about the book
Not since Jack the Ripper had a serial killer become so seared into public consciousness as Jeffrey Dahmer did in 1991. Dahmer took seventeen victims, drugging them and strangling them, at times delving into necrophilia and cannibalism. He was caught in 1991 and was beaten to death in prison some years later.
That is the story everyone knows.
This is the story known only to Dahmer’s classmates from middle and high school, from Derf Backderf’s perspective. To Derf, “Jeff” was just the weird kid in high school. Sometimes Derf even considered Jeff a friend. They shared classes, study halls, hallways, even car rides at times.
Yet even back then Derf and his fellow classmates could see something was wrong in Jeff’s life. Here Derf offers a graphic novel portraying his personal recollections about Jeff, in which he thinks Jeff’s family, teachers, friends, and Derf himself failed to see the warning signs.
Derf stresses that all sympathy he had for Jeff dissolved at Jeff’s first murder.
about the author
When he was in sixth grade, Derf Backderf sold his first cartoon for two dollars to a classmate. It was a nude portrait of their teacher. Seems the classmate had a crush on the school marm! Skip ahead many years later, and Derf (whose real name is John) is now an indie comic creator, and one of the most widely-read ones at that.
Derf was an art school dropout; he worked on a garbage truck before deciding to give cartooning a try. After winning a journalism scholarship to Ohio State University, he caused a huge controversy with the political cartoons in his school newspaper. After graduation, his position as political cartoonist for a paper in South Florida also ended when he was fired for “general tastelessness!”
Derf moved to Cleveland, and his comic creation “THE CITY” ran in the Cleveland Edition until the paper folded. For the next twenty years, the strip appeared in 140 alternative publications.
Derf claims that growing up in a rural Ohio town inspired much of his illustrative works. He works out of his unheated attic studio in his home in Cleveland, and his manic irreverent illustrations have appeared on t-shirts, CD covers, and in graphic novels.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview : CNN
Author interview : Reglar Wiglar
Author biography : Wikipedia
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