My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer is a 2012 graphic novel and memoir by artist John "Derf" Backderf about his teenage friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer, who later became a serial killer. The book evolved from a 24-page, self-published version by Backderf in 2002. Background Shortly after Backderf learned about Dahmer's crimes, he met two of his friends, Mike Kukral and Neil, all of whom had befriended Dahmer in school. With the new information regarding Dahmer's fate, many of his odd behaviors in adolescence seemed to make sense. Backderf recorded some of the stories shared in his sketchbook, which would serve as the beginning of My Friend Dahmer. He started focusing on writing the stories in 1994 following Dahmer's death. Because Backderf worked at Akron Beacon Journal, he also had access to much information about Dahmer's crimes before they became public knowledge, which, combined with his personal history with Dahmer, put him in a perfect situation to shed light on him. When Backderf initially began creating the comics, he thought of them as a series of mini-comics or as an anthology told from his own perspective. Later, he returned to their high school for a more in-depth, journalistic approach wherein he collected information via interviews and FBI files.