Derf Backderf: My Friend Dahmer

This is a profoundly powerful, deeply depressing and revelatory account of Dahmers life at High School, told by a contemporary who was in his year. There is clearly a degree of therapeutic value in writing this for the author but it is much more than that. It vividly shows how hellish life can be in the inexplicably idolised world of small town America, for anyone with a modicum of feeling and intelligence not to mention someone as damaged as Dahmer. Frequently the author queries why no-one ( himself and his peers included) did anything.

Dahmer does come across here as a tragic figure...up to the moment of his decision to kill for the first time and the author makes it clear that his empathy and sympathy for him end at that moment.

The visual style, strongly influenced by Robert Crumb who praises it on a cover quote, manages to be both realistic and yet with a weirdness in the look that matches both D's nature and in its way, the high school environment.

A superb example of how the graphic novel is easily the equal of traditional written format books. I recall the exploration of the worlds of the Columbine killers as being equally effective in that more traditional format. But equally, with the right artist, this format could have worked.