Release of KENT STATE pushed back to September

The release of KENT STATE: FOUR DEAD IN OHIO has been pushed back from April 4 until September 8, 2020. 

This was a difficult decision, since I very much wanted the book to be published in conjunction with the 50th commemoration of the Kent State Shootings on May 4. The coronavirus and unfolding events, obviously, have torched those plans. Abrams Books decided it would be better to wait, in the hope this crisis will ease over the summer, and the country can return to a semblance of normality. I completely agree. In fact, I pushed for this.

This is an important story, one I don’t want overlooked during the necessary fixation on the pandemic and its effects. I’m very proud of this book. The story of the four students who were cut down is deeply important to me. The issues that KENT STATE raises have no expiration date. In fact, it could well be it’s more relevant than ever in September. 

Be safe, everyone. I’ll see you in the Fall.

Locked out of Facebook. Again.

For the 10,000-plus of you who follow me on my Facebook feed, yeah, I've been locked out again. This is, if memory serves, the third time this has happened in the past 5 years or so. The latest, I suspect, is Facebook's admitted "glitch" in their A.I. rooting out Russian bots that are spreading fake news about coronavirus. Sorry, Uncle Putin, I've failed you!

Hopefully, this is resolved soon. Or maybe it won't be. I've been focusing more on Twitter, since my last lock out, and this may be the thing that prods me to abandon Facebook completely. I was planning to after the Kent State launch and tour anyways, but... hahaha... well, what difference does that make now?

My Twitter is HERE

Book tour update

Yeah, the book tour above is looking like a smoldering ruin. If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you already know the first three events are canceled. The big NYC launch ain't happening. The gallery show at the Society of Illustrators will still be hung, God bless em, but with the city on lockdown, who will come? I was particularly looking forward to the opening of that show. It's a huge honor and a real career validation. It'll hang until mid-June. Maybe this will have blown over by then. Yeah, I know. Wishful thinking, probably.

All the libraries are currently closed, it's anyone's guess for how long, and the state universities have shuttered campuses for the remainder of the semester, so those events are likely finished, although I haven't gotten final word yet. This is only a technicality.

I hold out slim hope for some of the fests later in the Spring, but that is probably just wishful thinking, too. I'm not optimistic about Comic Con either.

As of right now, there will be no book launch. Kent State will be released on April 7 and the online stores will start selling it then. Brick-and-mortar stores? Who knows if they'll even be open by then. 

I'm not looking for sympathy here. It is what it is. Every author with a Spring book is facing this same challenge. 

I'm hoping to set up an online signing service. My favorite indie bookstore here in Cleveland will take orders from anywhere, I'll personalize the copies and add a title page sketch, and the books will be shipped out. So people who want a signed book will be able to get one. Unless, of course, the post office shuts down, too. Groan. So stay tuned for details on that.

I'm now re-focusing on the Fall. Jesus Christ, I hope this thing has passed by then. A second leg to the tour above was already in the works. Some of the cancelled events will be rescheduled then, if possible. I fear the fests and cons that are cancelled will remain so. 

Stay safe everyone. Hopefully, I see you somewhere down the road.

Kent State Book Tour, Part 1

Here's the schedule so far, for the first half of 2020. The Fall festivals and events will be added later. These are the public events, so hopefully I'll see you at one. Check back for further updates and details.


Thurs., Mar. 26 – Society of Illustrators, New York City, Opening of Kent State gallery show, featuring sketches and original art, plus talk & signing

Fri, April 3 – OFFICIAL BOOK LAUNCH, The Strand Bookstore, New York City, signing and talk

Sat.-Sun, April 4 to 5, all day – The MOCCA Comics Fest, New York City

Tues, April, 7 pm – Akron Main Library, Main Event Speaker Series, slideshow talk & signing

Thurs, April 9, 11:30am to 1:30pm – Cleveland City Club, slideshow talk

Weds, April 15 – Wexner Center, Ohio State University, slideshow talk & signing

Fri, April 17, 7 pm – Quimby’s, Chicago, slideshow talk & signing

Sat, April 18, noon – Abraham Lincoln Bookstore, Chicago, live webcast & signing

Weds, April 22, 7 pm – Parma Cuyahoga Public Library, slideshow talk & signing

Fri, April 24, 6 to 9 pm – CLEVELAND BOOK LAUNCH, Mac’s Backs and the B-side Lounge, slideshow talk & signing

Tues, April 28, 6:30 pm – Bowling Green University, Library of Pop Culture, slideshow talk & signing

Sat, May 2, 1:30pm – FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, Carol & John’s Comics, Cleveland, slideshow talk & signing

Sat-Sun, May 9 & 10 – TCAF Toronto Comics Arts Festival

Sat-Sun, May 16 & 17 – VanCAF Vancouver Comics Arts Festival

Sat-Sun, May 30 & 31 – Stripdagen Comics Fest, Haarlem, the Netherlands

June 2 to June 6 – Paris signings, details to come

June 13 & 14 – CAKE Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, 

Sat-Sun, June 27 & 28 – American Library Assoc. Convention, Chicago

July 17 to 19 – San Diego Comic Con!

The new book! Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

Here it is, my latest, due to hit the stores on April 4. This book, a project near and dear to me and one I've long wanted to tackle, was four long years in the making. People I've shown it to tell me that it's good. I've stared at these pages too long and honestly can't tell anymore. It's always that way. I think it's good. Haha, too late to turn back now! 

The early reviews have been heartening.

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review (that's a good thing!) says:

"Backderf delivers a provocative, heartbreaking account of the days leading up to the infamous tragedy of May 1970. His expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims. "

The Library Journal, in another starred review, says: 

"An incendiary corrective to the myths and misconceptions surrounding these events and a memorial to the lives lost or forever altered that should be required reading for all Americans."

Here's a few pages. This is the most challenging book I've ever drawn.

Preorder? Why of course you can. here's the Amazon link. Although I'd prefer you buy it from your favorite indie bookstore.

I'm back!

Hey, a new post! Been awhile. Over two years.

I dunno, I just got away from blogging. Concentrated on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. But Facebook has become ever more evil and I’m pretty rotten at Twitter, frankly, and seem incapable of improving… so here I am, back at the blog.  Starting over from scratch after all my followers here wandered off. Typical.

Anybody still out there? Hellooooooooo?

So, yeah, the past two years have been pretty interesting. Had the whole movie rollout, which was an experience I never dreamt would happen. Spent the better part of 2017 traveling and promoting the film, coupled with a heavy comics fest schedule. Too much, really. Got a little carried away with all of it and that threw me behind schedule.

The plan was to finish up The Baron of Prospect Ave. and then start on my new book for Abrams, but I ran out of time. So I had to shelve the Baron and start the new book. No, it hasn’t been announced what it is yet. Soon, I’m told. 250 pages, my biggest book yet. It’ll be out in February 2020. I’m over halfway done with the inks and working hard. 

After that one is in the can come September, I’ll just keep slamming and finish the Baron, hopefully by the time the other one hits the stands, so the Baron will be ready to go as soon as contractually allowed. That’ll cut down on the time between books.

It’s kind of nice, after the media blitz of the last few years, to take a breather from interviews and promotion. My Google Alert hardly ever goes off now. That’s the life of an author. Blasts of coverage when a new book (or film) comes out, then nothing. 

Here’s some shit that happened since last I posted:

April 2017: The Tribecka Film Fest and the premier of My Friend Dahmer! I'm the very uncomfortable looking dude at the right. Waaaaaaay out of my element.

Here's a review of the film if you missed it. You can currently watch it on Amazon prime. I imagine it'll hit the streaming channels soon.

May 2017: Appearing on a popular Swedish tv program while guesting at the Stockholm Comics Festival. Great fun, beautiful city. I usually turn down tv, looking as I do like the love child of Joey Ramone and Herman Munster, but it was a great show about literature, don't let the game show set fool you.

September 2017: Back in France for a book tour and the premiere of the film at the Deauxville Film Festival. Here's one of the many interviews I did. The whole experience was surreal. I had autograph hounds run after me on the streets! Why, I don't know. And they put us up in this stunning 5-star hotel right on the beach. The difference between indie film and indie comics is stark, man!

October 2017: The CXC Festival in Columbus, Ohio. If I get to the end of my life and have to pick a moment to serve as my highlight, I can't imagine one will top this.

I was a feature guest this year. This fest started in 2016 and is fabulous. It's centered around the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum at Ohio State University. I'm an Ohio State guy, as many of you know. It's where I got my start as a cartoonist. The fest did a screening of the film, at the Wexner Center for the Arts on campus, followed by a Q&A with yours truly. When tickets went up in the summer, the house sold out in 10 minutes! The waiting list was longer than available seats in the Wex Theater!

Now, I usually don't watch the film. This evening, Jenny Robb, head curator at the Billy took my wife and I out to dinner. We returned  in time for the final credits. I was standing in the back of the room and when the credit "based on the graphic novel by Derf Backderf" flashed, the place erupted in a roar. You can imagine the goosebumps that danced on my skin. I took the stage to thunderous applause and tried not to burst into tears. To have this happen at Ohio State, where it all began, yeah, that was my moment.

Here's a cover I drew for the Miami New Times, once one of my many client papers,  back when I was drawing The City, before the newspaper apocalypse, and before I found my way to graphic novels.

I didn't actually draw the cover here, I drew the cover story inside, an annual wrap up of the worst people who live in Florida, which as you can imagine is a HIGH bar, especially this year. The editors liked it so much they had the art director make it into a cover. I've done this Dirty Dozen story for a decade at least. It's my last weekly paper freelance client. It's a fun assignment and I do it for nostalgia's sake as much as anything. There was a time when I drew a cover a month for some weekly or another. This is likely the last one I'll ever do.

A month later, the art director got laid off. That's the sorry state of weeklies now. Breaks my heart.

January 2018: The Angoulême Festival again, my 5th straight! Here I'm at a live drawing event in the SNCF Pavilion with colleague Marcello Quintanilla, a brilliant Brazilian creator. SNCF is the national train service. That's right, in France, they even sell comics on the trains!

Here's a crazy sketch interview I did in Angoulême this year, having had not nearly enough coffee. The festival is fun, but man we work hard. Six or seven hours of signings a day, and Europeans expect a dedicace, a tight title page drawing. My hand is throbbing by the end of the day. 

I lost a couple friends this year. One was the fabulous Ralph Carney, an extraordinary musician who mesmerized me in the Akron punk era, then went on to play with the B-52s, Tom Waits, Orang Symphonette and, of course, had a long, acclaimed solo career. He died in a freak accident.  I was lucky enough to draw the cover for his final two releases, including this one with fellow Akron legend Chris Butler, which was released a few months  after Ralph's death. Available HERE

I also lost my old pal Doug. We were best friends in junior high, above, me on the left, Doug on the right. Doug was a comics fiend, too, the only teenage friend who was, and ours was a journey of mutual discovery. Together we found Spain Rodriguez, Will Eisner, Richard Corben, Moebius, Gahan Wilson, all of whom would inspire me greatly in my own art and storytelling. We read comics together, we drew comics together, hour after hour. For a few short years, he was as close a compatriot as I've had in my life.

He moved away in high school and we lost touch. Eventually, he discovered my work and tracked me down and we re-connected, enjoying many online chats about comics, picking up right where we left off at age 15. The last message I received from him was one about Ralph Reese, the great war comics artist. Doug died of a heart attack the next day.

Safe travels, pal. I'll miss you.

The final two volumes of True Stories was published, making four in all, and putting a nice period on my long comic strip career. You can get them all on the dreaded Amazon HERE

French readers will get them all in one volume, due in Spring 2019! HERE

Mainly 2018 was a year of work. I have a new book with Abrams in the pipeline. Just hit the halfway mark with inked pages. I can't reveal what it is yet, but it's my largest and most ambitious yet. In fact, as I write, this bastard is kicking the crap out of me. 2019 will be a year of even MORE intense work. It'll be released, as I wrote earlier, February 2020.

November 2018: Wrapping up another busy year at the Genghis Con Fest here in Cleveland, as is my tradition. And... wrapping up this part of my career.

I've decided to stop tabling. It's been loads of fun over the past 10 years since Punk Rock & Trailer Parks kicked off my graphic novel career, but hauling 1000 lbs. of books in and out of venues and manning a table for 10 hours a day is just taking too much out of me. I'll still guest at cons and do some signings, if others run those signings and haul the books, but my days as a road warrior have ended.

And that's what I've been up to!

Bill Mauldin again

In dark times, I retreat into comics. 

Here’s a few new additions to my Bill Mauldin collection. As I’ve written before, I’m a HUGE Mauldin fan. The only cartoon book the branch library in my hometown had in its collection was Up Front, Mauldin’s bestselling collection of wartime cartoons. I checked out that thing so many times, the aged librarian Mrs. Born yelled at me to get my own copy (She yelled at everyone. She was extremely hard of hearing). Mauldin was more than brilliant, and incredibly resourceful, he was also the comics voice of his generation, probably the first to achieve that status… and, I’d argue, the first “underground” cartoonist. Before the Army brass realized he was there, he was a star and beyond their control. He was an early inspiration of mine. Still is!

The first piece here (above) is a copy of the 45th Division News from July 19, 1943. Mauldin was a member of the 45th, having joined up in 1940 before the war, a common rite of passage for Depession kids. He volunteered to work for the unit's newspaper and his cartoons proved so popular with the men, he was assigned to The News permanently and relieved of mundane soldiery. The Allies invaded Sicily on July 10, so this cartoon was produced ON the battlefield, the first action Mauldin had experienced, as fighting raged against two crack Panzer divisions, plus 200,000 unenthusiastic Italian troops. On D-day plus one, editor Sgt. Don Robinson and Sgt. Mauldin hitched into Vittoria (note the location on the masthead), the town having fallen to the Allies but still under sniper fire and aerial attack, and opened a makeshift newsroom. There was one lone print shop in the town. The News started a new volume, Vol. IV, to celebrate being the first US paper printed on Axis soil. This is issue #3! Notice the newspaper nameplate is hand lettered! They didn’t have any type to make a proper one. 

The paper was thrown together using whatever materials could be found. Engravers equipment was salvaged from a bombed out shop and a nearby chicken coop was converted into an engravers shop. . Mauldin found acid at a local chemical factory, and zinc for the plates was torn out of unused caskets at a funeral home! Ink was cut with motor oil to make it last longer. Power kept cutting out and the presses had to be hand cranked. It’s a simple one-page, double-sided “paper.” More a handout, really. Robinson and Mauldin packed the papers into cardboard boxes, hitched to the front line and passed out copies to the troops. 

Note how primitive Mauldin’s cartoon is. And no wonder, given the conditions. He was transitioning from working at a stateside army base under ideal conditions to working on the front under the worst possible conditions, and hadn’t figured it out yet. He likely drew this one right in the print shop. His earlier work featured ink washes and delicate halftones. That was unachievable in a bombed out Sicilian print shop.  So he moves to simple inked line here, but he’s still using a pen, and the lines don’t hold up that well. He would soon work only in brush, and his distinctive thick ink work would be a stylistic breakthrough, and also a technique that held up under the worst conditions. This is virtually the moment that Mauldin went from being an army base cartoonist to becoming the Bill Mauldin of legend! I haven’t seen this cartoon reprinted anywhere. It’s not included in the Fantagraphics two-volume set. Granted, it’s not a particularly good cartoon, but since Mauldin was frequently being shot at, I think we can cut him some slack.

The second piece (above) is from Feb. 1945. The war in Europe is nearly over now, and Mauldin had grown to such stature he was transferred to Stars & Stripes, and signed by a US Syndicate which distributed his cartoons to papers stateside. Note the difference in style from the earlier cartoon. Even with the lousy reproduction, it’s a powerful image. The way Mauldin casts the front of the cow in shadow highlights draws the eye right to the udders and Willie’s face. It’s a brilliant composition and Mauldin had become a master of light and shadow. Observe also how Mauldin creates so many different textures— straw, wood beams, cloth— with just a few bold strokes. It’s not just darker in appearance, but in tone. After two years of battle, Mauldin’s work reflects the weary and jaded troops in the field. This cartoon was drawn “in France,” likely on Mauldin’s jeep “studio,” a vehicle given him by Ike’s HQ, outfitted with drawing supplies and a lap board, so he could travel about the front and draw what he saw.  What’s surprising is how small Mauldin’s cartoon was published in Stripes, just two columns wide. And yet they still resonated with his dogface readers. 

Three months later, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as reported on he front page of this third piece. It was both the pinnacle of his career, and the end of that pinnacle. In early June, he returned home as a national hero to make an uneasy transition to a civilian cartoonist.