Derf Backderf – författare

From the award-winning author of My Friend Dahmer and Kent State comes a timely graphic novel about racism, violence, and political turmoil in the early 20th century, when a handful of cartoonists and journalists pushed back against a corrupt administration to defend the rights of free speech“WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE . . . BUT WE FORGOT.”It’s 1916. President Woodrow Wilson—a deeply divisive authoritarian who is also a white supremacist with open contempt for constitutional rights—sits in the Oval Office.Racial tensions, unprecedented economic inequality, a groundswell of support for unionization, and the rise of both a reactionary far right militia and a growing radical opposition shake the very foundations of American society. A pandemic is two years away. And the 1900s have only just gotten started.“AMERICA IS A COUNTRY ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS.”The Dissidents follows a group of real and influential political cartoonists who worked for the magazine The Masses—Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Cornelia Barns, and others, dominant in their day but now forgotten—as well as a fictional young German immigrant from Cleveland, Joe Hertle, who has come to New York to make his name.They rub elbows with the great opposition voices of the day, such as journalists Max Eastman and John Reed, and the radical provocateur Emma Goldman. What they document in their cartoons and illustrations is a country spiraling into darkness, under attack by German saboteurs and private militias, plagued by racism, and rocked by class war.For the crime of documenting the times they live in, these cartoonists are indicted for sedition and put on trial by the U.S. government—with twenty-year sentences hanging over their heads. Two others are forced to flee the country into exile. Another is incarcerated by the U.S. army and scheduled for execution!Award-winning author Derf Backderf raises the bar for visual storytelling in this gripping, layered, and perceptive original graphic novel, told through the lens of the political cartoonists whose work shaped our history and also held a mirror to it. Finding a personal connection as a journalist who started out as a political cartoonist, he opens a door to our past and crafts a story that pulls from the strongest elements of his previous work. In The Dissidents, Backderf delivers an utterly unique account of U.S. history, making connections to the events of today as they relate to the seeds that were sown over a hundred years ago.The Dissidents is his magnum opus. It is a gripping tale of political passion, artistic ambition, love, and betrayal, with great characters and unexpected twists. It’s a suspenseful and fascinating American story that is almost completely forgotten today—and a terrifying and relevant warning from the past.

My Friend Dahmer is the hauntingly original graphic novel by Derf Backderf, the award winning political cartoonist. In these pages, Backderf tries to make sense of Jeffery Dahmer, the future serial killer with whom he shared classrooms, hallways, libraries and car rides. What emerges is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a young man struggling helplessly against the urges, some ghastly, bubbling up from the deep recesses of his psyche. The Dahmer recounted here, although universally regarded as an inhumane monster, is a lonely oddball who, in reality, is all too human. A shy kid sucked inexorably into madness while the adults in his life fail him. The crimes Dahmer committed are incredibly depraved, infamous and unforgettable, but in My Friend Dahmer, Backderf provides profound insight into how, and more important, why Jeffery Dahmer transformed from a high school loner into the most depraved serial killer since Jack the Ripper, coming as close as anyone yet has to explaining the seemingly unexplainable phenomenon of Jeffery Dahmer.

From bestselling author Derf Backderf comes the untold story of the Kent State shootings—timed for the 50th anniversary On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, 4 students were killed and 9 shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory. A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same Guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, which will be published in time for the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent—as relevant today as it was in 1970.

From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer, comes the Eisner and ALA/YALSA Alex Award-winning tragic and unforgettable story of the Kent State shootings, told in graphic novel form.Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Times, Forbes, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and NPR, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent—as relevant today as it was in 1970.On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students were killed and nine shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory.The fatal shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. More than four million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools, the largest student strike in the history of the United States at that time. It was a day that shocked the nation and helped turn the tide of public opinion against America’s war in Vietnam.A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike.Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart.In this award-winning and powerful graphic novel, Derf Backderf takes us back to the age of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Woodstock, and the Cold War and explores, in words and images, a scene of tragedy: the campus of Kent State University, where National Guard Troops attacked unarmed protestors and killed four students (Allison Beth Krause, age 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20, and William Knox Schroeder, age 19).