Derf Backderf

After listening to an interview with Derf Backderf, the author of My Friend Dahmer, I found myself reading a graphic novel about the high school years of a serial killer. I don't generally like graphic novels, but the format was ideal for the subject matter. Derf went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer and they were a part of the same group of friends. Dahmer was an outcast until his humorous routine as a man with cerebral palsy won him a place on the edge of a group of boys. Dahmer lost his show more hold on whatever gave him stability in those years and Backderf's main question is "Where were the adults?"

And that's not an easy answer. It was the seventies, a time before teachers watched their students for signs of alcohol or drug abuse, when kids ran wild with very little supervision and when parents were focused on their own changing lives. But Backderf says that Dahmer's deterioration was so obvious that someone should have noticed. And his parents were absent, his father and mother were divorcing and the process was drawn-out and acrimonious. Dahmer and his younger brother were left living with their possibly mentally ill mother, a woman unable to care for them. And so he had no one to help him as the warning signs became ever larger and brighter.

Backderf is an excellent guide through these years of Dahmer's life. In addition to the time and effort he made in remembering those years, he also spoke to friends, classmates and teachers, putting together an account that is both insightful and centered in what it was like to be a teenage boy in that time and place. show less

I had only vaguely heard of “The Kent State Massacre” before reading this graphic novel. Now I feel like I was there to observe it all unfold. “Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio” is an absolutely heartbreaking account, following in great detail, the last few days of the four students who died on May 4th.

It’s eerie how many parallels there are to our present day’s treatment of protests and civil unrest, and how those in positions of power are not being held accountable for their show more blatant disregard of laws and public safety. And also how people are still so susceptible to believing the first thing they hear without question or evidence. It’s history repeating itself during the 50th anniversary of the massacre.

What I love most about this book is that almost a quarter of it is filled with a detailed bibliography of primary sources, including many conflicting accounts, which reflects the author’s deep dedication to getting as many facts as possible. The bibliography also serves to help the reader come to their own conclusions about the events leading up to, and including, that day. show less

Kent State is an event that I've always been vaguely aware of, but I don't remember it being given too much attention during any history class I took in school. There is so much US history to cover (not to mention all the other world history that's happened before and since) that glossing over a fairly recent event like this is almost understandable. That's unfortunate, though, because not only were the aftershocks of this event huge (changes to how law enforcement approach crowd control show more during protests; the cover-up, investigation, and warring opinions about the events and who was at fault), but the Kent State massacre is probably more relevant than ever before considering the protests going on in the US over the past few years.

At some point in the recent past I read the Wikipedia pages for the Kent State shootings and the four victims who were killed that day. It seemed like a good, unsentimental overview at the time, but the way the events are presented here in this book go above and beyond the facts in a good way. Spending some time with each victim in the days leading up to the massacre, seeing their friendships and relationships, watching them go to work and school and to parties, and following the events, beliefs, and choices that led them to be near the Prentice Hall parking lot on May 4, 1970, was compelling. Seeing all of the political conflict, covert government dealings/misunderstandings, and flat out foolish mistakes that led to violence occurring on that day was heartbreaking. Over the course of the book all of these elements combined into a mounting sense of dread that is ultimately only a fraction of what the protesters, bystander students, their families, and the whole country that watched felt during and after Kent State. Derf Beckderf did a wonderfully effective job of laying out a lot of important information in a compassionate way.

I don't know why I felt the need to write a whole long review for this book, but I'm glad to know a little more about the Kent State shootings than I did before. Unfortunately, the US is probably always going to experience political unrest of some sort. There will probably always be unhappy citizens making their opinions known via protests, some of them violent but many of them peaceful (frustrated, but peaceful). Reading this in light of the protests we've seen over the past year, for BLM and stopping AAPI hate and other important topics, hits hard, but it also made me feel a little worse: history repeats itself if you don't learn from it, and I'm not sure enough people learned from this to stop the repetition. show less

History repeats itself.

A president who vows to keep the United States out of war goes back on his word, moving to suppress the free press that criticizes him, demonizing socialists and immigrants as traitors to be deported, and unleashing a paramilitary force to demand citizens present papers on the streets or face detainment.

And it all happened more than a hundred years ago under a guy named Woodrow Wilson.

Derf Backderf masterfully dramatizes real events by having a fictional cartoonist show more hang out with the actual people who were put on trial under sedition and espionage laws for daring to make cartoons that disagreed with the President's mandated point of view.

It made me angry and sad, but I couldn't stop reading once I got going. (Though I did take my time going through the extensive end matter, absorbing the multitude of details over the course of four days.)

I'm already sure this will be one of my top graphic novels of the year and will appeal to readers with an interest in history and/or politics.

Disclosure: I received access to a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.com. show less