My Friend Dahmer is the culmination of a comic book project first started in 1994, shortly after Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison. Derf's first Dahmer story appeared in Zero Zero #18. Derf pitched the project as a 100-page graphic novel, but failed to find a publisher. He then self-published a scaled-back 24-page My Friend Dahmer in 2002. The success that came with the 24-page version spurred Derf to create the 224-page version after six years of stalling. Derf felt that he hadn't done the project justice in the 24-page version; the 224-page version was published by Abrams in 2012.
Plot
The novel depicts the author's teenage friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer, who later became a serial killer, during his time at Eastview Junior High and Revere High School. The story follows Dahmer from age 12up to, but not including, his first murder, two weeks after high school graduation. Backderf, while not excusing or forgiving Dahmer's crimes, presents an empathetic portrait of Dahmer as a lonely young man tormented by inner demons, ridiculed by bullies at school, and neglected by the adults in his life. The graphic novel recalls Dahmer's isolation, his binge drinking, his bizarre behavior to get attention, and his disturbing fascination with roadkill. Derf and his friends encouraged Dahmer to act out, including faking epileptic seizures in school and the mall and pretending to have cerebral palsy.
Style
One of Derf's techniques was drawing Dahmer in shadow as a representation of his personality.
Adaptations
The original self-published comic book was adapted and staged as a one-act play by the NYU Theater Department. The novel was adapted into a film in 2017, directed by Marc Meyers and starring Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 86% rating based on 88 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "My Friend Dahmer opens a window into the making of a serial killer whose conclusions are as empathetic as they are deeply troubling." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
