My Friend Dahmer

Part 3’s title (“The Dahmer Fan Club”) emphasizes the boys’ inability to grasp the severity of Dahmer’s descent—their lack of empathy leading them to use the latter for their amusement rather than seek help on his behalf. Backderf creates an atmosphere in which Dahmer’s transformation from isolated teen to serial killer seems inevitable, but he also mentions the system failing him. The cartoonish depiction of these events creates a sense of unease as the art style clashes with the disturbing nature of the material. The author utilizes this discrepancy to create tension and highlight the way Dahmer himself sticks out among his surroundings.

The crucial event in this part of the novel is Dahmer’s “command performance” at the Summit Mall. Backderf accentuates the boys’ complicity in persuading Dahmer to imitate a person with cerebral palsy in front of dozens of shoppers, scaring them. This complicity is especially evident in the boys’ idea to collect money to pay Dahmer for said performance. The visual style alerts the reader of this impropriety through the usage of the color black and heavy shading (112-113), adding graphic weight to the events taking place. Though organized at their request, this event forces the boys to reevaluate Dahmer’s behavior—and yet, not a single boy decides to notify an adult. For Backderf, the realization came prior to Dahmer’s performance, in the latter drinking a six-pack of beer within a span of ten minutes.

Backderf doesn’t offer an explanation as to why Dahmer’s bout provoked him in such a way (especially since he knew about his heavy drinking for a long time), but implies it was his witnessing the act that truly distressed him. The author elaborates on people choosing to forget or deliberately unsee behavior that they don’t know how to handle. In the boys’ case, they simply remove Dahmer from their social circle and almost forget his existence. Backderf reiterates his and his friends’ youth and their inability to deal with someone like Dahmer, but the reader is left to draw their own conclusions. The mall scene contains several splashes of people’s reactions to Dahmer (136-137, 141) and special effects lettering that indicate the magnitude of the situation. Page 139 is especially interesting as it offers an insert of Dahmer “in character” over two thirds of the page, with partially frameless panels surrounding him to indicate parallel actions (i.e., the boys’ reactions). This technique brings the reader closer to the event and magnifies the disturbed sense of peace.

Part 4 (“Becoming the Monster”) follows Dahmer’s final descent into madness. His experimentation with animals grows into ritualistic killing, as evidenced by the splash of a dog’s skull on a stick (155). Dahmer’s final attempt at “normalcy” takes place during prom—but his inability to see it through foreshadows his fate. Backderf depicts Dahmer in proper prom attire (a bow-tie and vest), but the façade gives way as he is unable to withstand the pressure of displaying expected behavior. Several panels give the reader glimpses into Dahmer’s eyes (160-161), which seem alert yet full of sadness. In framing Dahmer this way, the author implies he is well aware of his failure at being like other people, that he can no longer fight his inner demons—which is enhanced by the splash of his face in shadow on page 163. After his mother leaves him alone in the house and school ends, Dahmer’s face becomes fully shaded, emphasizing the loss of things that helped him cling to his sanity. Part 4 ends with Dahmer picking up a young hitchhiker who becomes his first victim.

In contrast to Part 5’s title “Fade to Black” (the title page being fully black with white lettering), the following pages are almost uniformly black, highlighting the idea that Dahmer crossed the line and is now irretrievably lost. The “fading” of the title gave way to darkness, the ominous silence of the first few pages which depict Dahmer’s empty house implying that the first murder already took place. The police stopping Dahmer in the middle of the night reads like a thriller, with Backderf utilizing suspense and irony as this first encounter could have prevented further killings. This aligns with Backderf’s theme of society failing to help or react to Dahmer’s obvious signs of disturbance. After the event, Dahmer doesn’t cry out of guilt but fear and relief that he was not caught—further indicating that he lost his grip on reality—as illustrated by his sigh of release on page 185.

Near the end of the novel, Backderf reuses the opening splash—but this time, the undulating road is in complete darkness (187). The bird’s-eye figure of Dahmer is now draped in shadows, a man lost to his own deteriorating health and neglect. The road represents a cycle, one in which Dahmer is fated to walk the path of a killer until his own death. Everything the future holds, a sequence of crime and grisly murder, is a direct consequence of others’ lack of attention to his downward spiral.