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My Friend Dahmer (Movie Tie-In Edition)

Derf Backderf author Marc Meyers editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Abrams

Published:1st Nov '17

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My Friend Dahmer (Movie Tie-In Edition) cover

The bone-chilling graphic novel that inspired the major motion picture starring Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer.

This special edition of the national bestseller includes:

  • Introduction by Marc Meyers, director of the FilmRise feature film, My Friend Dahmer
  • 16 full-color pages of movie stills, storyboards, and behind-the-scenes photographs
Named a BEST OF 2012 by Time, The Village Voice, A.V. Club, comiXology, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, MTV Geek, and more!
You only think you know this story. In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer—the most notorious serial killer since Jack the Ripper—seared himself into the American consciousness. To the public, Dahmer was a monster who committed unthinkable atrocities. To Derf Backderf, Dahmer was a much more complex figure: a high school friend with whom he had shared classrooms, hallways, and car rides. In My Friend Dahmer, a haunting and original graphic novel, writer-artist Backderf creates a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling against the morbid urges emanating from the deep recesses of his psyche—a shy kid, a teenage alcoholic, and a goofball who never quite fit in with his classmates. With profound insight, what emerges is a Jeffrey Dahmer that few ever really knew, and readers will never forget.

"A thoughtful adaptation of his schoolmate John Backderf's Robert Crumb-styled graphic novel, rich with detail and regret, it deconstructs the perfect storm of failures -by family, by friends, in his school life-that let him slip. [...] A humane film, this takes its responsibility as a true story seriously, without the luridness or cheap jump scares of Ed Gein (2000). Shot in Dahmer's utterly suburban childhood home, and cleaving tightly to Backderfs wish to bear witness, it's an exquisite dissection of how monsters are not only born, but also made." -- Sight & Sound magazine
"Based on the graphic novel memoir by Derf Backderf – a fair-weather friend of Dahmer’s from high school – Meyers’ film is a ghoulishly funny and profoundly sad portrait of a future killer." -- Total Film

  • Short-listed for The Harvey Awards 2018 (United States)

ISBN: 9781419727559

Dimensions: 233mm x 154mm x 28mm

Weight: 660g

240 pages