My Friend Dahmer: Derf Backderf (Graphic Biographies)

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I have much appreciation for Derf's project. Not everyone is a Ted Bundy "golden boy with a taste for murder"-style sociopath. In the same way that addiction is often an expression of pain or reaction to traumas, with killers like Dahmer there is something more than pure psychopathy at the root of his behavior. As with addicted persons, we absolutely don't OK or excuse his behavior nor should we refrain from punishing him for the consequences of it; but we do recall that all behavior has a root cause, that some of us are better at coping and overcoming these roots, and that a person is not essentially just his behavior. Also invoked later when, during a field trip with classmates to Washington DC, Jeff uses a payphone and talks an aide into letting him and Neil visit the Vice President of the United States. Lloyd Figg, a crude, disruptive, kleptomaniacal student that Derf regards as the class psycho and someone even Jeff is offended by. He's even Derf's first guess when he hears that someone from his high school class is a serial killer. Barnett, David (2017-11-12). "In New Film, 'My Friend Dahmer' Author Portrays Serial Killer As Sympathetic Outcast". NPR . Retrieved 2022-08-05. Un-person: The Dahmer Fan Club organizes a prank where they sneak Jeff into group photos of student organizations where he doesn't belong. A faculty member furiously scribbles over ◊ Jeff's face in one of the pictures when she finds out, while all of the other pictures are removed by the yearbook committee. That picture becomes a symbol of "Dahmer's wasted youth." note In Real Life, Revere High has a "Wall of Fame" featuring dozens of photo collages for each year's Graduating Class. The photo collection of the Class of 1978 is absent due to Dahmer being among that group of photos.

Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Double-Subversion in Jeff. On one hand, he does become one of the grisliest serial killers in modern history. However, he's presented somewhat semi-sympathetically (at first) in the comic and comes off more as a Reluctant Psycho than a gleeful sadist.

Aside from missing this opportunity in his book, it is a fascinating and sad story. It certainly made me think about my own cruelties to others, while reminding the reader you never ever know how much small kindnesses may mean to another person. It also touches on the nature/nurture question, as Dahmer's mother had problems during her pregnancy with him, and the household, while forlorn, was certainly something many many other kids have weathered better than Dahmer did.

Irony: A lesson of sorts in not judging books by their covers; Lloyd Figg makes a big show of being a huge psycho edgelord while Jeff looks relatively normal and well-behaved (even Derf in the lunchroom lampshades ◊ this when Figg's having a meltdown) in comparison... but it is the latter who becomes a genuine Serial Killer.My Friend Dahmer is about Jeffrey Dahmer’s life before he began having his “dates over for dinner.” It tells of a sad, neglected, not-ever-quite-right kind of boy whose problems were ignored by his family, classmates, and teachers alike . . . The idea for My Friend Dahmer came to me just a few weeks after the news broke,” Derf tells PWCW. “After the initial blast of media feeding frenzy died down a bit, I got together with two of my friends, Mike and Neal in the book, both members of my inner circle in high school who befriended Dahmer. We met at Neal's house, which just so happened to be about 200 yards from Dahmer's boyhood home, which was still ringed with yellow police tape as forensic investigators sifted through the property looking for bone fragments.” Team Pet: Dahmer's fan club regard him more as a mascot than anything else; they hang out with him because they find him hilarious, but he's just too creepy to consider an actual friend. Chekhov's Gun: Jeff's dumbbells. They never play a part in the actual story itself, but Derf mentions that they were used to kill his first victim in the afterword. But what would have changed the way things turned out for Jeffery Dahmer and his 17 victims? We'll never know. I can't help thinking

Groth, Gary (February 1997). "The Sledgehammer: A Chat with Hart Fisher". The Comics Journal. No.193. p.34-36. Consummate Liar: Derf notes that Jeff is great at deceiving others, which would become a very useful skill once he becomes a Serial Killer. I Love the Dead: Jeff's first sexual desires are for the male jogger who runs past his house... as a corpse.Fisher was a co-editor of Glenn Danzig's independent comic publisher Verotik from 1994 to 1995. [11] In 1995, he and Christian Moore co-authored the comic A Taste of Cherry with which was released by Verotik. [12] Tragic Keepsake: Almost all of Derf's sketches from high school show cameos of Jeff as a humorous character. He becomes the mascot for a fictitious candidate for class president and appears in the inner cover art for Revere High's 1978 yearbook, with all of the characters surrounding him speaking in "Dahmerisms." (Jeff would have been on the cover proper if the yearbook committee hadn't spiked it.) The book also shows a photo of Jeff joking around ◊ at school.

Caroline Picard (February 23, 2014). "Two Separate Conversations: An Interview with Dave Daley and Stephan Elliott". Make . Retrieved October 18, 2022. Boneyard's first release was Hart's comic book, Jeffrey Dahmer: An Unauthorized Biography of a Serial Killer. The comic was released in spring 1992, just a few months after Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison for his horrific crimes. Upon its release, protests were held in Milwaukee, where Dahmer had lived, [4] as well as in Fisher's home town of Champaign. [5] Derf's not even that much of a douche. Kinda flawed in the self-reflection department (a glaring weakness in this memoir, and dammit memoirs need genius level self-reflections to be readable), but one of those nice, ambitious boys who got out of midwest suburbia to work in creative fields. Still, reading his book just made me kinda angry. Like, didn't he learn anything? Everything in this book is emotionally defensive. Like... okay Derf, you knew Dahmer? Do you feel regret over not treating him as kindly as you could have? Do you feel scared knowing that someone capable of doing such things was a relatively normal-seeming human being standing right next to you? Do you feel fooled? Derf spends like one second on uncomfortable, unflattering questions and then, snap! blames the "adults" and moves on. It seems like the most emotion he can display here is disgust. So that's this book. Disgust and tired armchair psychiatry. I guess what I mean is Derf should have explored his own emotions and actions instead of trying to figure out Dahmer's, which was obviously something out of his psychiatric and empathic league. Clemency for Daniels OK'd by the court". News-Gazette. January 24, 2004 . Retrieved January 30, 2013. Subverted in regards to Lloyd Figg, whom Jeff is compared to. Lloyd appears blatantly Ax-Crazy next to the more quiet and awkward Jeff... but Jeff is the one that became a Serial Killer.Loners Are Freaks: Freaks of the " awkward, bespectacled, roadkill collecting/dissecting, alcoholic, Class Clown, closeted-homosexual, future Serial Killer" variety.