Derf Backderf
Abrams ($17.95)
It’s increasingly evident that “graphic novels” are the perfect vehicle for memoir, breezily conveying the evanescence of memory in a way that prose and film just cannot. Take My Friend Dahmer by Derf, creator of the alternative comic strip The City. The book tells the saga of growing up with the weird kid who would turn out to be a serial killer, masterfully foreshadowing the horror while rendering the incipient monster as just another high school misfit. My Friend Dahmer was twenty years in the making and it shows; it’ll be considered one of the finest examples of its medium for decades to come.