Genoeg reden om hem wat vragen te stellen dus toen ik hem zondag 15 februari tegenkwam in the American Book Center in Amsterdam.
Sunday Linda and I went to the public library to check out the exhibition on the Poezenkrant (Cat Newspaper) made by Piet Schreuders. I also took a moment to look at the wonderful city scape the library offers.
Here’s a life shot if you prefer that:
Maar ook daarvoor was hij al werkzaam aan strips die in de studio gemaakt werden, onder Vandersteen zelf. Na 250 albums gaat hij binnenkort met pensioen.
Een kort interview met ATV.be:
My Friend Dahmer gaat over de tijd dat Backderf op de middelbare school zat met Jefrey Dahmer die later maar liefst 17 jonge mannen vermoordde. Hij had seks met de lijken en soms at hij ook een stukje van zijn slachtoffers. Geen luchtig onderwerp dus.
Toch was het erg leuk om Backderf te spreken en ook een beetje gek, want de volgende dag interviewde ik hem in het café van het Americain voor de VPRO Gids. Zondagmiddag was dus een soort opwarmertje. Nu ja, vooral voor mij dan, want Derf was de afgelopen dagen in Frankrijk en België al flink ondervraagd over zijn boek. En vaak kreeg hij natuurlijk dezelfde vragen gesteld. Zo gaat dat op een perstoer.
(Dinsdagmiddag is Backderf om 17 uur in Lambiek).
De belangstelling in Frankrijk en België was groot geweest. In Nederland was ik een van de weinige journalisten die interesse heeft voor het werk van Backderf, vertelde uitgever Hansje Joustra. Strip blijft in hier toch een stiefkindje terwijl België en Frankrijk echte striplanden zijn.
Voor mij mag dat de pret niet drukken, al betekent het wel dat ik als freelancer lang niet altijd mijn artikelen over het beeldverhaal ergens kwijt kan.
Het gesprek in het Americain op maandag duurde lang. Derf had er zin in. Vooral toen ik het ook wilde hebben over zijn strip Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. Een hilarische strip over de punkscene in Akron Ohio in de vroege jaren tachtig. Het hoofdpersonage Otto, die zichzelf the Baron noemt, is zeer sympathiek en komt erg grappig uit de hoek. De strip zit vol gastoptredens van punkers als Klaus Nomi, The Ramones en Wendy O. Williams. Popjournalist Lester Bangs komt ook even langs.
Na het interview hebben we nog wat gepraat over de Amerikaanse stripwereld. Derf maakte nog een tekening in mijn exemplaar van Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. Het tekenen heb ik op video vastgelegd.
Binnenkort alles over Mijn vriend Dahmer en Punk Rock and Trailer Parks in de VPRO Gids.
Friday Linda and I visited the café Het Papeneiland for a nice cup of coffee. It is the same café Bill Clinton went to when he visited Amsterdam a few years ago. But for us it’s just a nice, quiet café around the corner.
This great photograph from the past hangs on one of the walls in Het Papeneiland. Old Skool street view.
This is the view from where I was sitting. While I lazily sipped my coffee a jogger raced on the bridge.
En dat is het ook, namelijk de (natte) droom van Jameson, getoond in The Daydreamers in Amazing Spider-Man #246 (1983). In dit verhaal trakteren Roger Stern en John Romita Jr. de lezer op de dagdromen van respectievelijk Felicia Hardy, Jameson, Mary Jane en Peter Parker. Alle dromen zijn interessant om eens goed te bestuderen, want al deze avonturen in het onderbewuste vertellen veel over het karakter van het personage dat aan het dagdromen is. Vandaag hou ik het echter bij de dagdroom van Jameson, die overigens boekdelen spreekt. Kijk maar:
Leuk detail is dat Lance Bannon én Peter Parker aanwezig zijn om foto’s te nemen. Duidelijk een signaal dat Jameson geen idee heeft dat Parker en Spider-Man dezelfde persoon zijn. Ook interessant is Jamesons ontkenning dat hij meer kranten verkoopt door nieuws over Spider-Man te plaatsen. Natuurlijk verkoopt de krant beter omdat er foto’s van Spider-Man op de voorpagina staan. Wat Spider-Man doet en de andere superhelden doen in het Marvel Universum is nieuws en dat willen mensen lezen. En dat weet de hoofdredacteur van de krant heus wel. Het hoog houden van de verkoopcijfers is volgens mij de hoofdreden om zijn lastercampagne tegen de Muurkruiper vol te houden.
(Toentertijd in ieder geval. Later werd Jameson de burgemeester van New York en ging hij gewoon door met lasteren. Sterker nog, hij huurde een heel team SpiderSlayers in om Spider-Man te bestrijden.)
Als Jameson aan het einde van de scène denkt: ‘But the Bugle prints the news… not fiction,’ is dat maar de halve waarheid. De berichtgeving over Spider-Man is door Jameson op zijn zachts gezegd gekleurd.
In the city I either travel by tram or bus but mostly by foot. I love walking through Amsterdam. It’s a great city to walk through. Besides, riding your bike here is kinda like being a kamikaze pilot.
Washing clothes, bed sheets and towels is a never-ending story.
On July 22nd 1991 serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the murder of seventeen young men. An inmate killed him on November 28th three years later. In the highly compelling and original graphic novel My Friend Dahmer comic book artist Derf Backderf looks back on his high school years and his friendship with classmate Jeffrey Dahmer.
The weird kid
Backderf shows that Dahmer lived an isolated life during his high school years in the mid-seventies. Classmates thought the tall guy with glasses was quite strange: Dahmner threw fake epileptic fits and mimicked the slurred speech and spastic tics of someone with cerebral palsy. Dahmer’s act made him somewhat of a celebrity in school, or a mascot, as Backderf describes it. Backderf himself was part of the so-called Dahmer fanclub, imitating his movements and Dahmerisms with his friends. The high point of this act and Dahmer’s questionable celebrity status at school would be a Saturday in which schoolmates paid Dahmer to act this way during a visit to the mall. The students would look on from a short distance as Dahmer freaked out innocent shoppers and shop personnel.
Later Backderf would discover that Jeffrey was imitating his mother, Joyce Dahmer, a woman plagued with depression and who had terrible fits. Dahmer’s home life wasn’t really pleasant: his parents fought most of the time until they decided to get a divorce, which became rancorous. Busy with their own problems they ignored Jeffrey all together, and he kept his homosexual tendencies to himself. He kept them hidden from everyone, but that wasn’t uncommon in the seventies. Of course, being gay doesn’t make one a serial killer, but when Damher fantasized about male lovers, they were dead and he had sex with their bodies. In Junior Year of high school Jeffrey took to drinking. Knowing too well his sexual urges were sick and twisted, he tried to dull these urges with alcohol.
‘How did he get away with being stinking drunk during school hours?’ Backderf asks in his graphic novel. ‘It still blows my mind. Every kid knew what Dahmer was doing… But not a single teacher or school administrator noticed a thing. Not one. Where they really that oblivious? Or was it that they just didn’t want to be bothered?’
Backderf makes a case for the adults being absent one way or another as the reason Dahmer’s descent into becoming a murderous monster was never noticed by anyone. ‘”I can’t say there were any signs he was different or strange,” one of the school guidance counselors would later state’, Backderf writes. After graduating high school Dahmer got even more isolated and shed his humanity forever. Soon he would pick up an innocent hitchhiker who became his first victim.
Cult classic
Backderf worked on this story for years. He self-published a comic about Dahmer in 2002. That 24-page story has become something of a cult classic and got nominated for an Eisner Award. Still, Backderf wasn’t really happy with that version of the story. Because of the 24-page limit, he had left a lot of stuff out, and that’s why he decided to make a full graphic novel. After becoming a more skilled artist by making his graphic novel Punk Rock & Trailer Parks and doing extensive research – talking to dozens of former classmates and teachers, reading FBI and police files and interviews with Dahmer – he started on My Friend Dahmer.
I found the book to be very fascinating. How often do we get to know a serial killer up-close through the eyes and memories of one of his classmates? There is an interesting tension between the complex and nuanced way Backderf tells his story and his somewhat crude and cartoon-style drawings. Backderf style works somewhat as a comic relief and at the same time points out that what we get here is his side of the story, his vision on Dahmer’s youth.
Interestingly Backderf doesn’t show any of the murders. Maybe that’s because he didn’t want to please those readers with a morbid curiosity. But maybe part of the reason is that Backderf could never see his odd high school friend as the killing monster capable of such atrocities.
Personal appearance of Backderf in ABC
It’s a question I like to ask the comic book artist, and on Sunday the 15th I will. Derf Backderf will be making a personal appearance at the American Book Center in Amsterdam that day at 15.00 hours, where I am going to interview him. The audience can ask questions as well. I hope to see you there.
Since Linda and I moved in our current appartment two years ago, I love watching the sky. It’s an ever-changing painting that keeps me fascinated. Especially in early mornings or on cloudy days. In the house we lived before this one, we had the curtains closed most of the time because looking out the window you’d look straight into the homes of the neighbors living opposite from us. In the new house, we can look out either at the park at the front or the schoolyard at the back and the sky, which makes me a lot happier.
I really like the sign on the door of the Bakkerswinkel at the Westergasfabriek. It just looks so friendly and that’s makes me happy.