My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer (2012) by Derf Backderf. This is a graphic novel by someone who was a high-school friend of Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who was arrested in 1991. Dahmer was a strange kid in the 1970s, when he attended junior high and high school with Backderf. He was also a tortured soul and an alcoholic. Backderf shows, in this comic-style book, what it was like to know Dahmer during this time period. The strangest thing is that so few people had any inkling during his junior high and high school years of what Dahmer would become. His teachers all later described him as a "normal kid," but Backderf, who saw him outside class, knew there was something wrong. His book nicely illustrates and clearly delineates what is undeniably a creepy subject. Grade: B