Derf Backderf

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Derf Backderf
Backderf in 2023
BornJohn Backderf
(1959-10-31) October 31, 1959 (age 64)
Richfield, Ohio, US
Area(s)Cartoonist
Pseudonym(s)Derf
Notable works
My Friend Dahmer
The City
AwardsRobert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, 2006
Inkpot Award, 2016,[1] Eisner Award, 2016 & 2021[2][3]
www.derfcity.com

John Backderf (born October 31, 1959), also known as Derf or Derf Backderf, is an American

Cleveland, Ohio
, for much of his career.

Early life

Backderf grew up in Richfield, Ohio, the son of a chemist. He attended Eastview Junior High and Revere High School, where one of his classmates was future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Backderf graduated high school in 1978, and attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for six months, before dropping out. The following year, he worked as a garbageman back in his hometown. Backderf then attended, and graduated from, Ohio State University with a BA in journalism. Backderf was immersed in the punk movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s.[5]

He began as a political cartoonist, for the Ohio State Lantern,[6] then professionally at The Evening Times, the evening counterpart of The Palm Beach Post, in West Palm Beach, FL. He worked as a staff cartoonist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in the late 80s.[7] In the mid-1990s Backderf worked in the newsroom of the Akron Beacon Journal.

Work

The City

Backderf's comic strip The City appeared in 174 publications,

The Providence Phoenix, and Washington City Paper. In 2014, Derf announced that he was discontinuing The City to focus on graphic novels.[8]

Strips from The City were collected in The City: The World's Most Grueling Comic Strip (SLG Publishing, 2003) and a four-volume series of comic books, True Stories (

Alternative Comics
, 2015, 2016, 2018).

Graphic novels

Punk Rock & Trailer Parks

Backderf wrote Punk Rock & Trailer Parks (SLG Publishing, 2010), a 152-page graphic novel set in 1980, during the punk rock heyday in

Best American Comics
(Houghton Mifflin).

My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer (Abrams Comic Arts, 2012) is the culmination of a comic book project first started in 1994, shortly after Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison. The book is the true story of how a young Backderf befriended his high-school classmate Dahmer, a troubled teenager prone to odd behavior, because he and his friends were amused by Dahmer's antics; the book also depicts some of Dahmer's increasingly morbid behavior that Backderf was unaware of at the time, culminating in Backderf and his friends falling away from Dahmer when he becomes more disturbing than funny.

Backderf's first Dahmer story appeared in

Reuben Awards,[10] received an Angoulême Award and was named by Time magazine as one of the top five non-fiction books of 2012.[11] Lev Grossman, book critic for Time, named My Friend Dahmer as one of the "top five non-fiction books of the year".[12] The book has been translated into 14 languages. A film adaptation of My Friend Dahmer, starring Ross Lynch as Dahmer, Alex Wolff as Backderf, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts and Vincent Kartheiser, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and received a general theatrical release in the fall of 2017.[13] The film received generally positive reviews.[14]

Trashed

Trashed (Abrams Comic Arts, 2015), an Eisner Award-winning

SLG Publishing
, 2002) . It was Derf's first attempt at long-form storytelling and was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Writer-artist. Derf revisited the project as a webcomic in 2010 and 2012 on his website.

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (Abrams Comic Arts, 2020;

Alex Award
from the American Library Association.

Art style

Derf cites Spain Rodriguez, Mad magazine and Lynda Barry as important influences on his art style. He also credits Expressionism as the inspiration for his usage of heavy ink, but feels the major influence on his work is the imagery of punk.[5]

Backderf has contributed to many well-known national publications, including Playboy, The Wall Street Journal and The Progressive. His illustrations have also appeared on posters, T-shirts, and CD covers.

Exhibitions

Backderf's work has been displayed in many galleries and museums both in the United States and abroad. In 1995, he had a large solo show at Altered Image Gallery in Cleveland, and in 1999 the Akron Art Museum put on a retrospective of his work, titled "Apocalyptic Giggles: The Industrial Cartoon Humor of Derf". The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at the Ohio State University established a Derf Collection of original art and papers in 2011.[18] In 2021, the Society of Illustrators in New York City held a major exhibition of original art from Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio.[19]

Awards

Backderf has won over 50 awards for his newspaper work, including a Bronze Medal from the Society of Newspaper Design. He was a member of the newsroom team for the

Eisner Award for lettering for Trashed. In 2021, he won both an Eisner Award [23] and a Ringo Award [24]
for Best Non-fiction Book for Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio.

References

  1. ^ Inkpot Award
  2. ^ "Here Are Your 2016 Eisner Award Winners". July 23, 2016.
  3. ^ "Eisner Awards 2021 Winners Announced". Screen Rant. July 28, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Gardner, Alan (May 1, 2006). "John Backderf wins Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award". The Daily Cartoonist. Archived from the original on February 19, 2008. Retrieved September 24, 2009.
  5. ^
    ISBN 1-900486-26-1
  6. ^ "John Backderf | Jeff Pearlman". www.jeffpearlman.com. January 16, 2013. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  7. ^ "Derf Backderf - Creative Workforce Fellow | CAC". Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  8. ^ a b Backderf, Derf (May 15, 2014). "The end of THE CITY". Derfcity.blogspot.com. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  9. ^ "Young Jeffrey Dahmer". Archived from the original on October 24, 2008. Retrieved August 27, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), p. 2
  10. ^ "Ignatz Awards 2012". The Small Press Expo. November 28, 2010. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  11. ^ "The Top 10 Everything Of 2012". Time. December 4, 2012.
  12. ^ Grossman, Lev. "My Friend Dahmer: The Unspeakable Horror of Life in the 1970s: An award-winning cartoonist pens a graphic novel about his high school classmate, a shy teenager who would become a monster". Time. March 28, 2012.
  13. ^ Collis, Clark. "Ross Lynch-starring serial killer film My Friend Dahmer to be released this fall", Entertainment Weekly (May 15, 2017).
  14. ^ My Friend Dahmer, retrieved March 14, 2018
  15. ^ "Newsarama | GamesRadar+".
  16. ISBN 9781419734847
    .
  17. ^ "YALSA announces 2021 Alex Awards". January 25, 2021.
  18. ^ Caitlin McGurk (May 1, 2012). "Derf". Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Blog. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  19. ^ "Kent State: 4 Dead in Ohio".
  20. ^ Warner, Stuart (November 6, 2017). "Jeffrey Dahmer's Friend Derf: A Q&A About His Classmate the Serial Killer". Phoenix New Times. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  21. ^ "About Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio". TourismOhio. Ohio: Find It Here.
  22. ^ Prix révélation (February 2, 2014). "Festival BD Angoulême. Notre chronique de "Mon ami Dahmer"" [BD Angoulême Festival. Our Review of "My Friend Dahmer"] (in French). Paris Match. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  23. ^ "2021 Eisner Award Winners". July 24, 2021.
  24. ^ "The 2021 Ringo Awards Winners Are". October 24, 2021.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derf_Backderf&oldid=1214877194"