My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel created by artist John "Derf" Backderf about his teenage friendship with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

A scaled back 24-page self-published version was published by Derf in 2002.

The final 224-page version was later published by Abrams Comic Arts in 2012.

The novel depicts the author's teenage friendship with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer during his time at Eastview Junior High and Revere High School. The story follows Dahmer from age 12 to the day he killed his first victim two weeks after high school graduation.

Backderf, while not excusing Dahmer's crimes, presents an empathetic portrait of Dahmer as a lonely young man tormented by inner demons and neglected by the adults in his life. The graphic novel recalls Dahmer's isolation, his binge drinking, his bizarre behavior to get attention, and his disturbing fascination with roadkill. Derf and his friends encouraged Dahmer to act out, including fake epileptic seizures in the library and his imitation of a person with cerebral palsy sometimes encouraged by his peers.

My Friend Dahmer is the culmination of a comic book project first started in 1994, shortly after Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison. Derf's first Dahmer story appeared in Zero Zero #18 (Fantagraphics, July 1997). Derf then pitched the project as a 100-page graphic novel, but failed to find a publisher. He then self-published a scaled-back 24-page My Friend Dahmer comic book in 2002.

One technique of Derf's was drawing Jeffrey Dahmer in shadow, as a representation of his personality.

The original self-published comic book was adapted and staged as a one-act play by the NYU Theater Dept.

The novel was adapted into a film in 2017 as My Friend Dahmer, directed by Marc Meyers and starring Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer.

The original self-published comic book was nominated for an Eisner Award.

Lev Grossman, book critic of Time magazine, named My Friend Dahmer as one of the top five non-fiction books of 2012.

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Wikipedia