My Friend Dahmer

A national bestseller, Derf Backderf’s Alex Award winner My Friend Dahmer is the bone-chilling graphic novel that inspired the major motion picture.

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 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 Derf Backderf creates a portrait of a disturbed young man struggling with the morbid urges emanating from the deep recesses of his psyche.

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:

• The Dissidents
• Trashed
• Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

Derf Backderf is an Eisner Award–winning cartoonist and graphic novelist whose books include My Friend Dahmer, Trashed, Punk Rock & Trailer Parks, The Dissidents, and Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio. Before focusing on graphic novels, he created the long-running comic strip The City, published in alternative newspapers nationwide. His work draws on first-hand experience to explore working-class life, history, and overlooked systems through dark humor and narrative storytelling. He lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio.