IN THE INTRODUCTION, YOU TELL READERS, "PITY HIM, BUT DON'T EMPATHIZE WITH HIM." BUT IN PLACES, I FOUND MYSELF DOING A BIT OF BOTH. WAS IT TOUGH TO FIND A LINE BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS WHILE YOU WERE WRITING? HOW DID YOU COPE WITH THAT? By keeping in mind the body count. In my mind, Dahmer was a tragic figure, but that only applies up until the day he first kills. It helped that I didn't really know Dahmer the serial killer. Our friendship ended right when he started to kill. The Thing that emerged in 1991 was not the kid I knew.
WITH THIS BOOK, DO YOU HOPE TO CHANGE THE STOCK IMAGE OF DAHMER THAT PEOPLE HOLD IN THEIR MIND? No, but I do think I humanize him, which no one has successfully done before. And that's valid, because he wasn't always a monster. Up until the very end of the book, he had committed no crime. There are people who don't want him to be anything other than totally evil, the hundreds who mourn his victims, and I get that. But I don't think we do ourselves any favors by writing people like Dahmer off as monsters, because that implies that it was inevitable that he became one.
Topics:
This Just In
, Comics, Jeffrey Dahmer, Graphic Novels
