My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel/memoir by American cartoonist and writer Derf Backderf, known for utilizing darkness and shading in his comic strips and graphic novels. Evolving from a 24-page cartoon created in 2002, My Friend Dahmer (2012) depicts the author’s memories of his high school friend, notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, in novelistic form—exploring the ways Dahmer himself could have been helped and his 17 murders prevented. The graphic novel was adapted into the eponymous movie in 2017 to great success.

Derf Backderf (born John Backderf in 1959) is the son of a chemist from rural Ohio. He attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in journalism, and now works as a political cartoonist in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning and three Eisner Awards for achievement in American comic books.

This guide refers to the Abrams ComicArts paperback edition (2012).

Content Warning: Please note that this guide references the book’s depictions of violence and murder.

Plot Summary

The narrator, Derf, meets Jeffrey Dahmer in the seventh grade. Dahmer is awkward and shy, and lives in a rural area outside of Akron, Ohio, with his dysfunctional family: his distant father, a chemist, his mother who has psychological issues, and a younger brother. Once they reach high school, Dahmer becomes even more distant and isolated, developing a habit of dissolving road kill animals in acid to observe their insides.

During their sophomore year, in imitation of his mother’s interior decorator, Dahmer begins to fake epileptic fits to his schoolmates’ amusement and shock. He obsesses over a male jogger who runs past his house, fantasizing about worshiping his dead body. Dahmer begins to drink heavily in order to drown his fantasies of death and sex, and although he is frequently intoxicated in school, the adults don’t seem to notice—and his behavior goes unchecked. Dahmer’s parents start divorce proceedings, causing further turmoil. Dahmer stalks the jogger and plans to kill him with a bat, but the man doesn’t show on the day of his plan.

During their senior year, the boys in school (including Derf) form a “Dahmer Fan Club,” coaxing Dahmer to perform his epileptic stunts and sneaking him into school photos for fun. This culminates in the boys’ “command performance” at the Summit Mall, in which they pay Dahmer to participate. During the ride to the mall, a shocked Derf witnesses Dahmer drink a six-pack of beer in under ten minutes. Dahmer’s antics alarm and frighten the shoppers, eliciting the boys to lose interest, abandon the club, and distance themselves from Dahmer for good. Dahmer later gets a date for the prom, only to abandon the girl and leave for a McDonald’s. At home, Dahmer’s mother informs him that she plans to move to Wisconsin, leaving him on his own. Dahmer succumbs to his urges, picks up a young male hitchhiker, and murders him.

A few days later, the police stop Dahmer in the middle of the night as he is attempting to dispose of the dismembered body—but the police officer fails to inquire further and lets him off, causing him to cry with relief. Ten years later, Derf and his friends meet up and mention Dahmer, joking about him becoming a serial killer. At the end of the novel, in 1991, Derf receives a phone call from his journalist wife, only to learn that Dahmer was arrested for committing a number of grisly murders.