco! Parla ai ragazzi, ma anche agli adulti. Ricorda a tutti, a qualsiasi età, l’importanza di cercare il proprio modo di vivere, circondandosi di persone che si amano e di cui ci si può fidare davvero.

Si affronta anche il tema della malattia, e di chi sta accanto a chi soffre, cercando in ogni modo una soluzione. Anche queste persone vivono un dolore diverso, fatto di impotenza e dubbi, perché a volte non sanno più come aiutare gli altri o se stesse.

I disegni sono abbastanza semplici e i colori variano dal bianco, nero e grigio, con un pizzico di rosa che assume tante sfumature. Ho apprezzato molto il modo in cui questo colore assume significati molteplici, arricchendo ulteriormente il racconto.

[EyrisReadsTheWorld · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pink Monster is a graphic novel that follows Frank and his family as they navigate his father's depression. When an energy specialist is brought in to help balance the household's energy, we observe the dynamics between Frank, his mother, and his struggling father. The story unfolds slowly and thoughtfully, examining how a family copes when one member is weighed down by mental illness and how alternative healing methods enter the picture.

The graphic novel's greatest strength is its exploration of a difficult truth: how do you help someone you love while also protecting your own well-being? Frank's position—caught between wanting to support his depressed father and needing to maintain his own emotional health—is interesting. The family dynamics are portrayed with care, showing the strain depression places on everyone in the household, not just the person experiencing it. The pacing suits the subject matter, giving space for these complex relationships to breathe and develop naturally on the page.

The portrayal of alternative healing practices is where the book becomes a bit problematic. The depiction of crystal healing and energy work veers into territory that could read as somewhat cult-like, potentially sending questionable messages about treating depression. Even if you're open to alternative healing methods, the way they're presented here requires you to maintain critical distance and focus on the emotional story rather than taking the healing philosophy at face value. The book doesn't do enough to balance these approaches with more established mental health treatments.

Pink Monster offers a touching look at family and depression but requires readers to approach its healing themes with caution. If you can separate the emotional core of the story from its more questionable elements about treatment, there's value here. Recommended for readers interested in graphic novels about mental health and family dynamics, but with the caveat that you shouldn't view this as a guide for addressing depression—take what resonates emotionally and leave the rest.

[Frank Chillura (OhYouRead) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking in its reality, Pink Monsters is a truthful and insightful graphic novel about coming of age in a household that may not be safe for a queer teenager. 28% of LGBTQIA teenagers report having been homeless for a time, while 14% being kicked out of abandoned by their caregivers. It’s a scary truth that not every person or parent is accepting of a queer kid. 40% seriously consider suicide, while 1 in 10 attempt to complete the act.

While the facts may be scary and seriously painful to hear, this book isn’t as tragic. There is a happy ending. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but sometimes hard hitting facts have to be given to understand what’s right in front of us.

Pink Monsters is about a boy who is finding himself amid his own father’s deep despair and depression. Frank wants to be there for his father’s healing journey, but when a “healer” is invited into their home, everything goes from bad to worse. His own father starts to treat him differently. And all of it is in the name of being “saved!”

I found the art style refreshing in its almost incompleteness. It felt like I was snooping through someone’s sketchbook. I loved that the main character shares a first name with me, which made it easier for me to see myself in him. Did I have an idea of where the story was going? Yes. But I didn’t know exactly how we’d get there. And I really enjoyed the story. Sometimes we need everything not to be tied up in a neat little bow, because that’s not how life is.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

[Chantaal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pink Monsters is the story of Frank, a young teen trying to figure himself out in a house with a severely depressed father and a mother strained to the point where she brings in an energy healer in an attempt to help her husband. Of course, negative energies can be found in just about anything - including Frank.

This was an interesting story, combining aspects of the emotional upheaval of coming out with the emotional toil of having a family member whose illness affects the entire household. I can see where the author was going with this, with Frank's eventual decision to not let himself be painted over or boxed up in service of someone else's mental health. But the journey there felt...off? The portrayal of his father's depression, the way nothing in the story interrogates the spiritualist's assertion that antidepressants are not great, the portrayal of spiritualists as approaching a vague almost cultish group think...it's a lot. It's easy to let Frank's coming of age story put a rose colored lens on that ending, but it's still a bit sad.

The art is really great, all black and white except for splashes of pink used artfully and with purpose.

Thanks to NetGalley and Oni Press for the eARC to review. Pink Monsters will be out on May 26th.

[Moth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars
Thank you NetGalley and Oni Press for the ARC!
Pink Monsters is a graphic novel about a teenage boy juggling his father’s depression as well as his own discovery of queerness.
This book was just alright. I really enjoyed seeing Frank, the MC, become more confident in his queerness and form a romantic relationship. But that was just a small part of the story.
I haven’t even mentioned Thea, the holistic healer who takes over the family to “fix” Frank’s father’s depression. I feel like her character was a very stereotypical, demonized version of a “crystal MLM girlie” and it didn’t quite hit right.
The book had interesting themes: sexuality exploration, the impact of one person’s depression on their family, religion as healing. But there wasn’t a lot of grey area in the story, and that made the message feel very lacking.
If you want a fairly quick graphic novel about mental health and family dynamics, give this one a shot.

CW: homophobia; toxic relationship; severe depression

[Waldkauzz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A queer coming-of-age story of a 14-year-old boy, Frank, living with a parent with depression who starts to obsess over an esoteric lifestyle which puts partially the blame onto Frank's hobbies and sexual orientation.

This dilemma is accompanied by a sweet and simplistic art style, which branches into pink colouration when dealing with monsters, fears and conformity, let it be the monsters he draws or the key aspect of the new, charismatic but homophobic lifestyle.
More like an intimate snapshot of someone's life, the comic keeps a fast pace and focuses on Frank's struggles and relationships with the people around him. Not everything is neatly resolved at the end, which I thought to be fitting because nothing in real-life never is, and maybe that can spark discussions for younger readers.

Recommended for YA/middle grade readers, or people interested in queer stories. Thanks to NetGalley and Oni Press for an ARC for an honest review.

[Abby Aguilera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of advance copy received from Netgalley!

I really enjoyed this and hadn't read a graphic novel that broached this topic before - in the closet teen trying to deal with both coming out and the family dynamics of having a severely depressed father who is then lost to woo woo spiritualism. The art and how it plays with color reminded me a lot of The Giver (that is probably an oversimplification, but I don't have a lot to compare it to!) with how colors are introduced or removed based on the growth or emotions of a character.

Also, one of my very favorite parts was the arc of Frank's mom and how she supports him. This was really lovely and I look forward to seeing more from this author.

I was given the opportunity to read this title by NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I long for the day when #ItGetsBetter and books like this aren't necessary, but until then I'm grateful they exist.

Frank Schuster's life is hard enough just being a teenager, and it's exponentially harder coming to terms with being gay and coming out, but he also has to navigate the fact that his family life is overshadowed by the chronic depression that has overtaken his father. Having exhausted conventional medical options with little success, Frank's mother brings in a New Age spiritualist who touts the healing properties of crystals and searches for negative energies in the home that could be affecting the father before landing on a convenient scapegoat.

It's an emotionally rough journey, but ultimately uplifting.


Disclosure: I received access to a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.com.

[Caitlin Teaches · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the important jobs of fiction is to present mirrors that reflect back at the reader and let them know themselves and be seen, (borrowing a concept from Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop), and Pink Monsters offers a gentle mirror. Any reader that had their own struggles with identity, parents with mental health problems, or. has been taken in by a charismatic leader would find a sign that they are not alone. Subtle art that uses grayscale with punctuating pink makes a dreamy world in an nonspecific era. Frank is easy to empathize with as he navigates confusing and charged situations, and there is space for both his pain and anger as well as his joy and growth. The final resolution is feels real, coming with some compromise and loss, but still a victory.

This is an easy choice to add to my classroom library.

Thanks to Netgalley and Oni Press for the ARC of this comic.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, this graphic novel was such a disappointment. Having read it, I cannot tell you what it was about, nor what the message was. I thought this was going to be a story about coming out, how it can affect relationships with your parents, and navigating mental health. Instead, it was about some homophobic crystal cult leader preying on vulnerable people... Yeah, I didn't get it either.

The only person who I didn't completely dislike in this story was the mum, who was supportive and just doing her damn best. Everyone else, including our main character Frank, sucked.

The art style was the only redeeming feature of this graphic novel, and I thought that the monochrome + pink colour palette gave this book a unique style. I also loved the pencil sketch style, as it made the book feel more hand created.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eArc.

[Ingrid Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful coming of age story were a young teen learns to be himself in not just his sexuality but in his role as son.  His father's depression is just getting worse and his mother turns to alternative methods of healing. He finds comfort in the crystals and the meditation but more so in the woman who is offering the healing. He starts to see her as his oath to healing and she just becomes his new crutch. She has good intentions but she also has negative beliefs that are not lightness and love making the mans son sad and lost.
The art is great as is the story. Definately a novel to get the queer and questioning youth in your life. Recommended
Thanks to @netgalley and Oni Press
for the opportunity to read this eArc in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

[Frankkie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars rounded up - This is a quiet, subtle graphic novel about a young man coming out of the closet. I really liked the grayscale pencil artwork with the splashes of pink, which I interpreted at first as representing “good energy.” That actually threw me off toward the end, when that same energy started to feel more like toxic positivity instead.

As it so often goes, the mom in this story is putting her own feelings last while trying to hold the family together. I’m glad this family had her, because she ended up being the real star of the book. Unlike Thea, who can kick rocks.

The plot wasn’t profound or completely unique, but it felt realistic and will probably be relatable for a lot of queer youth.

I was gifted this book as an eARC from the publisher.

[Haruka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing read!!! The storyline was very touching. I know dealing with depression is very hard but the father just very very selfish. I feel pity for the mom and his son for the sacrifices they have to make just to make sure there is no ‘negative energy’. I feel the pain for the mom since she is a working mom and she have to deal with her unresponsive husband and gave attention to her son. But i love the ending that the mom sticks with her son and be an open minded mother. She stood her ground for her son!! Amazing read!!!
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Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for giving me the chance to read this amazing book in advance~

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awww this was cute. I was nervous at first at the premise, letting a woo-woo healer in to try and "fix" Frank's dad's depression but it was a lot more than that! Kudos to mom to being so chill about her son coming out and also offering him a place to explore himself (a queer group she knew through her library!). The relationship was sweet and surprising and it didn't end with everything roses, but realistically with hope. Cute and recommended. I also really liked the thick pencil-esque art and the use of pink throughout in different ways!

Thank you to Oni Press and NetGalley for the eARC for review!

[ca__libri · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Pink monsters” di Claus Daniel Herrmann ci insegna che, molte volte, chi professa il bene non è altro che il male stesso. Questa lettura mi ha ricordato che il prendersi cura degli altri deve interrompersi laddove inizia a nuocere noi stessi, portandoci a limitare i nostri modi di sentire e di essere.
“Pink monsters” è un graphic novel di poco più di 200 pagine, non ci si può per tanto aspettare una storia molto elaborata, tuttavia credo che funzioni alla perfezione e che l’autore sia riuscito chiaramente a comunicare il suo messaggio. Una storia dolce, tenera e leggera da leggere durante il pride month 🏳️‍🌈

[Dario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non esattamente quello che mi aspettavo.

Viene presentata come una graphic novel queer solo perché il protagonista è gay, quando il punto centrale della storia dovrebbe essere la depressione ed i finti guru che si approfittano delle persone.

È una storia piacevole, ma sul finale accelera incredibilmente senza alcun motivo e la fine non risolve assolutamente il tema centrale della storia, spostando il focus sulla relazione di Frank.

Sinceramente da l’idea di una storia iniziata in un modo e non finita.

[Kristall Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, many thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this graphic novel as an eARC! I greatly appreciate it!

This one's hard to rate. I did like the overall story, but man, all the energies and crystal healing nonsense made this so hard to get through. Like, I get that's the point, that it gets under your skin, but yikes. 

Also, as someone with clinical depression, depression isn't an excuse for bigotry. Just saying. 

Three stars out of five for Pink Monsters.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.
Multiple avenues are mixing within this family. There is a father’s freezing response to life mixed with a teen’s sexuality backdropped against a New Age, quack, spiritualist. What’s is a wife/mother to do with all of this. The artist wisely implements the color pink in appropriate spaces within the tale; however, as much as I wanted to like the story, it was actually pale and bland.

[Kait W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally really enjoyed this story. I found the exploration of religious trauma through new age toxic positivity interesting and I loved how some characters were flawed and made mistakes, but still were seen to grow and change their perspectives. I really enjoyed this delve into mental health, the difference between supporting and enabling toxicity in loved ones, and the queer representation.

[Sun Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cute but I wish things had been resolved with the Dad and that Sandra had stood up for her son more in the beginning. Loved the art and the weird cult vibes. Thank you NetGalley for the EArc

[Clinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly well done coming of age story. The art is absolutely stunning and how it's utilized within the story to convey XYZ. The story itself is beautiful, sad, frustrating, and others and it's so well done.

[Calla Bjorklund Jarvie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching coming-of-age story about a boy who has to stand up to his father and his father's holistic healer when he comes out as gay. Loved the color scheme and simplicity.

[mad mags · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Content warning for mental illness and homophobia.)

Fourteen-year-old Frank isn't exactly having the best year. He's a bit shy and awkward, but he's managed to leverage his knack for drawing into a vehicle for making friends. When a teammate named Michael asks him to draw a picture of a monster to hang on his wall, Frank happily complies and, before you can say "Run!," he's supplying to whole team with zombie posters. (Conversations about free labor aside.) That is, until Thea gets involved.

Frank's dad George has been struggling with depression for some time; neither therapy nor meds have helped. When a co-worker recommends an "alternative healer" named Thea, Frank's mom Sandra jumps at the chance. Her act of desperation (or rather, George's general awfulness) might just tear the family apart.

Instead of a chemical imbalance or chronic, intrusive thoughts, Thea blames George's mental illness on "dark energies" present in the house - including the computer (okay, doomscrolling is a thing), the television (if it's blaring Faux news), and Frank's drawings (you lost me there, lady). Cue: a rather disturbing scene of the family defacing Frank's art. Nazis, y'all (could the pink triangles on Grace's dress at story's end have been intentional?).

Before long, Frank's become the focus of Thea's hate-masquerading-as-concern, especially as Frank's relationship with Michael evolves into something else. Coming out in high school is hard enough; even more so when your sexuality is being blamed for your father's mental illness by a hippie dippie, buttinsky grifter. (Thea is described as "charismatic" in the synopsis, but I really don't get it. How could you take medical advice from a white lady who claims to have been an Egyptian priestess in a previous life?)

PINK MONSTERS is a really interesting, unique take on the coming out story. I empathized with Frank and Sandra from the jump, even as I was BEGGING them to exorcise Thea from their lives from her very first appearance. (This "positive thinking" yourself out of a mental illness shit has got to stop.)

Though PINK MONSTERS could easily be a jagged, cutting story, Herrmann's approach is gentle - almost too much so at times. You want more for Frank: from Michael, the bully turned first boyfriend; from George, whose failures as a father stem from bigotry rather than depression; and from society, which seems to coalesce around Thea. (Sure, you could attribute it to the self-selected company of the party, but the way the world's going, this seems emblematic of Trump 2.0.)

Sandra, though? Sandra is a pleasant surprise. I wish she could adopt me.

One thing that left me confounded were the titular PINK MONSTERS. At first, Thea and her nonsense are what's mostly bathed in pink, on a canvas that's otherwise white and black. This makes sense: she is a toxic presence disguised as kindness and healing. Eventually, though, the pink also creeps onto Frank and Sandra - perhaps they are reclaiming joy from the maws on evil?

[Lee Lacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet story that addresses a topic I’ve not seen much of in comics- how families, especially children/teens, cope with a depressive parent. Balancing this with a coming-of-age LGBTQ+ narrative was done very neatly, and this story was a breeze to read.