Trashed

Every week we pile our rubbish out on the pavement. We go to work and when we return it’s gone. Like magic! The reality is anything but, of course. Trashed, Derf Backderf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning national bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is a working man’s epic. An ode to the crap job of all crap jobs—but anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking gig can relate to this tale. Trashed takes place after Derf graduates high school, when he and his childhood pals find themselves working as garbagemen in their Midwestern hometown. Together they clean the streets of pile after pile of stinking garbage, overcoming the unique difficulties of each season and battling small-town bureaucrats and nuisances, all while trying to decide what they want to do with their lives. Interspersed are non-fiction pages that detail the history of trash, the staggering volume of garbage that is produced every day, the nuts and bolts of how our trash is disposed of beyond curbside recycling and what happens to it once it’s removed from our houses, our streets and our office buildings. Inspired by Derf’s own experiences, Trashed (like My Friend Dahmer) is a hilarious, stomach-churning, in-depth examination of this vast, unknown world, taking readers to a place they have never been before, in a way that only Derf, and comics, can.

About the Author :
Derf Backderf is the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer and the recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, appeared in more than one hundred newspapers over the past twenty-two years. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Review :
“A downbeat but entertaining ode to the odiferous realities of getting by.” “Backderf’s (My Friend Dahmer) detailed and grimy art is perfect for this raucous piece of infotainment about the crappiest of necessary crap jobs.” “More than anything else, the book is funny, very funny. At times, it’s a laugh-out-loud kind of funny rarely found in graphic novels. It might even make you think.” “The microcosm of Backderf’s humor-rich, coming-of-age story expands toward larger social and cultural themes, including the idea that ‘we all contribute to the staggering, never-ending accumulation of waste on this planet.’” “Intriguing, hilarious, and stinky.” “It’s all far more entertaining than it sounds, thanks to the likeability of J.B. and his at-loose-ends roommates . . . and Derf’s slightly off-kilter, pleasantly ungainly drawings.” “Trashed is both entertaining and unnerving.” “Fun, funny, gross and engrossing.”