Festival International
de la bande dessinée

 

After 35 years of a career as humour cartoonist, he had a huge success with his graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, the story of a serial killer's adolescence who was, before all, a school friend. A unique book, original, deep and engaging, My Friend Dahmer was awarded at the 41st Festival with the Prix Révélation, tied with The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad.

Derf Backderf tells us the origins and challenges of his second graphic novel by the Editions ça et là and reveals The Ohio Trilogy.

 

Your graphic novel Mon ami Dahmer won « le Prix Révélation » at last FIBD and was selected in a lot of other festivals. How does it feel to see your work such appreciated?

Derf Backderf : It feels damn good! I worked for a long, long time on the fringe. I was successful, but I was always a cult figure. To have this huge breakthrough after 35 years as a professional, it’s amazing. When I won le Prix Révélation, one of my colleagues, Frank Santaro, who is also published by Éditions çà et là, was almost in tears he was so happy. He told me ” man, you’re an inspiration to the rest of us!” Because I’d been slaving away all those years, and never gave up, and finally made it big. That meant a lot to me. I'm enjoying myself immensely right now.

 

This book was written and published in many different parts. How did the project evolve into the book we finally hold in our hands ?

D.B. : It took 20 years. I started with short stories. When Dahmer was caught, I knew I had an incredible story, but I didn’t want to rush something into print. Most of the books (including a couple comic books) were real sleazy. I didn’t want to be a part of that.

I was also dealing with a lot of emotional stuff, since this guy was once my friend.  You can’t imagine how awful it was. Not only the horrible details of what Dahmer did, but being chased by a horde of media for weeks. I had camera trucks parked outside my house! Reporters were beating on my door.  It was a nightmare.

And finally, I had never done a long story before. I was strictly a humor cartoonist. I made  single-panel cartoons and comic strips. I didn’t know HOW to make longer stories. It was harder than I thought. So I had all that to work out.

After he was killed in 1995, I started writing. I’d been collecting material in sketchbooks and notebooks up until then. I made six short stories from 1995-97. One of them was published in ZeroZero, the anthology title from Fantagraphics. I thought it was pretty special stuff. Very unique and powerful. In 1998, I pulled it all together into a 100-page BD. It wasn’t much like the final Mon Ami Dahmer. It was really just a collection of short stories, not one long story. I spent three years trying to find a publisher. Everyone turned me down, including Fantagraphics! Twice!!

So in 2002, I self-published a 24-page comic book, in the hope some publisher would see it in print and be interested in the full book. That didn’t happen, but that little comic book got an Eisner nomination and all sorts of press. It confirmed my belief that this was a story worth doing. But at that point, I had run out of options, so I set it aside and started working on other projects.

Then I got cancer. Everything got delayed while I dealt with that. I lost five years until I beat it and recovered. By then it was 2007. I didn’t feel like taking on a dark tale like Mon Ami Dahmer, so I dove into Punk Rock & Mobile Homes instead. That was a fun story that was full of hope and life. This was the book that turned me into a graphic novelist. I couldn’t have done Mon Ami Dahmer without having done Punk Rock first. My thinking was: I’ve wasted enough time. If I’m going to learn how to make BDs, I have to plunge in. No fear. Take on every artistic challenge. And that’s what I did.

When I sent the finished Punk Rock off to the publisher, I knew I was ready for Mon Ami Dahmer. I started working on it right away.

Sorry. That was a really long answer !

 

How can you write such a terrible story ? Did your journalism training help you , especially in writing ?

D.B. : Well, this is where taking such a long time was very helpful. I dealt with all the emotional stuff years and years ago. And, yes, I approached much of the story as a journalist. All the research and the interviews and digging through police files, that was fun for me, as a journalist. Writing the story, that wasn’t so much fun. That’s a very dark place, Dahmer’s world. Thankfully, the writing only took a couple weeks. I had done SO much research, and made the earlier versions of the story, so I knew exactly how the story would unfold. But, yes, that was a very depressing task.

Then I faced a year of drawing the damn thing. But that wasn’t a problem. I stumbled upon an unusual solution. I detached emotionally from the story after I wrote it and focused instead on all the details in the drawings: my friends, the school, the places we liked to hang out, my hometown. All that crazy detail in the book comes from this, because THAT was fun for me. Yes, it’s Dahmer’s world, but it’s also MY world. Recreating that was very enjoyable.

The book, as most readers know, has two storylines. Jeff’s is the main story, and then there’s a secondary storyline of me and my friends, the Dahmer Fan Club. That secondary story came from what I describe above. It was the result of trying to make the book fun to produce. I also though it was impoirtant to give the reader something normal, something human, to hang onto, especially as Jeff becomes darker and darker and less human. I like that contrast, between Jeff and us. We were so similar, but our lives went in completely different directions. I like the constrast of dark and light, and my friends and I and our silly antics give the book some much-needed humor. And I believe the humor makes Dahmer’s story even more tragic and bleak.

The odd thing is, after I finished the first draft I showed it to Mike and Neal, my two friends from the Dahmer Fan Club. They both reacted the same way. They said “This is the funniest book I’ve ever read!” Because, for them, all that stuff in the background leapt to the front. Our silly antics and all the hidden details I put in the background. There’s only four people in the world who would read the book this way! But I think other readers recognize the detail, and the insane amount of it, even if they don’t understand what that detail means. It gives the book depth, and readers respond to that.

That’s my belief anyways.

How can you write such a terrible story ? Did your journalism training help you , especially in writing ?

D.B. : Well, this is where taking such a long time was very helpful. I dealt with all the emotional stuff years and years ago. And, yes, I approached much of the story as a journalist. All the research and the interviews and digging through police files, that was fun for me, as a journalist. Writing the story, that wasn’t so much fun. That’s a very dark place, Dahmer’s world. Thankfully, the writing only took a couple weeks. I had done SO much research, and made the earlier versions of the story, so I knew exactly how the story would unfold. But, yes, that was a very depressing task.

Then I faced a year of drawing the damn thing. But that wasn’t a problem. I stumbled upon an unusual solution. I detached emotionally from the story after I wrote it and focused instead on all the details in the drawings: my friends, the school, the places we liked to hang out, my hometown. All that crazy detail in the book comes from this, because THAT was fun for me. Yes, it’s Dahmer’s world, but it’s also MY world. Recreating that was very enjoyable.

The book, as most readers know, has two storylines. Jeff’s is the main story, and then there’s a secondary storyline of me and my friends, the Dahmer Fan Club. That secondary story came from what I describe above. It was the result of trying to make the book fun to produce. I also though it was impoirtant to give the reader something normal, something human, to hang onto, especially as Jeff becomes darker and darker and less human. I like that contrast, between Jeff and us. We were so similar, but our lives went in completely different directions. I like the constrast of dark and light, and my friends and I and our silly antics give the book some much-needed humor. And I believe the humor makes Dahmer’s story even more tragic and bleak.

The odd thing is, after I finished the first draft I showed it to Mike and Neal, my two friends from the Dahmer Fan Club. They both reacted the same way. They said “This is the funniest book I’ve ever read!” Because, for them, all that stuff in the background leapt to the front. Our silly antics and all the hidden details I put in the background. There’s only four people in the world who would read the book this way! But I think other readers recognize the detail, and the insane amount of it, even if they don’t understand what that detail means. It gives the book depth, and readers respond to that.

That’s my belief anyways.

 

The novel of formation, and the transition to adulthood, often returns in American authors' books. Is it kind of necessary to lay the foundation of its own work ? Why is the passage from youth to adulthood so important ?

D.B. : Not sure. It’s an important period for all of us. Great stories have that element of recognition. Readers see themselves, or at least their experience, in a story and they relate to that. Isn’t it that way in France? Jeff’s story couldn’t be more unusual and you wouldn’t think anyone could see their own life in his tale, but they do. The most common thing I hear is, yeah, I knew a kid just like Dahmer when I was in school.

 

In France, we'll discover Punk rock and mobile homes this year and we hope to read Trashed as well. What are your plans for the future ?

D.B. : My next book is more Trashed ! I’m working on it right now. The first Trashed, which was only a 50-page magazine, was published in 2001. It was the memoir of my career as a garbageman in my hometown. It was a fun book, but it was very poorly drawn unfortunately. I just wasn’t very polished then. It got an Eisner nomination, too! I’ve returned to it a couple times, as a webcomic in 2009 and 2010. I expanded the story and made it fiction.  After My Friend Dahmer came out here and was a big hit, my publisher suggested I make those webcomics into a new book. It’s all about garbage, and shit jobs, and creepy co-workers and weird small towns. Fun stuff. It’s close_frontr to Punk Rock and Mobile Homes than Mon Ami Dahmer. It’ll be released in the US in late 2015, and then in France in 2016. Éditions çà et là has already bought the rights. French readers will recoginize the same weird American Midwest that I depict in both my other books. You folks seem to really enjoy that. In fact, Éditions çà et là is going to call them all The Ohio Trilogy.

After that, more books. Work until you die, that’s my motto.

 

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