Written by Ross Webster

By Derf Backderf

Published by: Abrams Books

$24.99

Derf Backderf knows more than most that it is one thing to read about historical events, or to watch them unfold on TV news (and increasingly social media), and another thing to be present for history as it happens. He first made this point clear in his breakthrough graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer, where he reflects on what it was like to go to high school with the troubled teen who would grow up to be one of America’s most notorious serial killers.

In Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio, Backderf returns to his native Buckeye State - but further back in time for this trip to May, 1970 and four catastrophic days at Kent State University that ended in bloodshed. This event, due to contemporary circumstances, feels disturbingly resonant again amid social unrest driven largely by paranoia, conspiracy theories, and a governments with few qualms about subverting democracy. With his latest graphic novel Backderf seeks to set the record straight on the events of the four days in May we think we know so well and to give life back to the four slain students through painstaking research and a historically informed imagination. The result is a far more dynamic, frightening, tragic and infuriating tale than the official record or historical memory has ever given us.

Those across the country that can remember the Kent State Massacre - but were not direct participants - by and large do so vaguely. They mainly remember the infamous photo of a girl screaming over the body of a slain student and all the of the civil disfunction of Nixon’s America that it came to symbolize. Whether younger generations remember Kent State beyond the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, is perhaps an even thornier question. In an interview with The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (an excerpt of which was posted on Kent State University’s website to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the massacre), Backderf commented on the inadequacy of photographs (even the most iconic) to convey truth, history and meaning over time. And aside from the most iconic image most fail to capture anything meaningful about the events that transpired.[1] This is in part because the most critical events at Kent State occurred at night which of course was difficult at best to cover with 1970s camera technology. This is where a medium like comics can often fill in the blanks of our collective historical memory and, through a combination of well-informed research and a touch of creative license, can free historical events from the obscurity and aphorism created by both the passage of time and the desire for socio-political actors to dilute and divest historical narratives of their power.[2]

To first drive the atmosphere of the times Backderf begins not at Kent State but in his hometown of Richfield, Ohio where, as a ten-year-old boy, he observed Ohio National Guard soldiers who were called in to quell striking truck workers. It is a grim reminder that much of the true fear, danger and violence of the late Sixties and early Seventies has been diluted both by time and nostalgia. There would be no bloodshed at the picket lines on April 30, 1970 as that evening, President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. The guardsmen were sent to a new domestic battleground.

When readers get to Kent State University for the first time, they are introduced to two narrative threads; the lives of the four slain students, and the historical record counting down to May 4, 1970 like an ominous ticking time bomb. If one of the purposes of “Kent State:…” is to restore life to the four slain students and free them from the obscurity of history, then it is appropriate to get a glimpse at who they were;

Sandy Scheuer - a 20-year-old speech therapy student who, although opposed to the Vietnam War, is reluctant to get involved in the demonstrations stirring up across campus and beyond.

Jeff Miller - also 20, dating Sandy and far more committed to making a stand at his increasingly besieged university.

Alison Krause - a 19-year-old student looking to transfer to the University of Buffalo and away from the engulfing chaos.

Bill Schroeder - a 19-year-old ROTC cadet who, while not partaking in the protests, has increasing doubts about the direction his country is going in.

Backderf pieced their lives together from a combination of interviews from Kent State’s May 4 Collection (many of which are part of the Kent State Truth Tribunal; a project spearheaded by Allison Krause’s sister, Laurel), Interviews he conducted -including friends of Jeff Miller and Sandy Scheuer- and some creative license. When following the goings on of the four students, the reader is granted some brief reprieve from the growing sense of tension and chaos in and around their university. Their stories are a reminder that they were living, breathing people and not mere footnotes of history. You learn that Alison Krause liked to care for stray animals; that Sandy Scheuer and Jeff Miller were in love; and that Bill Shroeder was a fan of The Rolling Stones. You are also reminded that they were all known and loved by others. That they had parents who desperately wished for their safety. We all know that this would be cruelly denied.

The other portions of “Kent State…” could not be more different. Here Backderf maintains a careful balance between stating historical fact and circumstances without compromising the emotional gravity of his artwork (a task I don’t think Backderf always succeeds at in this work). The stark drawings in crisp black-and-white capture horrifying acts of violence (primarily state-sponsored) and abuses of power up the chains of command from the Ohio National Guard all the way to the U.S. intelligence agencies. Any one of the players opposite the students - be they lowly privates or the highest echelons of the U.S. government - are presented as living case studies for the banality of evil (Ironically many of those enlisted did so to avoid being sent to Vietnam).[3] However, Backderf reserves his strongest condemnations for the chief administrators of the Ohio National Guard, namely Brigadier General Robert Canterbury; General Sylvester del Corso; the Mayor of Kent, Leroy Satrom; and Governor of Ohio Jim Rhodes.

All these men are a dangerous cocktail of careerism, authoritarian impulses, and Cold War-fueled paranoia. In practice, this trickles down the chain of command and informs every crucial decision made at Kent State with bloody arrogance, staggering ineptitude, and stupid, horrifying cruelty. There was disregard for the lives and safety of all in their way be they demonstrators or innocent bystanders.[4]

While Backderf pins most of the blame on the forces of law and order (rightfully so) he does not let certain student actors off the hook. Namely the mob of students who on the night of May 1, set fire to the campus ROTC building - which in turn escalated the authoritarian instincts of their antagonists and justified their paranoid delusions in their minds. Backderf goes to great lengths to put their fears into context. It is easy in hindsight to forget that antiwar and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s were in many ways a de facto civil war - with both J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and CIA (illegally) infiltrating college campuses to root out activist organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Youth International Movement (Yippies) and the infamous Weather Underground. The real-life rhetoric and antics of the Far-Left domestic terrorist organization served mostly to fuel the fears, delusions and willing ignorance of the authorities who equated all protesters with them.

Backderf notes that a major exception to the conduct of the protests was The Black United Students, who’s tactics exhibited far more restraint than their other left-wing cohorts and declined to participate in the major rallies. The reasoning for this was their leadership sensing the increasing disjunction of the protests and the grim knowledge that the National Guard would be far more willing to shoot black protesters than white ones (given previous experience when the Guard was called on to enforce martial law in black neighborhoods in Cleveland and Akron in the late Sixties).

It’s also from here readers get a glimpse into the career of Terry Norman, an undercover campus cop who serves somewhat as a source of comic relief throughout this tragedy. Tasked with keeping the Kent Campus police informed (and in effect the FBI), Norman didn’t seem to grasp the basic tenets of undercover field work. He was constantly bragging about his work off campus; failing to keep a low profile (let alone a believable cover as a yearbook photographer); and trigger happy with a side pistol whenever under pressure. Again, while these aspects can be seen as comedic they also add to the bewildering incompetence of the higher-ups who sent Norman into the field.

Another tool Backderf uses to convey the weight of historic events are detailed maps of the Kent State University campus. Beginning with the campus in its peacetime default mode, subsequent maps depict the movements of protesters and soldiers throughout the four days and resemble something more akin to war maps. While the purpose of the maps is practical, the historical point is driven hard; this was an assault on civilian life. Every battle movement and every arrow are a stain on the normalcy that the students once enjoyed and should have been able to take for granted.

The final portion of Backderf’s chronicle is obviously the shooting, and no reader is spared from all that entails. From the paths of the bullets through the bodies of the four slain to the horrific injuries to nine other students; the terror felt by the evacuating faculty and student body to the rage inducing unwillingness of all authorities to accept responsibility; and the failure to adequately punish or disgrace them (with the exceptions of Generals del Canto and Canterbury - who effectively saw the end of their military careers). Finally, numbness and sadness as the loved ones of the slain reel from grief and the stains on their memories from the miscarriages of justice and the marginalization of their tragedy by the powers that be. However now, in part thanks to “Kent State…,” their humanity can finally break past the veil of time and obscurity and make us feel.

I first became aware of Derf Backderf in the pages of Chuck Klosterman’s landmark book of cultural essays, Sex, Drugs, and Coco-Puffs. In one essay about serial killers, he mentioned Backderf as one of his co-workers when he worked at the Akron Beacon Journal who just happened to be writing a comic book memoir about going to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer. It was some years later I picked up the completed hardcover edition and was blown away at Backderf’s mastery of balancing moments of hilarity and sadness along with the disturbing details of Dahmer’s childhood. I also admired his ability to portray Dahmer sympathetically without fetishizing his murders, a feat rarely achieved by most true crime novels (this is largely due to the graphic novel being set before Dahmer slayed his first victim).[5]

I also loved Derf’s sense of place and how alive Akron, Ohio in the 1970s felt in his art style. He would repeat this again in Trashed, a hilarious semi-autobiographical tale of the antics of a college dropout and his garbage collector coworkers in small-town Ohio. Trashed also served as a serious study into America’s relationship to waste management and our collective failure to create a more ecologically sustainable method of reducing and disposing our garbage.[6] I have always been drawn to artists and authors (be it comics or prose) whose works are deeply tied to a place - and in that Backderf proves as adept a chronicler of the Rust Belt as his late also Cleveland-based compatriot, Harvey Pekar.[7]

Backderf’s striking irreverent style which is often reminiscent of Robert Crumb makes him an excellent political cartoonist.[8] His copious research backs his art up with substance. However, if there is one area where Kent State… falls short of Backderf’s previous work, it is that the art and text are often overly dependent on the other. There are very few “quiet” moments where characters and scenes are allowed to just be and let the art do the talking. Given the necessity to account for and explain the historical events - as well as the ticking time bomb nature of the pacing of the events between April 30 and May 4, 1970 - it was probably more difficult to include such quiet moments compared to “My Friend Dahmer,” which had the luxury of being paced over several years.

Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio is available from Abram’s Books as a single hardcover graphic novel, as well as in a digital edition. The book was initially slated to be released in 2020, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre. However, the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic delayed publishing for a year. However due to the worst of circumstances, events have unfurled to make the tragedy feel once again resonant. After the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN on May 2020, and the subsequent anti-police brutality protests across the nation as well as the heavy handed response of law enforcement in cities like Minneapolis, Louisville, New York, Denver and Portland Oregon, as well as the then-Presidential administration’s attempts to exploit the crisis for political gain, it is impossible not to see parallels between May 1979 and May 2020 (One major difference though was the Nixon administration’s exploitation was largely successful while the Trump administration’s was incompetent and an utter failure).[9] As a result, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio both meets and transcends its initial purpose of making an account of the events and honoring the victims of the terrible four days in May fifty years ago. In addition, it is now a warning that freedom and civil liberties should not be taken for granted and that it is the duty of citizens to take power to task for its abuses. For this we all should owe Derf Backderf our thanks for reminding us of the potential powers of comics.

[1] A similar example of the inadequacy of uncontextualized photographic record occurred two years prior with the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph “The Summary Execution of Nguyen Van Lem.” Taken during the Tet Offensive by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, the infamous photo depicts the summary execution of Viet Cong operative Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan for the alleged murder of a South Vietnamese Lt. Colonel and his family. In the public sphere, the photo came to symbolize the worst aspects of America’s dysfunctional conduct of the Vietnam War and galvanized the Anti-War movement back home. Despite the Pulitzer Prize, Adams has long felt regret for taking the photo both for exploiting the victim’s death and for generating the disgrace of General Loan even as a refugee in the United States.

[2] This seems to have been the case ever since Art Spiegelman’s Maus debuted back in 1986. Other prime examples include Joe Sacco’s Footnotes From Gaza & Paying The Land, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Igort’s The Russian & Ukrainian Notebooks, Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Frank Smith & Jared Rainmuth’s Big Black: Stand At Attica, Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts, Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, and Keum Suk Gendry Kim’s Grass & The Waiting.

[3] Coined by German-Jewish American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the “banality of evil” refers to the notion that normal human beings - free of mental illness or ideological motivation - can be conditioned by social advancement or pressures of conformity to normalize and carry out inhuman acts; be they in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or even the democratic United States. Arendt arrived at these conclusions while observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the primary planners of The Holocaust, in Jerusalem in 1961. While her conclusions have substance, Arendt is frequently criticized for taking Eichmann’s “only following orders” defense too much at face value. Given that he was a high ranking implementor of Nazi policy and an avowed antisemite, Eichmann by all available evidence was far from just a cog in the machine.

[4] While many of those in command of the Ohio National Guard served in World War II, almost none of them saw actual combat. While I don’t think Backderf intended to disparage anyone who served primarily as desk jockeys during the war, it seems to drive the point that few in command at Kent State truly understood or appreciated the violence that they were tasked to dispense with.

[5] A film adaptation of My Friend Dahmer was made in 2017 directed by Marc Myers starring Ross Lynch as Dahmer and Alex Wolff as a young Backderf, which received much critical acclaim.

[6] His other graphic novel, “Punk Rock & Trailer Parks” is set amid Akron’s vibrant punk scene in the late 70s and early 80s which included musicians like Devo, Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders and The Cramps. Unfortunately, I have yet to read it. The same goes for his compilations of political cartoons he did for the Akron Beacon Journal.

[7] Along with Pekar, other graphic novelists and places that I find that meet this criteria include Julia Wurtz’s New York City, Paul Madonna’s San Francisco, Andi Watson’s English Midlands, Alison Bechdel’s rural Pennsylvania, Jack Edward Jackson’s Texas, Jeff Lemire’s Essex County Ontario, Posy Simmonds’ London & South English countryside, Craig Thompson’s rural Wisconsin, Kan Takahama’s Kyushu islands, Dylon Horrocks’ North Island New Zealand, Emi Lennox and Natalie Nourigat’s Oregon and my own city of Denver’s Karl Christian Krumpholz.

[8] Among Crumb’s artistic descendants I’d also include Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, Evan Dorkin, Lynda Barry (whom Backderf cites as a direct influence), Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, Adian Tomine and Ellen Forney.

[9] Backderf also noted that 11 days after the Kent State Massacre, a similar protest broke out at the historically black Jackson State University in Mississippi which resulted in police fatally shooting two students and injuring twelve others. Unlike Kent State though, the outrage failed to make national headlines.

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A Review of Derf Backderf's Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio

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