My Friend Dahmer

Everyone has that one strange classmate whose antics amused, entertained, and perhaps frightened us in school. The one we remember even after so many years. After graduation, no one talks to him, he fades into memory, stored alongside old photo albums and artifacts of adolescence. But sometimes we ponder what happened to him. In the case of one man who grew up in a small town in Ohio, the world’s media answered that question all at once. It happened on July 22, 1991, when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the murder of 17 young men and teenagers. «My Friend Dahmer» is an outstanding graphic novel by Derf Backderf, an award-winning political cartoonist. On these pages, Backderf attempts to understand the future serial killer he attended school with, spent time with during breaks, and drove around with. He creates a compassionate portrait of a deeply troubled young man struggling against terrible desires rising from the dark corners of his soul. Dahmer is seen around the world as an inhumane monster, but here he is depicted as lonely and strange – even too human. A shy guy, who, in the complete ignorance of the adults, was irrevocably swept into madness. We all know what Dahmer did, but in «My Friend Dahmer», Backderf offers his unique persuasive and sometimes even strangely comedic arguments on how and, more importantly, why Jeffrey Dahmer transformed from the school weirdo into as horrific an enemy of humankind as Jack the Ripper. In «My Friend Dahmer», Backderf gets closer than anyone before him to unraveling the seemingly inexplicable case of Jeffrey Dahmer, a graduate of Revere High School, class of 1978.