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Book Information
The bone-chilling graphic novel that inspired the major motion picture starring Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2013 ALA/YALSA Alex Award
2014 Revelation Award at Angoulême
2015 ALA/YALSA Alex Award (Excellence in Narrative Nonfiction)
Named a BEST OF 2012 by Time, The Village Voice, A.V. Club, comiXology, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, MTV Geek, and more!
You only think you know this story. In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer—the most notorious serial killer since Jack the Ripper—seared himself into the American consciousness. To the public, Dahmer was a monster who committed unthinkable atrocities. To Derf Backderf, "Jeff" was a much more complex figure: a high school friend with whom he had shared classrooms, hallways, and car rides. In My Friend Dahmer, a haunting and original graphic novel, writer-artist Backderf creates a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling against the morbid urges emanating from the deep recesses of his psyche—a shy kid, a teenage alcoholic, and a goofball who never quite fit in with his classmates. With profound insight, what emerges is a Jeffrey Dahmer that few ever really knew, and one readers will never forget.
Also available by Derf Backderf, Trashed.
Find teaching guides for My Friend Dahmer and other titles at abramsbooks.com/resources.
Book ID Asin: 1419702165
Book Title: My Friend Dahmer
Book Author: Derf Backderf
Book Format and Price:
Book Format Name: KindleComixology
Book Format Price: $11.99
Book Format Name: Hardcover
Book Format Price: $26.99
Book Format Name: Paperback
Book Format Price: $17.99
Book Price: $26.99
Book Category: Books, Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime and unknown
Book Rating: 1,386 ratings
Book Product Detail
Publisher : Harry N. Abrams; 1st edition (March 1, 2012)
Language : English
Hardcover : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 1419702165
ISBN-13 : 978-1419702167
Item Weight : 1.74 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #70,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#22 in Educational & Nonfiction Graphic Novels
#45 in Biographies & History Graphic Novels
#245 in Serial Killers True Accounts
Customer Reviews:
4.6 out of 5 stars 1,386 ratings
Review
ASTOUNDING.―Lev Grossman
A well-told, powerful story. Backderf is quite skilled in using comics to tell this tale of a truly weird and sinister 1970s adolescent world.―R. Crumb
The tone is sympathetic and enraged (‘Where were the damn adults?’), while not excusing or making the story unduly fascinating. Backderf’s writing is impeccably honest in not exculpating his own misdeeds . . . and quietly horrifying. A small, dark classic.―Publisher's Weekly
One of the best graphic novels I've read this year.―USA Today's PopCandy
One of the most thought-provoking comics released in a long time.―Slate.com
Carefully researched and sourced with ample back matter, Backderf’s tragic chronicle of what shouldn’t have been is a real butt-kicker for educators and youth counselors as well as peers of other potential Dahmers. Highly recommended for professionals as well as true crime readers.―Library Journal
This isn't a cautionary tale. It's insight shared insight arriving too late to save Dahmer's victims, let alone Jeff himself, but perhaps soon enough to remind both teens and their caretakers that questioning peculiar behavior might be a better tack than ignoring or exploiting it.―School Library Journal
Fortunately, cartoonist Derf Backderf isn't one to avoid the troubling, even terrifying, truths that lurk in the dark recesses of that notorious serial killer's early life and modern American life itself.―Foreword Reviews
A powerful, unsettling use of the graphic medium to share a profoundly disturbing story . . . An exemplary demonstration of the transformative possibilities of graphic narrative.―Kirkus Reviews
Masterful . . . a rich tale full of complexity and sensitivity . . . There's something about Dahmer's life and crimes that seems almost crafted for treatment in the murky world of comix. Yet it's empathy and nuance, not gore, that put My Friend Dahmer alongside Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and David Small's Stitches in the annals of illustrated literature.―Cleveland Plain Dealer
A new classic of the graphic novel genre . . . A moving book that qualifies as one of the great graphic novels, a work of art.―Creative Loafing
Anyone who opens My Friend Dahmer to satisfy a morbid curiosity, and likewise anyone who expects to find no more than a cynical publishing venture here, is bound for disappointment. It is a horrifying read, yes, not so much for what it reveals about the sad early (and inevitably terrible) life of Jeffrey Dahmer, but because of what it reveals about the bland emotional landscape of Middle America, in this vision a petri dish for psychoses in many degrees and forms. Backderf’s odd stylization, with figures that look like organic robots, is a perfect vehicle for this conception. His graphic approach is grotesque, droll, and it rags on reality as masses of kids knew and still know it. Lots of books exist about the agonies and cruelty of the adolescent high school experience, but few so compellingly bring us straight into that soulless environment, showing the ways it can shelter, allow to burgeon, and, at the same time, be completely blind to real madness. It wasn’t easy reading this book, but I’m glad I did.―David Small, Stitches
Stunning. Horrifying. Beautifully done.―Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
My Friend Dahmer is a brilliant graphic novel and surely ranks among the very best of the form. Like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the book plumbs a dark autobiographical mystery, trying in retrospect to understand actions and motivations to piece together the makings of a tragedy. Like Charles Burns’s Black Hole, it’s a starkly etched portrait of the horror of high school in the 1970s. Comparisons aside, My Friend Dahmer is entirely original, boldly and beautifully drawn, and full of nuance and complexity and even a strange tenderness. Out of the sordid and grotesque details of Dahmer’s life, Derf has fashioned a moving and complex literary work of art.―Dan Chaon, Among the Missing, You Remind Me of Me
Just when you think you know all there is to know about Jeffrey Dahmer— one of the most notorious criminals of the past century—along comes My Friend Dahmer, which adds significantly to our understanding of this rare form of psychopathology. The graphic novel format helps the reader appreciate the adolescent mind-set of Dahmer’s high school classmates. Although none of those who grew up with Dahmer expected to hear what they learned on July 22, 1991, when he was caught, no one was really surprised, either. This unique book allows the reader to listen in on the fascinating reminiscences of those who watched the developing mind of a future serial killer.―Louis B. Schlesinger, PhD, Professor of Forensic Psychology
It’d be so easy to pigeonhole and think that the reason you can’t stop reading My Friend Dahmer is because it offers a voyeuristic peek inside the monster. And it does. But as it turns its self-aware eye on the boy who doesn’t belong, the real magic trick is how equally hateful and sad you feel for the monster himself. This one’s still haunting me.―Brad Meltzer, Identity Crisis, The Inner Circle
As someone who walked the halls of Revere High School with both Backderf and Dahmer and was there from the beginning, I am astounded by the accuracy and truthfulness of this portrait. I know of no other work that so clearly shows the teenage days of an American monster, long before the rest of the world heard of him. Mesmerizing.―Mike Kukral, PhD, Revere High School class of 1978, Professor of Geography, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Prague 1989: Theater of Revolution
If you want to read a heavy story about a disturbing teenager, My Friend Dahmer will certainly quench your dark little desires. But this book is about a lot of other things that matter much, much more: the institutionalized weirdness of the suburban seventies, what it means to be friends with someone you don’t really like, a cogent explanation as to why terrible things happen, and a means for feeling sympathy toward those who don’t seem to deserve it.―Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
A solid job. Putrid serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s origins are explored in this fine book. Dig it—it’ll hang you out to dry.―James Ellroy, My Dark Places, L.A. Confidential
About the Author
Derf Backderf has been nominated for two Eisner Awards and has received a host of honors, including the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, has appeared in more than 100 newspapers over the past 22 years. Backderf lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Book Review
Name: Mr. E
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The most socially relevant comic book since Spiegelman's "Maus"
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 28, 2012
Review: In "My Friend Dahmer" Derf Backderf has created a work that should be required reading for all school counselors, educators, and indeed anyone with an interest in the psychology of alienated outsiders. This is probably the single best work on the early origins of a serial killer that has ever seen print. All the warning signs of troubled youth are presented clearly in a very engrossing manner. The work is tastefully done. The art, while cartoonish, sets a great mood for the story. The horrid excess of Jeff Dahmer's crimes are left unseen, as it should be. What is truly fascinating about people like Dahmer is not the gory details of their violence, but the psychology that unleashes such horrors.
Derf really captures the essence of high school of that era. I was an early 80s student, myself, and little had changed by that point. I knew plenty of people much like the ones shown here. As a Dungeons & Dragons nerd, I too was near the bottom of the social ladder, much like Derf and Dahmer were. I can attest to the authenticity of Derf's portrayal of high school life of 30-odd years ago. As I read, I found myself wondering about the whereabouts of marginal characters I knew in my own school, like "Einerschteiner", "Squiddy" and the infamous "Onion". I'm just glad I haven't read about them in the newspapers.
Derf himself had a ringside seat to the genesis of notorious serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer's psychosis as a teen in 1970s small town Ohio. Derf was the leader of a group of self-described "band nerds" who associated with Dahmer in a strange blend of hero worship, fascination, pity, and disgust. Derf and his friends based a whole quasi-mythology and much of their banter and social interactions on Dahmer's desperate and bizarre attempts to gain peer acceptance through sick humor. Dahmer seems to have deeply infiltrated almost every aspect of Derf and friends' high school life. One is reminded of Alfred Jarry's creation of his absurdist play, Ubu Roi, based on stories he and his school friends made up about their strange and eccentric physics teacher.
Derf generally treats Dahmer as sympathetically as possible, noting how his disturbed behavior and alcoholism, while blatantly obvious to his peers, was overlooked by every single adult in Dahmer's life. Derf even shows how he and his friends egged Dahmer on to ever greater lengths of weirdness and unacceptable behavior, culminating in an unforgettable trip to a local mall where they paid Dahmer $35 to run amok for two hours. Ironically, this episode was the 'last straw' that resulted in their disassociation from him due to discomfort with his ever-worsening freakish persona.
I cannot give this any less than five stars, however one area that I think Derf held back on was the central character of Dahmer. I'm not saying he should have showed his killings or grotesque fantasies, I just think Derf consciously or unconsciously tended to dehumanize Dahmer, rendering him more as a caricature of a lunatic than an actual human being. The scenes of Dahmer alone or with his parents do not have this problem, just the scenes of his interactions with others in his peer group. I do understand that Dahmer had this crazed persona he hid behind at school, but I am sure he was a little more articulate than presented here, especially with the members of Derf's "Dahmer Fan Club". Clues in the end notes to Derf's book reinforce this, as well as the articulate nature of the interviews with Dahmer that I have seen in documentaries.
In the book, Dahmer's dialogue is mainly restricted to loud exclamations of "THMAAAA!" and "BAAAAA!". (This is a depiction of Dahmer's cruel mockery of a handicapped man who was employed by his mother.) However, in an actual 70s high school year book cartoon done by Derf and included in the text, many quoted "Dahmerisms" are included that prove that Dahmer was in fact possessed of an eccentric and somewhat obscure sense of humor, rather than being a non-stop bellowing lunatic. Unfortunately Derf only allows Dahmer to act as a real human in a couple of scenes; notably, one where he manages to maneuver himself and several classmates into a meeting with Vice President Mondale during a trip to Washington DC.
Understandably, Derf must have wanted to distance himself from Dahmer as much as possible in the making of this book. He had the unenviable task of telling the story of his boyhood friendship with one of the most horrible serial killers of modern times while at the same time avoiding being tarred with the same brush, so to speak. Derf constantly throws in little anecdotes to emphasize the normalcy of his own life as he recounts the bizarreness of Dahmer's. Perhaps Derf was reluctant to show himself and his friends interacting with Dahmer on any level deeper than a "bemused observer" capacity. Certainly, Dahmer was a real weirdo, but it would have been fascinating if Derf had added one or two scenes where Dahmer actually interacted a little with his peers. Undoubtedly there must have been incidents like that, as I doubt someone of Derf's imagination and intellect would have been so thoroughly captivated by a guy whose sole schtick was a loud, ugly impression of a cerebral palsy sufferer.
All in all, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It would have been interesting to see at least one or two of Dahmer's more lucid interactions with classmates, and to find out a bit about how he functioned academically (I understand his IQ was about 145), but these are very small complaints indeed given the general exceptional quality of this book. We may still not know the whole explanation behind the descent into horrific madness of an intelligent, pleasant looking boy with a well-to-do family and a caring father, but Derf's graphic novel does as much or more to explain it as any of the other literature on this all-around tragic subject. Five Stars.
Name: Sheila D
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Well done! Well written and well drawn.
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 6, 2022
Review: This book really sheds light on the period in Dahmer's life in which he changed from a basically normal adolescent/young teenager into a raging alcoholic just barely hanging onto his sanity. The teenagers who surrounded him in school and who formed the Dahmer Fan Club knew a lot more about what was going on in his life than did the adults, who seemed to be completely unobservant and clueless. Great book!
Name: LB Reed
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Standard book
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2022
Review: Bought it for my daughter's 16th bday. She's read it and she was pleased. No vulgarity or terrible content, she would've expressed that.
Name: Caitlyn
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Witty, Eerie Perspective!
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 23, 2022
Review: I admire the classmate of Dahmer for writing this or we wouldn't have the backstory before Dahmer became a serial killer. This deserves an award. I read it in two sittings.
Name: Bec
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Terrifyingly Brilliant
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 29, 2022
Review: This book was hard to put down, I read it in less than a few hours!!!
Name: Scott Slemmons
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Friends and Killers
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 21, 2017
Review: So once upon a time, there was this guy named Jeffrey Dahmer. You might’ve heard of him. In 1991, he got caught trying to abduct a guy in Milwaukee, and police found a human head in his refrigerator, along with human remains stored in barrels and various severed body parts scattered around his apartment. He’s one of the most notorious serial killers in history.
Back in ’91, there was an editorial cartoonist called Derf Backderf working for a paper in Cleveland. His wife, also a reporter at the paper, calls him, tells him about this serial killer they’ve arrested in Milwaukee, and drops a bomb on him — Backderf graduated from high school with the guy.
So Backderf spends a few years wrestling with the fact that he was friends with a future serial killer and eventually sits down, does a ton of research, and creates this graphic novel, “My Friend Dahmer,” a retelling of his interactions as a teenager with this kid who everyone laughed at and no one really understood.
Backderf and his circle of friends discovered Dahmer after he’d started impersonating a person with cerebral palsy and throwing fake epileptic fits to get attention. Dahmer was a stone freak, but his antics were amusing in the juvenile way we all enjoy when we’re in high school, and they encouraged him as much as they could, even calling themselves the “Dahmer Fan Club.” Backderf remembers him as a really strange kid, sometimes disturbing, usually harmless, often depressing. He drank heavily in high school — a fact that a number of students were aware of, but that every teacher apparently missed — hiding beer and hard liquor around the school grounds so he’d always be able to sneak out and find something to drink.
Ultimately, it’s a really sympathetic portrait of Dahmer. Not to say that it’s entirely Dahmer-positive — Backderf says more than once that Dahmer is a kid he feels tremendous sympathy and empathy for — but that goes away when he crosses the line into murder. But Backderf knew Dahmer as a sad, strange kid with parents struggling through mental health issues and a very nasty divorce. Dahmer wanted attention, like a lot of kids, he was darkly funny, like a lot of kids, and he was conflicted when he realized he was gay, like a lot of kids. Of course, not a lot of kids also realize they’re necrophiliacs and have to struggle with urges to do violence to others. But even then, Backderf recognizes that Dahmer went through a very stressful high school career and kept himself together — admittedly with huge doses of alcohol — until after graduation.
Backderf says that he thinks Jeff Dahmer, the disturbed teenager, could have been saved if only the adults in his life had paid closer attention to him and cared enough to get involved. We’ll never know for sure, of course, but that doesn’t do anything to make this book any less fascinating.
This is a pretty thick book, and I burned through it as fast as I could, including the section detailing Backderf’s research and notes. Backderf’s writing about Dahmer is captivating and humanizing in all the best ways — this isn’t something that glorifies a serial killer, but instead asks us to look at how the serial killer was created, at Dahmer’s depressingly rotten youth, at all the ways this kid was failed by the grownups who were supposed to be helping him.
The setting is also pretty amazing — Revere High School in West Allis, Ohio in the mid- to late-1970s is a great backdrop for all of this to happen. Locked-down schools, zero tolerance, and No Child Left Behind were 20-30 years in the future, and the book is both stereotypically ’70s-ish and simultaneously timeless — we’ve all felt this way about school, we’ve all been freaked out by our adolescent hormones, we’ve all wondered whether we’d survive to get out of school and wondered what happened to the people we used to hang with.
This isn’t a horror story, at least not in the traditional sense. If you read it hoping for blood and gore and psycho killer mayhem, you’re going to be very disappointed. If we can call it horror at all, it’s more a matter of the horror of how one person can go from being a pretty normal kid to the kind of lunatic who’d kill 17 people. It’s a heck of a good story, and I think you should read it.