"I really struggle with it, because I sort of make Dahmer out as a tragic figure. He was, to me, but I had a different vantage point; I knew him before he was Dahmer the monster; I knew him as Dahmer the kid who was put through hell..."
the somewhat compleat dialogues of derf
Interview with John Backderf (Derf)
Cartoonist, The City
By Marc Covert
 Weirdness abounds in The City by Derf, that is, John Backderf, admittedly a mostly contented yet prone-to-rant cartoonist from Cleveland, Ohio. When you stop laughing long enough to notice the words "true story" inked above many of his more quirky strips you begin to see just how weird life in the city can be. Until recently his widely-read cartoon was featured in Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week; Derf's Portland fans must now make do with Too Much Coffee Man. Derf himself takes this unceremonious dumping in stride; at last count The City is appearing in sixty alternative weekly publications nationwide, including The Village Voice, The Chicago Free Times, and The Cleveland Free Times.
Derf's distinctive style, with its heavy, jagged lines and grotesque characters, makes it safe to assume you will not find his cartoons pinned up next to, say, The Family Circus or Dilbert. On closer inspection his drawing reveals a strange beauty and sharp eye for detail; Derf's stage is indeed the city, complete with litter, broken bottles, decaying buildings, and puddles of various fluids best left unmentioned. None of that unpleasantness can be found, of course, in the suburban paradise inhabited by his only recurring character, White Middle Class Suburban Man, a perpetually befuddled, clueless superhero charged with making the 'burbs safe for manicured lawns and mindless consumerism.
But secondary to the drawing is Derf's underlying vision; he sees and comments on what others stay away from (male boobs, bad piercings, Katie Couric's colon, cops and plungers). His view of society appears at first to be purely cynical, but his message is really a well-aimed kick to the rump of a society that teeters mindlessly on the edge of insanity. The coarse, ugly, borderline-deformed characters populating The City capture that insanity whole.
John Backderf works out of a home he shares with his wife and two children. Along with his usual weekly publications, his cartoons and illustrations have appeared in Guitar Player Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and on the cover of the Akron Beacon Journal's Enjoy! and Sunday magazines. From July to October 1999 the Akron Art Museum featured his work in an exhibition titled Apocalyptic Giggles: The Industrial Cartoon Humor of of Derf. His website, www.derfcity.com, contains in-depth biographical information, current weekly cartoons, a cartoon archive, and links. Derf sat down on November 17 and spoke to smokebox writer Marc Covert about the state of The City.
smokebox: So what’s a successful cartoonist doing at home at nine o-clock on a Friday night in Cleveland?
derf: Awww well, two small children tend to do that.
smokebox: What ages?
derf: One and five; my social life is pretty much trashed for the next couple of years. So, I go out on Sunday nights and that’s about it; that’s all my social life is now -- but that’s alright.
smokebox: Has the fatherhood thing crimped your "wandering the streets in search of cartoon ideas" lifestyle?
derf: It has at night, but I still get out during the day, which is probably less dangerous anyway. But weirdness, it's all around, so that’s not a problem.
smokebox: No lack of material, then?
 derf: No.
smokebox: Last time I checked your site I saw you are now in over 60 papers; is that increasing steadily or staying about the same?
derf: Well, approximately. You're never sure if the bottom three or so are publishing or not.
smokebox: How did you actually find out about Willamette Week dropping your strip?
derf: Oh, you mean Willamette Week? I really don’t lose that many. More often than not they just fold rather than drop the strip. But boy, I was with Willamette Week for a long time, so that one kind of stung. I really didn’t get an answer out of them, but I’ve gotten letters saying, "Where the hell are you," so hopefully somebody’s bitching about it.
smokebox: I was able to get an assistant art editor to respond to my e-mails, and he sounded pretty bummed about it. He had to say, "Well, nobody tells me anything," and said he wasn’t sure it was even a permanent thing, but it seems to me that when they drop a strip, that’s it.
derf: I’ve had a couple where that’s been the case. I mean, I’ve always gotten a lot of feedback from Portland, so I was just surprised when it happened. Usually it happens when there’s an editor change, but this was just so arbitrary. I really don't understand it, since the feedback was always so positive -- not that I’m advocating making these decisions based on surveys or that sort of shit.
smokebox: Focus groups! Aaargh!!!
derf: Right! (laughs) That way you get nothing but bland vanilla, because they take the most innocuous stuff they can since that’s what keeps the most people happy.
smokebox: It’s kind of hard to say with Willamette Week, I mean, they’ve carried Callahan for so many years.
derf: Yeah, he's a local guy.
smokebox: Right, in fact I see him wheeling around in the Fred Meyer’s here sometimes but he’s generated all kinds of controversy over the years. He ran a cartoon back in April, where his caption states "The pope turns out to be a Patti Smith fan," and he’s up in front of an audience singing the chorus from "Rock & Roll Nigger."
 derf: Oh yeah? That would not go over too well if you took it out of context!
smokebox: It didn’t! That thing raged for months! [On May 17 Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman published an apology after protests by NAACP members, church groups, and the general public.]
derf: I saw her [Patti Smith] last month, she was awesome! She sang that for her encore. Oh, man, it was great! But "Rock & Roll Nigger," well, I think maybe the meaning of that song has sort of faded from the public consciousness -- I mean, it could cause a little bit of a problem. The one I remember was the one he [Callahan] did with a young Martin Luther King, saying "I had a dream" and there’s a wet bed behind him. That one got him in a little bit of trouble; of course I thought it was a great cartoon!
smokebox: It really was! Of course you’ve generated some controversy yourself. I found reference to a "Tickle Me Elmo" episode in Kentucky while searching around for "Derf" stories.
derf: Oh? (laughs) Where was that article run?
smokebox: I think it was run in Ace Magazine.
derf: Well it ran all over the place, but they got in trouble in Cleveland, Lexington, and I think St. Louis.
smokebox: I remember the cartoon, and just laughing my head off.
derf: It was weird, just weird. In Lexington a right-wing radio show host got all bent out of shape.
smokebox: Did the local papers take the crap for that, or did you actually get some on you?
derf: No, it was mostly the papers that told me about it; most of these papers, they just laugh it off. The Ace people got a little uptight about it; they're kind of a new paper, it was their first time dealing with trouble like that. I mean, over the years, I’ve caused a lot of firestorms, you know? (laughs)
smokebox: I guess one of those storms would be the "Backderf Cartoonist Term Limit" at Ohio State?
derf: Oh yeah, Ohio State; I really wore out my welcome there. That was around the start of the whole P.C. thing, so that was definitely not a place where I should have been! And I never like to look at that old stuff, but I’m grateful I had the opportunity at the time; I did have a great time. I wish I’d been even more on the ball; I mean, if I was there now, Jesus Christ, I’d be shipped out of there in a box.
smokebox: I saw your story about the time you pissed off the Ohio State football team and had to skip town for a while.
derf: I really did -- that one caused a whole shitload of trouble, let me tell you.
(more derf!)
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