My Friend Dahmer

"My Friend Dahmer" by Derf Backderf is one of the most memorable and disturbing graphic novels I've read in a long time.  This is the type of book that will make you stay up at night thinking about it.  When I was reading it I found I couldn't put it down because it was so interesting.

It is written and illustrated by someone who was a classmate of Jeff Dahmer and saw him get more and more strange and anti-social over the years.  It starts in the 7th Grade and ends when the author and his friends graduate from high school.  The author is one of a handful of people who attempted to talk to and become friends with Jeff Dahmer but even he has trouble relating to him.  The fact of the matter is that even in the 7th Grade Jeff Dahmer was "weird" for lack of a better word.  Even at that age he was doing things like collecting road kill and trying to decompose the bodies in acid.  He had no friends to speak of and a very troubled life at home.  We see how Dahmer gets more and more withdrawn as he gets older and closer to graduation.  We also learn that in high school Jeff Dahmer developed a severe dependence on alcohol and drank heavily during school.  The author's theory is that Dahmer drank to numb his senses to the evil and depraved thoughts that went through his head.

The author may have known Jeff Dahmer better than almost anyone during those high school years.  Even though the author and his friends think Dahmer is a "freak" they form the "Jeff Dahmer Fan Club" and they observe his antics and sometimes invite him into their group.  They "use" Dahmer to help them do pranks like getting Dahmer to pose in the back of all of the group and club photos for the yearbook.  The author is one of the few teens who knew Dahmer well enough to visit him at his home.  He admits he only visited him a couple of times because the visits were often weird and creepy in some way.

When you read the book you can't help but ask yourself, "how does someone cross that line from being a social outcast to a full blown serial killer?"  The author also clearly struggles with those questions as well.  Jeff Dahmer had a variety of issues.  He was an outsider.  A weirdo.  It is also revealed in the book that he figured out in high school that he was a homosexual.  Jeff Dahmer was bullied in school but he also picked on younger weaker classmates himself.  All of these are huge pressures on any teenager but there are thousands of other teenagers in the same position all across the country.  What made Dahmer snap?

What is also sort of scary is that the author and his friends could almost see it coming.  There is a scene in the book that takes place several years after high school.  The author and his friends are at a bar talking about their high school days and their old friends.  Jeff Dahmer's name comes up and they wonder what he's doing just then.  The author jokes that, "he's probably a serial killer by now", and they all laugh.  They would later be haunted by this memory.  The author asks himself if he could sense that something was seriously wrong with Dahmer why didn't he ever get help?  How could his parents be so clueless?  How could his teachers at school not notice that he was coming to school drunk every day?  By the end of the book it seems like there are more questions than answers and perhaps that is one reason why this book is so disturbing and yet so fascinating.