My Friend Dahmer

by Derf Backderf

The 2002 short-form comic where Derf, creator of the syndicated comic strip The City, tells the story of his friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer, from 7th grade to the end of high school. Dahmer would later be known as one of the nation's most notorious serial killers.

In 2012 Derf published a different, and much longer comic with the same name My Friend Dahmer.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels Comics, True Crime, Crime, History

29 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

John Backderf is a Eisner-award-winning American comics creator, also known as Derf Backderf. He is most famous for his recent graphic novels, especially My Friend Dahmer, the international bestseller which won an Angoulême Prize, and earlier for his comic strip The City, which appeared in a number of alternative newspapers from 1990–2014.

Derf has been nominated for multiple Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards and a Rueben Award. In 2006, he won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. Backderf has been based in Cleveland, Ohio, for much of his career.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an intimate portrait of a serial killer's childhood experiences. It is not a complete biography but a glimpse into one person's experience and his understanding of how an awkward classmate developed into one of the most renowned serial killers in the world.

The narrative is passionate and authentic. I disagree with other reviewers about the writer's objective to portray himself as a good person and to put the blame on everyone else. To the contrary, he does not conceal the fact that he and his friends contributed to Dahmer's misery, and the author's shame is apparent.

Because this is a graphic and not a prosaic novel, the reader has to be able to infer the author's intention by expression of the characters, or by different type or font which highlight important words and phases. It is also necessary to empathize with the the thoughts and behaviors of teenagers. If you are the slightest bit judgmental about the rationality of teenage decisions this book will leave you angry. However, if you are capable of entering the world that this story illustrates, you will cry.

It really is that powerful.

[Toober · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing....A sick, pathetic, miserable life story, that's all it is." This is a quote from Jeff Dahmer himself and fitting as a review. Interesting read, especially the pages of footnotes telling how the info was obtained.

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Backderf would later lament that he had to be so concise with this original iteration of the award-winning graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, but I actually think that the brevity of his 2002 comic My Friend Dahmer works in its favour. A powerful story with impactful illustrations and prose that doesn’t pull any punches.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is too personal a work to be judged by usual comic standards. Without spending any serious time on the Dahmer case, my guess is that this 30-pager comes closer to describing Dahmer's mentality and "cause and effect" than any other study.

[Goran Gluščić · Rating 5 out of 5]

U samo trideset stranica ispričana je priča koja bi trebala postati film. Kako piše u fantastičnom uvodu, u stripu nije prikazano ni jedno ubojstvo, nema tu nasilja (osim jedne mrtve ribe), nema krvi itd. Ovo je priča o malenoj grupici koja se družila s Dahmerom u srednjoj školi, prije njegovog prvog ubojstva.

Ali način na koji je radnja prezentirana nekako uspjeva biti strašnija i jezovitija od fikcije pune nasilja i ubijanja, jednostavno se uvlači pod kožu.

Efikasan crtež, fantastičan tekst, malo jeftina produkcija, ali ovo posljednje ne znači puno, dakle - petica.

Strip je kasnije pretvoren u puno dulji rad (cca 220 stranica) tako da mi je sada on na repertoaru. No ovo, kao samostalana cjelina, je itekako strip vrijedan vaše pozornosti.

Osim ako stripove čitate samo kako biste ih završili veseli i duševno ispunjeniji, onda možda ipak nije.

[Michel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.

John Backderf zat op school met Dahmer. Deze My Friend Dahmer is de 28-bladzijden-eerste-versie van een verhaal waar hij uiteindelijk een langer boek van gemaakt heeft.

Kort, ruw, een banaal verhaal, en geen pagina waar je niet denkt there but for the grace of God...

Spooky. Ik zoek eens naar de uitgebreide versie.

[˗ˏˋ✰ s y l v i e ✰ˎˊ˗ · Rating 3 out of 5]

after reading the renewed version i was curious about the first draft he talked about. definitely not bad, but everything in here is explained in the longer comic (in much more detail and with more consistency) and the art was also much better. i'm very glad the author decided to do more with this draft. it's okay on its own but if you compare it to the extended one it's pretty lame

[R-mig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot imagine how it feels to have been the classmate/friend of a serial killer. I don't condemn Backderf for taking the initiative and publishing this project. He could have had many reasons for doing so: getting it out of his system, giving the world an idea of what Dahmer was like during school years, trying to decrease the trauma that he has to endure on a daily basis, even though on the first page of the book, he mentions that working on this resulted in more trauma than he had anticipated...

An honorable mention from the first page: I liked how Backderf talks about people being able to save people from horrible fates that await them from the hands of individuals like Dahmer. This means that Dahmer himself could have been saved as well if not for all those who failed him during his childhood.

I recently watched the movie that this "comic" is based on, and I have to say that the movie perfectly depicts the instances of true life described by the author (which is also an idea shared and mentioned by Backderf in an interview I watched on YouTube). I had already watched the series. I put off watching the movie, thinking that they were going to be similar. I was wrong.
I am planning on reading the novel of the same work in the near future.

[jazthedigital · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all the title of this book is misleading. It’s not a comic about being close friend of Dahmer. Author was just a classmate, a person that saw meek, socially inept & quiet Dahmer in passing from hallways to his class. It’s not some close insight on how Dahmer would display himself in front of a person he would trust. So it promises something in a title that it doesn’t deliver. Well that’s a bummer.

I took from it that Dahmer was a pretty strange closed-off guy that no-one liked at high school. A thing you’d learn from a documentary about the guy or opening paragraphs of articles about his life.

This material doesn’t form well-versed context to even try understand how strange person as Dahmer would feel as a student. Nothing revealing.

It looks like either short-sighted project that got wrapped up in messy state and cut-through. Or one that genuinely cashes-in on the dark topic, not giving us any new perspective, just saying as vague Wikipedia synopsis with cartoon pictures underneath.

1/5stars from me.

[Myra · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first graphic novel, not sure how I feel about it, but, it was something different. Sad to learn he was basically invisible to parents, some of the kids he went to school with, and adults. Maybe if he'd have had some notice... But, I will read more graphic novels.

[Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this, the short version of the story that would later become a graphic novel, and it was just about interesting enough to make me check out the longer version. Having read the first little section of the longer version, that one looks like the superior work so far.

[Carly Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me gustaron mucho las ilustraciones y como está narrada la historia, aunque admito que deseaba ver sangre o algo más relacionado con los asesinatos.

[Daniella Pozo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very different kind of graphic novel

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good! I love how it looks at dahmer’s parents and how alone he felt at the beginning. It gives you a different perspective. I also didn’t know about him pretending to have epileptic fits. Very insightful and the graphics remind me of something from Mad or Cracked magazine!

[Melissa Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eerie graphic story...

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It may sound strange to say this, but I wished this GN was longer. Beyond creepy, but a very interesting look at the formative years of a serial killer.

[Enid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story about what it was like to know him while he was young. Quick read.

[Melissa Della · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Interesting to learn more about how someone turns into a killer. It gave a little glimpse into Jeffrey Dahmer's teen years without being gratuitous.

[Matthew Beaver]

Good read. Too short and a bit melodramatic, but a graceful treatment of a difficult topic. Would have liked to hear more about Dahmer's family circumstances.

[Zac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, but I think it manages to get across the same point as the longer version. Dahmer is pretty recognisable from my own experiences of high school, and this is what makes the story so unsettling.

[Jeremy Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little light. Hopefully the new edition has more to it.

[Katelyn Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book broke my heart. Though it was a good book, the author left me kind of angry. I understand he was just a teenager when this all went down. But him and his friends made fun of Dahmer. None of them asked if he was okay. It breaks my heart because I believe that if one of those kids just cared a little more then maybe he wouldn't have turned out the way he did. It's a hard book to read. Leaves you feeling heart sick