My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86  ·  rating details  ·  2,406 ratings  ·  526 reviews
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....more
Paperback, 224 pages
Published March 1st 2012 by Harry N. Abrams
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Mariel
Feb 11, 2013 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: cat skulls stacked to the black hole sunset
Recommended to Mariel by: stem to stem
I had normal friendships in high school... and really never had any close friendships after high school. - Jeffrey Dahmer

I followed up a suicide book with a shut-in book and on those heels My Friend Dahmer. I'm more than a little bummed out right now. Sometimes I'll try to bring myself out of myself by allowing me to act incredibly over the top mopey cry baby. I'll put in a bleak song and really get into it. Somehow this cheers me up. It is out of the system. Reading My Friend Dahmer made me cry...more
M
So far this book is absurd and offensive. The idea that it's necessarily Dahmer's parents and adults at the school who are to blame for his crimes is hammered home pretty early. The schools are chided for being overcrowded facilities where teachers don't take the time to get involved in their students' personal lives (uhhh every public high school in the U.S.).

The author claims "friendship" with Dahmer while also saying he made fun of him, but not in a mean way, in a "you're genuinely amusing"...more
Joanna
This was really disappointing. So... it's sorta a memoir by this guy who knew and kinda bullied Jeffrey Dahmer when he was in High School. Sounds okay! How can that be boring.

It's kinda boring.

Problem is, I'm more sympathetic to Dahmer than Derf! That's crazy! I mean, it's Dahmer and Derf is just like... a douche. But even then the douchiest douche can't possibly inspire more negative feelings than a goddamn serial killer! I mean... can it?

Derf's not even that much of a douche. Kinda flawed i...more
J
To call this book upsetting is an understatement. It is a memoir account of the author's relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer during his youth (ranging from middle school to graduation from high school) in a secluded town in Ohio. The fact that Dahmer was undeniably creepy and not just a little spooky isn't what is upsetting. That Dahmer had a proclivity for cruelty to people and animals isn't what makes this book scary. What makes it chilling is how everyone- his peers, his family and the adults- k...more
Kayla
So while waiting for my final in Ancient Rhetoric to begin earlier today (which is, despite the name, bar none one of the easiest classes that I have ever taken, including those I took in High School), I cheerfully showed some of the people in class the book I was reading while we were all waiting for the professor to run in late. I noticed, as I explained the all-too obvious subject of the book, that everyone else in the classroom had grown suddenly very very silent. So... Awkward.

The title alo...more
Justin Bauer
Having gone to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, Derf Backderf tells a story of adolescence in the 1970′s that leads right up to Dahmer’s first murder. The story focuses on the high school experience and the strange outcast that brought Derf and his group of friends the occasional comic relief and concern. My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel that is not so much a bloodbath as it is a prelude to the horrors that would surface in adulthood. It explores the mind of a teenager who simply shook hands...more
Helen
Serial killers are people, too. Derf Backderf relates a snapshot of his experience going to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, before he became a ruthless serial killer. Backderf and his friends were friendly with Dahmer, whose antics in high school entertained them, but there was always something disturbing about him. Backderf's research into Dahmer's past reveals a young man haunted by impulses who abused alcohol and whose parents were too involved in their own problems to notice what was happen...more
M Hunt
A fascinating look at the life of a serial killer before he became a killer. Derf Backderf was a classmate(based on his own depiction, the word 'friend' used in the title seems strong) of Jeffrey Dahmer's in the seventies, through their middle and high school years. He tells their shared history journalistically, layering his own recollections of the period over the facts of Dahmer's life as revealed later, in FBI and press interviews. At the time, Backderf could not know that Dahmer lived in em...more
Katya Vinogradova
We've all had a "friend" like Dahmer. That creepy lonely kid who wanted to fit in, but did everything wrong and was always an outcast. In high school you either ignored this kid, made fun of him, or bullied him. And if you stopped to wonder, what would happen to this kid later in life, you would probably envision a grim future for him.
Dahmer's future became extremely grim. He became the most atrocious serial killer since Jack the Ripper, "the real Hannibal Lecter".
The author of this book is try...more
Lauren
This is an interesting and at times chilling account of Jeffrey Dahmer's teenaged years--alternately painfully isolated and jeeringly included, he struggled to connect and surround himself with people in order to stave off what he knew was a dearth of empathy and an excess of disturbing sexual fantasies. Backderf is successful at evoking Dahmer as a "weird" figure that you wouldn't, particularly, want around while still noting how this lack of socialization furthered his strangeness and worsened...more
April Helms
I had heard about this book, and decided to give it a try when I saw that it was one of the books which won this year's Alex Award. For those who don't know about Jeffrey Dahmer, he was arrested and found guilty in connection of the murders of 17 men and boys. He grew up - as did the author - in a community about a half hour from where I live. Indeed, Backderf, who has done editorial cartooning, comic strips and a previous graphic novel and lives in the Cleveland area, was in the same graduating...more
Annie
Absolutely fascinating. This memoir takes celebrated cartoonist Derf Backderf back to his high school years and his teenage friendship with the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer up until the point where Dahmer kills for the first time--just two weeks after graduation.

This memoir is unflinching (an overused adjective, but absolutely fitting in this case). Dahmer clearly had intense issues during his adolescent and teenage years. They were bare and on the surface, and Derf and all of his friends saw f...more
Fizzgig76
In mid-1970s, in Bath, Ohio, just outside of Toledo, a monster was growing in Revere High School. John Backderf and his friends didn’t know that the guy they had formed a club around would plotting a murder and dismemberment. The Jeffrey Dahmer Club celebrated and circled around the weird, strange man. As Dahmer slipped deeper and deeper into his problems, the Jeffrey Dahmer Club found him more and more entertaining. After Dahmer became a serial killer, John Backderf looks back into the Jeffrey...more
Lexie Robinson Austin
Oof. This book is rough. I didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, and I'm okay reading dark stuff. But this....this just makes you uncomfortable. Which I suppose the author meant to happen.

Summary: "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 h...more
Karin
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Annalee Schnebele
This was okay. It was difficult to read how Derf and his friends basically reduced Dahmer to a caricature for their own amusement. No one deserves to be treated that way, and Derf realizes that and does mention that he feels some remorse for how he acted in high school. Other times, it feels like Derf was making sure that he told us over and over again how he tried to distance himself from Dahmer and all the times he realized that something was a bit off about Dahmer.

This is a graphic novel to r...more
Nic
This is a book (graphic novel technically) that I didn't plan on reading. When my mom brought it home from the library, my initial impression of it was based soley on the cover and title. I tend to have a fascination for things that most would consider morbid (not in a way that I glorify those things but just tend to find them very interesting) but I thought this might be a little much even for me. I changed my mind very quickly after thumbing through it. Once I started reading, I couldn't put i...more
Abby
A portrait of the serial killer as a young man. The author went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer and was somewhat friendly with him; I don't know that I would consider their relationship an actual friendship. It's a very fast read and the illustrations are strong. Despite the dark subject matter, there isn't much violence depicted in the book -- at least not inflicted on humans. There are definitely lots of drawings of dead animals, so if that makes you squeamish, do not read this book.

My mai...more
A. V.
While reading the preface I was struck, quite negatively, by this line urging readers' to "Pity [Dahmer], but don't empathize with him." Given the title, this seemed like a rather ironic plea, but I held out hope that this was just an overzealous attempt to assure the world that Backderf was in no way endorsing mass murder, but the novel itself would still be an attempt to draw out some depth of humanity to such a well-known horror story. Alas.

The art is fine. Maybe better than fine, but who kno...more
Michelle
I'm in awe of this graphic novel. I admit, I didn't know much about Jeffery Dahmer before I read this. I graduated high school in '91, so when the story hit, I paid enough attention to the news to get a lot of misinformation. Hell, I didn't even know how he really died, apparently a mop had nothing to do with it (this isn't a spoiler, it is simply fact).

I'm that weird kind of person (at least weird by most people that I associate with standards) that looks at the criminal first when I hear of a...more
Hannah  Messler
Yikes, this book is super good.

I saw this over the summer for the first time, on a table at Bergen Street, I think. It held zero interest for me, with its Mad-style art, and its premise of (I assumed) sensationalist cashing-in on Having Known Someone We've Heard Of. And then I kept seeing it, and the art began to look less derivative and more genuinely odd, the premise to seem potentially less sensation and more personal, and then finally the other day I was feeding cats in Park Slope and stopp...more
Emily
Dec 29, 2012 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2012
I had a hold on this book at the library for so long that I forget what made me add it to my list. Probably some round-up of the best graphic novels.

I expected it to be grisly, to be read through your hands over your face, but it isn't. It only treats Dahmer's life in junior high and high school, up to his first murder, as seen through the eyes of a classmate. Backderf wasn't exactly friends with Dahmer, but they hung out a lot. His crowd is fascinated and amused by Dahmer, who plays up a freak...more
Molly Jarke
This book intrigued me on many levels. I've always been interested in the minds of serial killers; something about Dahmer pulled me more so than others. My brother found it while combing the shelves of graphic novels for his interests and he felt he had to get it for me.

I feel sorry for who Jeffrey Dahmer was in school. Yes, in school. Once he kills, he loses my pity. The book shows how rough his adolescent and teen years were both at school and home. It doesn't excuse what he became but it give...more
Ryan Anderson
My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel that depicts the life of Dahmer as he grows up in High School and the years that lead up to his terrible life as a Serial Killer. The story is told from the perspective of a friend of Dahmer's (also the author and artist for the story) as he talks about how strange Dahmer was and reflects on how he now realized that he could have helped Dahmer if he just stepped up. The story evolves from Dahmer starting as an angry boy, and beginning to grow up in to the seri...more
Penelope
This book is intense. It's also terrifying, despite not being very [visually] graphic or violent at all. A lot of Backderf's narrative is centered around showing how "normal" Dahmer appeared to other people (or maybe rather, the fact that he was completely off the radar of most people), but also how this coincided with the many warnings signs and bizarre behavior he exhibited.

Backderf's drawings are great. They remind me a lot of Crumb's style (I think it's the way he draws arms and butts...for...more
Chris Kervina
Honestly, I wasn't sure about this book. But, I saw Backderf on a panel at ALAN 2012, and I was fascinated by the use of graphic novel as memoir.

Backderf's visual narrative tells the story of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who Backderf knew as a teen. The memoir painstakingly synthesizes information from Dahmer's FBI interviews, published memoirs and televised interviews with Dahmer's mother and father, news accounts, visits to the former Dahmer family home, interviews with classmates,...more
Barbara
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer might not seem to be the expected subject for a graphic novel. After all, he was arrested in 1991 for killing 17 young men or boys. But somehow, the graphic novel format works for this story, providing an insider's view into the boyhood and adolescence of an almost unfathomable individual whose demons would prompt him to kill and kill again. The author/illustrator attended the same Richfield, Ohio, middle school and high school as Dahmer, giving him and his friends a...more
MissAnnThrope
I have a fascination with the serial killer mind and have read a few books on the subject, so I thought this might be an interesting read, especially combined with the graphic novel medium. I found this extremely disturbing but not in the way you might think.

It feels as if the author, a supposed "friend" of Jeffrey Dahmer, is capitalizing on that thing he calls friendship. Backderf puts the blame on the adults in Dahmer's life, but I believe he isn't entirely innocent in Dahmer's suffering. He m...more
James Renner
The artist mostly known as “Derf” was a bit of a mystery during my tenure at the Cleveland Scene and Free Times. He was the guy behind the coolest comic strip in the paper, The City, which ripped on Cleveland every week but also seemed to celebrate its crazy residents at the same time. I would occasionally see him at company parties, quietly watching from the back, this tall dude with a long face who usually seemed pissed at something.

There was this rumor he’d been friends with the serial killer...more
Stacy
My local library has a small but interesting and growing collection of graphic novels for adults. Early this evening, while browsing the new titles, I found this story by Derf Backderf, a graphic novelist who attended high school with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Backderf not only includes his own stories, but he interviewed various people that were in Dahmer's life, read all of the interviews the killer granted during his brief stint in prison before being killed, and read the FBI files. My st...more
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My Friend Dahmer (Hardcover)
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