Happy Summer Solstice!
We hope this post finds you enjoying these warmer days and finding time to catch up on that TBR list. This Weekend Picks is brought to us again by Kia Jane Richmond, and she takes us on a darker path with My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf.
We hope this post finds you enjoying these warmer days and finding time to catch up on that TBR list. This Weekend Picks is brought to us again by Kia Jane Richmond, and she takes us on a darker path with My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf.
 Kia Jane Richmond | Dr. Kia Jane Richmond is Professor and Director of English Education at Northern Michigan University and author of Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Real Struggles through Fictional Characters (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is a frequent presenter at NCTE, ELATE, ALAN, CEL, and MCTE conferences and has published many articles and book chapters focused on young adult literature and teacher preparation in English Language Arts. She can be reached at [email protected]. |
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
Published by Abrams ComicArts (2012)
With an academic background in psychology and an adolescence that coincided with the serial killer era (1970s-1980s), I often choose to read books or watch movies/TV shows about serial killers. Most recently I found myself engrossed in Netflix’s series, “Mindhunter,” based on a 1995 true crime book by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit). Learning about how the FBI developed criminal profiles for suspects who committed multiple murders was fascinating.
 | Many 21st century adolescents and young adults have also developed an affinity for true crime books or novels featuring murder or a serial killer. High school and college teachers occasionally tap into this interest by including units focused on fictional novels such as Out of the Easy by Ruby Sepetys (2014), The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002) or Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco (2017), nonfiction texts such as The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater (2017) or In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965), or podcasts such as “Serial,” a podcast created in 2014 as a spinoff of the public radio show “This American Life.” One of the best books I’ve found to pique readers’ interests is My Friend Dahmer, a graphic novel written and illustrated by Derf Backderf. The text is based on Backderf’s own memories having grown up with Jeffrey Dahmer in rural Ohio in the 1970s. However, the text is not solely grounded in reminiscence; instead, Backderf completed extensive research on Dahmer’s life before he killed his first victim in 1978. |
Included in My Friend Dahmer is thorough list of notes at the end of the book that include references to FBI investigations and newspaper/media coverage of Dahmer’s murders, published interviews with Dahmer and his family, and the author’s own personal reflections.
| What makes My Friend Dahmer an engaging read is the author’s ability to represent four years of life in the 1970s so effectively while also telling the story of one teen’s daily routines as a high school outcast who frequently drank himself into oblivion while ruminating on the desire to kill first animals, then another human being. The visuals in the book are powerful examples of excellence in graphic art. For instance, in Part 2 (“A Secret Life”), Dahmer is represented in four panels having just caught a fish in a local stream. He cuts the fish’s head off with a “thwap,” bludgeons the fish in multiple strokes (“chok! chok! chok!), and kneels over the fish, fixated on its mutilated body. In a splash page that follows, a close up is shown of this last image, with the words “I just wanted to see what it looked like” in the speech bubble. Backderf’s use of shading (Dahmer’s face is very dark, his eyes blocked by lines drawn across his wire-framed glasses) and body positioning add to the reader’s experiences with this novel. Most of the author’s drawings in My Friend Dahmer fit into one of three categories: graphic comic, cartoon, or sketch. As the reader moves through the book, the images on the pages get progressively darker -- in shading and in content. However, Backderf deftly leaves details of Dahmer’s first of seventeen murders for the last chapter and the “Notes” section. |  Derf Backderf |
For those who are interested in exploring graphic novels or who are interested in the psychological backgrounds of serial killers, My Friend Dahmer is a great choice. And if you appreciate the book, a movie version with the same title premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and is available now through streaming services such as Netflix or Apple TV+.
 Dr. Richmond holding her copy of Backderf's graphic novel. | Note 1: Jeffrey Dahmer was 4 years older than I was. I attended elementary school in Ohio in Dayton (1970-1974) while Dahmer was attending junior high in Bath, Ohio, just 3 hours away. When he graduated from high school in 1978 and killed his first victim, I was just starting high school in Fort Worth, Texas. Note 2: In 2018, I published a scholarly article in The ALAN Review on mental illness, stigma, and language used in My Friend Dahmer. Here is the free link to the PDF: https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v46n1/pdf/richmond.pdf |
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