No Laughing Matter : Comic about serial killer Dahmer is deplorably irresponsible

Earlier this year a Northern California publishing company caused an uproar when it announced plans to sell a set of collectible trading cards that featured serial killers, mass murderers and figures of organized crime. Now a small-time Milwaukee publisher, in an equally outrageous example of poor taste and judgment, is selling a comic book “biography” of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Priced at $2.50 cents, the gruesome comic--entitled “Jeffery (misspelled on the cover) Dahmer: An unauthorized Biography of a Serial Killer”--has outraged relatives of his victims, many of whom were named in the comic.

Dahmer, sentenced in February to consecutive life terms for 15 mutilation slayings in and near Milwaukee since 1987, recently was sentenced to an additional life term for a 1978 Ohio murder.

The Milwaukee publisher defends the product, terming it a legitimate way to inform people about the Dahmer case and the danger of serial killers.

That’s a dubious claim--and surely a hypocritical one--considering that the comic’s graphic depictions of sexual acts and decapitated victims appear in a format calculated to appeal primarily to children . . . or at least juvenile mentalities. Sadly, that has probably been a contributing factor in the publication’s popularity: Milwaukee comic book stores say that it has sold out. (Not so sad is the report of one store manager that the publisher says no more copies will be available.)

Publishers, of course, are protected under the 1st Amendment’s right of a free press, and that protection needs to be as near-absolute as possible. But with rights come responsibilities--including judgment and, at times, self-restraint. Obviously neither one of those qualities was exercised in this case.