My friend Dahmer

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Mein Freund Dahmer (original title My Friend Dahmer ) is a graphic novel by the American comic artist John "Derf" Backderf about the teenage years of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer , with whom the author went to school.

action

The graphic novel describes Dahmer's youth and high school days from the point of view of his school friend Derf Backderf. The author takes up, among other things, Dahmer's loneliness and alcohol addiction, the tense family situation as well as his fascination for dead animals and his fantasies of violence. It ends with Dahmer's first murder shortly after graduating from school in the summer of 1978.

Background and history

The author John Backderf and the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer first attended Eastview Junior High School and from 1974 to 1978 the Revere Senior High School in Richfield , Ohio, USA. Dahmer was considered a loner and eccentric among his classmates, but he managed to attract the attention of his classmates through bizarre jokes and pranks. Backderf and his clique then founded a "Dahmer Fan Club", the main purpose of which was to incite Dahmer to further nonsense. In the course of his school days, Dahmer developed into an alcoholic, which is why most of his classmates turned away from him again. After graduating from school, Backderf lost sight of Dahmer until he was arrested in July 1991 and made headlines around the world with his confession of murdering 17 young men and young people.

A few weeks after Dahmer's series of murders became known, Backderf began collecting material on his former school friend, with no clear idea of ​​what to do with it. After Dahmer's death in November 1994, Backderf began writing and drawing a few short stories about him in order to "treat himself in a way." Those whom he showed the stories to encouraged him to publish. The first short story appeared in 1997 in the comic anthology Zero Zero by the comic publisher Fantagraphics Books . After that, Backderf tried in vain for three years to sell a hundred-page summary of his short stories to a publisher. In 2002 he therefore self-published a version of My Friend Dahmer shortened to 24 pages , which earned him a nomination for the Eisner Award .

Backderf himself was not satisfied with the original version. He found his own drawings “lousy, the narrative bumpy and the chronological order inconsistent.” He also missed depth in his story, which is why he completely revised his work. To do this, he studied the FBI and police files on Damer’s crimes, interviewed his former classmates and teachers, and wrote and drew the new version for a month. The 224-page final version was published in 2012 by Abrams Comic Arts in the USA. Stefan Pannor provided the German translation, which was published in 2013 by Metrolit Verlag under the title Mein Freund Dahmer . The German edition has been supplemented by an afterword by Lutz Göllner and is therefore six pages longer than the original.

expenditure

  • Derf Backderf: My Friend Dahmer: A Graphic Novel. Abrams ComicArts, New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4197-0216-7 .
  • Derf Backderf: My friend Dahmer: A graphic novel about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. 1st edition. Metrolit Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8493-0048-7 .

Reviews

The work was received almost exclusively positively by critics. For example, Der Tagesspiegel wrote : “[...] The fact that Backderf ends his story with text annotations and two later epilogues after Dahmer's first murder of a young hitchhiker is his greatest narrative trick in this book, in which he expresses sympathy and pity wakes up for the later serial killer. [...] Due to his personal perspective and his connection with the topic, Backderf has presented an impressive inventory and study that draws from his own biography as well as from the extensive material on the case of Jeffrey Dahmer. "

On Deutschlandfunk it was said: “Even if Backderf plays with the prior knowledge of the reader, he does not rely on clumsy shower effects. [...] The images that Backderf finds for his dark story are mostly surprisingly bright and light, not least thanks to his humorous, expressionistic drawing style - only on Dahmer's face there is usually a shadow. Backderf shows how it was without any rating. [...] After reading Mein Freund Dahmer , one shares the author's bewilderment and grief in view of the many senselessly destroyed lives. "

Die Welt wrote: “Backderf draws his own memories in black and white and mixes them with episodes of early Dahmer. The book has nothing to do with conventional serial killer literature, which is often clearly too drooling. [...] So Backderf gets on board again and wisely does not grant the perpetrator the modest triumph of depicting the deeds, of giving the horror any depth or meaning by means of speculative images. The gaps are very useful for the narrative. It is a terribly sad story. Backderf vacillates between compassion and disgust, he spreads the musty world of the teenager without wanting to explain the deeds of the later “Milwaukee Monster”. [...] My friend Dahmer manages without violence and yet the later deeds are present, even for those who know nothing about Dahmer. "

Awards

Adaptations

The original version of My Friend Dahmer was performed as a one-act play by the New York University Theater Faculty. A new version was adapted for the big screen by director Marc Meyers under the title My Friend Dahmer and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. Dahmer is played by Ross Lynch , Backderf is played by Alex Wolff .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Derf Backderf: My Friend Dahmer . S. 205 .
  2. ^ Brian Masters: The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer . S. 35 .
  3. ↑ Derf Backderf: My friend Dahmer. P. 9 (preface).
  4. ↑ a b c d e Christian Endres: The way to hell . In: Der Tagesspiegel . May 20, 2013. Retrieved June 21, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Derf Backderf: My friend Dahmer. P. 10 (preface).
  6. ^ Tabea Soergel: Graphic novel about a serial killer . deutschlandfunk.de, June 6, 2013, accessed on June 22, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Holger Kreitling: The funny serial killer from the last bank . welt.de, April 28, 2013, accessed June 22, 2017 .
  8. ↑ 2012 Ignatz Awards , Internet Archive , accessed November 4, 2017.
  9. ↑ An interview with Derf Backderf, about his graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, Prix Révélation 2014 . Retrieved November 4, 2017 .