By pure, horrific chance, Derf Backderf went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, the future serial killer. The two were even friendly. In this graphic memoir, which he worked on for more than a decade, Backderf creates a shockingly recognizable, almost tragic portrait of Dahmer, an alienated kid in a toxic family who wrestled with nightmarish demons and lost. As such, it’s one of the most horrifying and upsetting books published this year. But My Friend Dahmer is also a vivid 1970s period piece, reeking of Mad magazine and acid rock, and with his trippy, expressive black-and-white drawings, Backderf shows how the sickness of that self-obsessed decade is somehow inseparable from the disease that drove Dahmer.