Comics creator John “Derf” Backderf was born and raised in a small town outside of Akron, Ohio.
Derf attended Ohio State University on a journalism scholarship and was a political cartoonist for the student paper, The Lantern, for three years. He began his professional career as a political cartoonist for a paper in South Florida, but was fired after two years for, as the editor put it, “general tastlessness.”
In 1990, his freeform comic strip THE CITY debuted, beginning a two decade run. THE CITY appeared in over 150 altweekly papers around the country, and won a Robert F. Kennedy Award for political satire.
Since 2009, he has published five original graphic novels
Derf’s most famous is MY FRIEND DAHMER (Abrams Comicarts, 2012), a haunting account of his teenage friendship with the future serial killer. It received an Alex Award for YA lit from the American Library Association. It has been translated into 15 languages and was awarded an Angoulême Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. The film adaptation of MY FRIEND DAHMER premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and played in cinemas in the US and abroad.
His next graphic novel, TRASHED (Abrams Comicarts, 2016), inspired by his garbage truck career, won an Eisner Award and was named book-of-the-year by the Green Party of France. TRASHED is also in development as a film project.
Then came KENT STATE: FOUR DEAD IN OHIO (Abrams Comicarts, 2020), which also received an Eisner Award, as well as the French Critic’s Prize and Derf’s second Alex Award from the ALA.
His latest book, premiering here at SPX, is THE DISSIDENTS, also from Abrams.
Derf lives in Cleveland, for reasons he can no longer remember.
SPX Table Abrams