A graphic look at Jeffrey Dahmer's high-school life

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

Dark subject matter in graphic novels is nothing new – but a memoir about a childhood with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is up there with the darkest of them.

My Friend Dahmer (Abrams, £16.99) by award-winning comic artist Derf Backderf is a high-school memoir detailing the early life of Dahmer, one of America's most repulsive murderers. Backderf was one of a circle of distant acquaintances of Dahmer's at high school in Ohio. He later realised that that group included Dahmer's closest friends. My Friend – drawn in Backderf's Robert Crumb-like style and in monotone, documents Dahmer's teenage oddities, which included heavy drinking, faking fits and, in a preview you can see at derfcity.com, pickling roadkill using his pharmacist father's acid.

It's a unique look at a dark heart.