Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?

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It is fantastic! Not only is Eric Powell’s art on point, but Harold Schechter introduces some new ideas about Ed Gein that have never been heard.”– THE LAST PODCAST ON THE LEFT This is a truly fascinating and disturbing story and it’s testament to Eric Powell’s skill that, while the subject matter is certainly grizzly and disturbing, it’s not delivered in a gratuitously sensational way. Don’t get me wrong, there are some sections of the book that are utterly horrifying, and Powell does a worryingly good job of making your flesh crawl through these moments, but they’re handled well, and without cheapening Schechter’s work. This isn’t for the squeamish — in case the uninitiated casual potential reader doesn’t recognize The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reference explicit on the front cover portrait, I’d advise said reader to turn over the book to see the trio of human-skin facemasks hanging on Gein’s wall (in the special edition of the book, as seen in many places online and in the banner here) — nor is it for the rabid gorehound seeking exploitative splattery thrills. Powell and Schechter share writing duties but the art is all courtesy of the man who created The Goon, Powell himself. As stated, What Eddie Gein Done? looks at the life of the killer that many got to know as The Butcher of Plainfield, after Gein’s hometown. It goes from childhood to old age and it focuses on two big phases in his life: his upbringing with a strict, near-misanthropic but fundamentally religious mother figure, and the aftermath of his arrest for his many crimes, in all its dimensions.

Ed Gein, The Serial Killer An Original Graphic Novel about Ed Gein, The Serial Killer

Painstakingly researched and illustrated, Schechter and Powell's true crime graphic novel takes the Gein story out of the realms of exploitation and gives the reader a fact-based dramatization of these tragic, psychotic and heartbreaking events. Because, in this case, the truth needs no embellishment to be horrifying. The book is interested in presenting the horrors of Gein’s case as coming from beyond the gruesome and the macabre. What’s terrifying here is Gein’s childhood, the abusive family environment he endured, the invasive sexual repression, and a uniquely American obsession with violence. I think true crime has always been popular. If you look at photographs of the newsstands in 1940s New York City, for example, you see an astonishing number of pulp true crime magazines. What’s different now is that this once-disreputable genre has achieved cultural respectability. It’s gone mainstream. My own sense is that the enormous popularity of the podcast “Serial” and the HBO documentary “The Jinx” gave the genre a new cachet.Of course, if you read the endnotes, you will see that they flubbed at least one scene involving a sexual assault of Gein as a child; while you would think such a claim would probably require attribution, the authors essentially say "there were lots of rumors and it seemed true, so we included it." For me, that was a killer--it directly confirmed my suspicions that the authors were less invested in giving an accurate account and more interested in titillation and voyeurism. (To be fair, I willingly read a book about a necrophile/serial killer so maybe this is all just projection). But it is not the solution that we should be looking for, rather what the matter entails. If society bears the burden of creating citizens, then society is always to blame for the rise of elements with antisocial and harmful tendencies. A beautiful option, this one, as it allows for the idea that by perfecting the education of men and women we can reach the goal of producing the best human beings that Earth could ever hope to give birth to. One of our goals was to take readers inside Gein’s head and gain a greater understanding of the madness that drove him. Again, Eric did an extraordinary job of bringing us inside the floridly bizarre mind of Ed Gein.

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? (Volume) - Comic Vine Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? (Volume) - Comic Vine

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? could easily have been exploitative, but is much more respectful, especially in its depiction of Gein's victims and those left wondering what made this man do what he did. As with the original book that this is based on, “Did You Hear About What Eddie Gein Done?” doesn’t just tell the story of Ed Gein’s crimes, it also details the childhood and upbringing that in no small way shaped the man that became what the press would term the “Plainfield Butcher”; and this book is a condensed but relatively faithful retelling of Schechter’s brilliant book Deviant (there are some minor changes to make the story work better in GN format) which is brought to life by Eric Powell’s unique and masterful artwork.In the end, the Gein we are being presented with in this superb novel is not a character we can understand, at least not regarding the motives behind his abhorrent conduct. What does the fact that he denies killing people mean, even when there is so much evidence pointing to his being obviously guilty? The “Superhero” Trademark: how the name of a genre came to be owned by DC and Marvel, and how they enforce it

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? | Harold Schechter

Of course, Ed Gein – lonely, battered, pathetic, almost pitiable, working his dark craft in an empty house on a frigid plain in central Wisconsin – was no Charlie Manson. He was as much a product of his time and place as Manson was of his, but it was a very different time and place. And that’s where Eric Powell, the endlessly gifted artist behind The Goon and the primary reason to buy this book, comes in. Schechter’s writing is perfectly competent and sometimes very engaging, and no one can fault him for having a poor grasp on the facts of the case, but he’s a true crime writer in the classic sense: a very plain and straightforward journalistic style, wordy and precise but rarely artful, and more reliable than inventive. Powell is best known as the creator of the long-running Dark Horse series The Goon, and has also worked on titles like Action Comics, Swamp Thing and Star Wars: Tales. Schechter is a true crime writer who has penned nonfiction books like Deviant and The Serial Killer Files. When I was a kid I remember hearing talk about how Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a true story. That there was a real Leatherface. I don’t remember what age I was but it was probably too early to be hearing about people being strung up in barns and skinned. I think much like the kids in the 50s who read the story in Life magazine, Gein became a real life bogeyman to me. It was really Harold’s work that got me interested in the family dynamic. He has explored that area of Gein’s life probably more than any true crime writer. We describe the isolated farmhouse in the book as an incubator for madness, and I think that’s a pretty accurate description for the abusive cycle this family put themselves through. In Chapter 11, Professor O’Hara explains your theory regarding the possibility that Gein’s mother had become a sort of deity to her son. If taken as a metaphor for Gein’s deranged mind, the effect is such that we do not feel intimidated, yet, if taken as proof that Gein’s was not something peculiar, that his was not a case never to be repeated, this means that he was simply acting out a primordial need that is part and parcel of humanity (or, at least, of part of humanity). Your theory, so it seems to me, destabilizes our preconceptions of what a serial killer is. Is our idea of progress and civilization, something we derive from ancient Greece (with its us-civilized and them-uncivilized dichotomy), a blatant lie we tell ourselves?One of the greats in the field of true crime literature, Harold Schechter (Deviant, The Serial Killer Files, Hell’s Princess), teams with five-time Eisner Award-winning graphic novelist Eric Powell (The Goon, Big Man Plans, Hillbilly) to bring you the tale of one of the most notoriously deranged serial killers in American history, Ed Gein. Would it be right to call Gein a monster? Is he really someone who has abandoned humanity to become part of something which lies far away from our society, or is he part of what makes humankind what it is? Is the book about us or is it about a foreign element?

Did you hear what Eddie Gein done?” (review) “Did you hear what Eddie Gein done?” (review)

Perhaps one of the most surprising elements of Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? is how it approaches American violence. Gein is shown throughout the book as a troubled mind that’s also fascinated by extreme acts of depravity. We learn of his interests in the atrocities the Nazi’s committed in concentration camps, specifically in terms of the kinds of torture and sadism Germans inflicted upon their prisoners. There’s also a look at how the rise of pulp and horror stories and crime comics could’ve played a role in the desires Gein acted on later in life. Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?

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Sarjakuvan alkupuolella käydään läpi Geinin surullista lapsuutta, jota varjostivat alkoholismi sekä henkinen että fyysinen väkivalta. Geinin maailman keskipisteeksi muodostui hänen syvästi uskonnollinen äitinsä, jonka näkemykset eritoten naisista mahtoivat vaurioittaa nuorta mieltä entuudestaan.