GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?
By Lisa Gullickson — "Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?" That title reads like a rumor—the condescending familiarity of the nickname; the un-self-conscious, casual grammar. I was taught from a young age that spreading rumors was a sin, but, like many of the venial sins, there is a satisfaction to committing it. Edward Theodore Gein has done something terrible - the kind of terrible that you hate hearing about but get a cheap thrill from telling. It’s monsters like Ed Gein that make rumors an evolutionary necessity.
Before picking up Eric Powell and Harold Schecter’s graphic novel, I don’t recall hearing the name Ed Gein, though by the end of this book Powell and Schecter make it very clear that I’ve experienced his legacy. I’ve seen the films Psycho, TheSilence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of which contain a spark of inspiration from his heinous acts. I like horror movies because they’re fiction. Because they’re not “true,” the abominations on the screen are hypothetical. Maybe that’s what Alfred Hitchock was referring to when he said to fellow director François Truffaut that making Psycho took a “sense of humor;” That films like it couldn’t be made “without your tongue in your cheek.” Behind every piece of horror fiction, there is a creative, leaning back in their chair and asking, “wouldn’t it be outrageous if…?”
What Powell and Schecter accomplish is more akin to rumor than fiction. If fiction contains a spark of truth, "Did You Hear Eddie Gein Done?" finds its narrative in the flames. They bring you so close to the facts that you can feel the heat of reality off of them, and it stings. It is impossible to create a comic book that is literally true. You can present facts, photos, first-hand accounts, and primary documents, but the instant you start speculating, you are a storyteller. Harold Schecter is a true-crime writer whose 1998 book, Deviant, is considered the definitive text on the life and crimes of Ed Gein, “The Butcher of Plainfield.” Eric Powell is the creator of The Goon, a supernatural crime comedy known for its delectably vile violence and sacrilege. Though their chosen genres could not be more disparate, they share a slightly bent perspective, and the challenge of presenting the facts of Ed Gein’s abhorrent existence in a compelling graphic novel has produced a work that is singular and extraordinary.
Rumors, which are simply stories we create from presumed facts, are the coping mechanism to reassure us that we can make sense of the senseless. We inventory what we think we know for sure and then rationalize until we feel safer, wiser, or wary. For "Did You Hear Eddie Gein Done?", Powell and Schecter amassed a tremendous amount of research to contextualize the deeply perverse and peculiar crimes of Ed Gein. They present the circumstances of his birth, his upbringing, his traumas, his social standing in his small town in a way so compelling that it will test your boundary between sympathy and empathy. Their imaginings based on those facts tell the story of a man who, if indifferent chaos had wielded itself slightly differently, could have turned out only to be pathetic, not pathological.
It takes integrity to tell a story like "Did You Hear Eddie Gein Done?" Integrity requires respect in equal parts to what is data and what is drama. Powell, being a comic book artist, is uniquely poised to present both. A still image, drawn by hand, innately infers the truth as he sees it as filtered through his very being. Words are different. A fact and a fiction can look deceptively the same in text, but no one can draw like Eric Powell. Perhaps out of reverence for the victims and the immensity of sadness surrounding the subject matter, the art in this book is some of Powell’s most considered and careful work, and the result is a masterpiece. He presents side-by-side images that range from clinical and fully interpretational, and it is all evocative. You should be prepared. The time you spend enclosed in his pages with this theoretical Gein will disturb you. You will witness moments so intimate, taboo, and grotesque they will change your core temperature.
“You can’t apply morality to insane persons.” That is another quote that Alfred Hitchcock said to François Truffaut, which Powell and Schecter use in their opening chapter. Hitchcock is not sitting across from a fellow director, but rather a fictional press junket where journalists are asking him to defend the existence of Psycho.
The reason that rumor is a sin is that it is ultimately self-serving and unproductive. You can have all of the facts short of the omnipotence of God, but you can never actually solve anything. You can’t make it so that the crimes of Ed Gein never happened, and you can’t make the future any more predictable. What makes rumor a necessity is that it forces us to apply both fact and fantasy to each other in a way that informs our personal truth and becomes our story. What Powell and Schecter offer is not a rumor; it’s a story. "Did You Hear Eddie Gein Done?" uses the facts of Ed Gein’s life to tell you a story so compelling, so expertly rendered, and compassionately told, it will confront your capacity for empathy and have you questioning what you consider your truth.
Graphic Novel Review: Did You Hear Eddie Gein Done?
Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done
Writer: Harold Schecter and Eric Powell
Artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Albatross Funny Books
Price: $40.00
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.
Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? is an in-depth exploration of the Gein family and what led to the creation of the necrophile who haunted the dreams of 1950s America and inspired such films as Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.
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.
Publication Date: August 24th, 2021
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Lisa Gullickson is one half of the couple on the Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast, and, yes, the a capella version of the 90s X-men theme is all her. Her Love Language is Words of Affirmation which she accepts @sidewalksiren on twitter.
