My Friend Dahmer: A Graphic Novel

· Abrams
4.7
151 reviews
Ebook
240
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

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

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.

In My Friend Dahmer, a haunting and original graphic novel, writer-artist Backderf creates a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling against the morbid urges emanating from the deep recesses of his psyche—a shy kid, a teenage alcoholic, and a goofball who never quite fit in with his classmates. With profound insight, what emerges is a Jeffrey Dahmer that few ever really knew, and one readers will never forget.

Find teaching guides for My Friend Dahmer and other titles at abramsbooks.com/resources.

Also available by Derf Backderf:
Trashed
Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

Ratings and reviews

4.7
151 reviews
Briana Manon
June 25, 2016
I read this book during my sophomore year of high school. I was into criminals and death scenes. Jeffrey Dahmer was very different and no one understood him, but what he did was pretty awful. I feel bad for those families that lost their loved one. But thank God that he found Christ in jail.
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Ben Lawless
April 12, 2019
This is an interesting illustration of not just the making of a monster, but the stripping away of that monsters human identity, the harder he tries to cling to it, the more he dehumanizes everything around him most of all himself. The alcohol, the antics, the odd eccentric behaviors, all of it, coping mechanisms to keep what lurked in the dark away from the surface. brilliantly done.
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Richard Ward
April 2, 2015
The book is really well done all around. The illustrations are fresh, and the narrative gives really good insight. It does a great job of not pointing the finger, but almost leaving you somewhat sympathetic for Jeff. I realize that his crimes are inexcusable, however, this book shows the downward spiral that he lived that led him to doing what he did.
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About the author

Derf Backderf has been nominated for two Eisner Awards and has received a host of honors, including the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, has appeared in more than 100 newspapers over the past 22 years. Backderf lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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