In the hands of a less talented creator, My Friend Dahmer would find its place alongside other "True Crime" books, volumes that mostly give readers the gory details in superheated prose, but which provide little insight into how such monsters are born. Fortunately, cartoonist Derf Backderf isn't one to avoid the troubling, even terrifying, truths that lurk in the dark recesses of that notorious serial killer's early life—and modern American life itself.

As the title suggests, Backderf did know Dahmer. They first met during the 1970s, while both were attending junior high school in Eastville, Ohio. However, he's quick to reveal the lie behind his title by repeatedly demonstrating throughout this harrowing volume that no one laid even passing claim to the title of "friend" to Dahmer during high school. Worse still, it seems that there was no adult—no parent, guardian, or educator—who demonstrated a modicum of real, sustained interest in that troubled youth's life.

Instead, what little human contact the teenaged Dahmer had with others was superficial at best. More often he was excluded, ignored, or served as the scapegoat of bullies, both an object of derision for his classmates and a neglected burden to his family and acquaintances. For Backderf and his fellows, he was a caustic class clown, the weird kid who could be bribed with booze to perform outrageous imitations of a local handicapped man for their enjoyment. Ultimately, Dahmer was easily discarded and barred from any hope of friendship once these heartless games ceased to amuse them.

All of this is presented in Backderf's
signature style, which places elongated, blocky figures against realistically rendered backgrounds. This lends both the players and their environs a real sense of weight that is bolstered by his fluid line work combined with a superior use of both negative space and shadows. And it's those same abilities that imbue the features and physiques of these characters with a depth of emotion that belies their two-dimensional natures. This is cartooning of the highest caliber, an approach which—working in tandem with Backderf's understated and seamless script—ensures a fascinating, if,
ultimately bleak, reading experience.

The most disturbing aspect of this tale is how all of the adults in Dahmer's life utterly failed him. According to this account, not one questioned the increasingly haunted youth about his fascination with collecting and dissecting road kill, or investigated his growing absences from school (when he attended at all) or his increasing dependence on alcohol, which eventually left him a reeking stumblebum. Readers have to wonder how different things might have been if anyone had taken this troubled teen in hand or shown even a glimmer of interest in him.

And that's the terrible, unspoken truth coiled around the bleak heart of this story; the sad realization that things might have been different, followed by a prayer that our own children do not, will not, lead lives that mask their own private hell.

Backderf went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who murdered 17 people, dabbling in cannibalism and necrophilia en route. With growing gay attractions he couldn't talk about, distant and combative parents, and limited social skills with peers, Dahmer was a kid who imitated cerebral palsy victims to get anybody to notice him. Indeed, perhaps "friend" isn't the right word for Backderf's relationship to Dahmer, since the kids who talked to Dahmer did so mainly to laugh at his weird performances or to torment him. There's no graphic crime or murder in this story, just the creepiness of how Dahmer's loneliness and insanity snuck up on him while eluding the adults who should have helped. Backderf's intentionally ungainly black-and-white art underscores the universal awkwardness of adolescence, and the approach has emotional resonance even if Dahmer must have been rather nice looking, judging from later photos. VERDICT Carefully researched and sourced with ample back matter, Backderf's tragic chronicle of what shouldn't have been is a real butt-kicker for educators and youth counselors as well as peers of other potential Dahmers. Highly recommended for professionals as well as true crime readers, teen up.—M.C.

Readers of Derf Backderf's the City strip in various alt-weeklies will immediately recognize his visual style (flattened landscapes and blocky characters who look uncomfortable in their own skin), but not the content in this visceral, ambitious new graphic novel. Instead of the City's surreal, satirical ennui, Backderf explores a hard-to-believe autobiographical story. During the 1970s in Ohio, he attended high school with and befriended Jeffrey Dahmer, "the loneliest kid I'd ever met." Backderf and his social misfit crew drift in and out of Dahmer's story, which the author pieced together from memories and more recent research. It's a barbed-wire portrait of a devil-minded teen with divorcing and neglectful parents. He slices up roadkill to see what it looks like, gets attention in school by doing imitations of cerebral palsy victims, and swims in alcohol to drown out his violent urges. The tone is sympathetic and enraged ("Where were the damn adults?") while not excusing or making the story unduly fascinating. Backderf's writing is impeccably honest in not exculpating his own misdeeds (the sections about how he and his friends encourage Dahmer's spaz shtick while still excluding him make for brutal reading) and quietly horrifying. A small, dark classic. (Mar.)