All that aside, I know I’ll remember this book for 2 specific moments in particular. [No spoilers; even if you already know the true story, the artistic choices here deserve to be experienced fresh, so I’ll be vague. Also, the authors have a unique take on Gein’s psychosis and seeing their disturbing depiction of his inner thoughts is what really makes this book]. But those are fictional characters, and Eddie Gein is for sure NOT. He was a mentally unstable person abused by his mother and other people in his town, and eventually averted his attention to killing folks because...well reasons. But in this book they go into a deep dive. You'll learn about Eddie from birth to death, and while it's most certainly not painting him as a worthy person to be talked about, it shows who and maybe even hints to why he did what he did. Gein has always been a fascinating case. In terms of body count (which, in the world of true crime, is the sexiest statistic, the equivalent of home runs in baseball), he was pretty much a dud, tallying a meager two killings. But the grim details of the house of horrors he inhabited in tiny, unremarkable Plainfield are what made him one of the country’s most notorious maniacs and led to so many people patterning fictional killers, from Norman Bates to Leatherface to Buffalo Bill, on his story. Gein sewed suits of clothing out of the skins of dead bodies, made a belt out of nipples, ate his meals out of a bowl fashioned from the top of a skull, and performed a litany of other horrors. He was the quintessential American psychopath, and his story caused a media frenzy that loomed far larger than the human cost of his crimes. 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.

New Graphic Novel Peels Back The Story Of Infamous Wisconsin

Eric Powell—the legendary creator of comics like The Goon and Hillbilly—and Harold Schechter—the author of true crime classics including Deviant and The Serial Killer Files—are collaborating on an ambitious new graphic novel about one of the most notoriously deranged murderers in American history, Ed Gein. 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. I was very curious about this graphic novel (or a comic, as I will refer to this book from this point on) can tell what wasn't already known, especially to me since I already read Harold Schechter's "Deviant", an in-depth look at Gein's case. But I was pleasantly surprised. The information was true to the case (and couple inconsistencies were explained in appendixes) and didn't invent any facts or information.

Success!

This book takes Gein’s gruesome crimes out of the realms of exploitation and delivers a powerful, fact-based dramatization of the tragic, psychotic, and heartbreaking events,” said Powell. “Because, in this case, the truth needs no embellishment to be horrifying.” Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? is a powerful meditation on the things that can make a person take the lives of others, and then go further. It’s a detailed and very smart take on True Crime that is interested in explaining the phenomenon that is Ed Gein. There’s horror, there’s pain, and there’s violence, but the point of it all is to consider just what it is that goes into the formation of an all-American killer.

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

If you have lived in Wisconsin, as I have, you know the book Wisconsin Death Trip which makes a case for the state being one of the creepiest places on the planet (including chapters on monsters/serial killers such as jeffery Dahmer, and so on). But before Dahmer, in 1957, there was Eddie Gein, one of the most truly macabre people to ever walk the planet (oh, I know he has competition). And I admit, I have recently taken a (shallow, hypocritical) stand against the sensationalization of murder in my review of a graphic memoir, The Murder Book (Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell), a book about the author's obsession with True Crime, as I was at the same time reading Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song, about psycho-killer Gary Gilmore. The “Superhero” Trademark: how the name of a genre came to be owned by DC and Marvel, and how they enforce itFor those who aren’t aware of the story of Ed Gein (pronounced Geen), and without giving too much of the book away, Ed was a quiet and quite well thought of (if considered harmlessly odd), resident of a small town of less than 400. The discoveries at his farm in November 1957 saw him convicted of murder, grave robbing, and evidence was presented of cannibalism, bizarre human taxidermy, and necrophile practices. Ed Gein’s crimes captured the attention of the world, and led to his incarceration in an institution for the criminally insane where he died at the age of 77 in 1984. 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. This is an immersive look into a twisted mind. What made you decide you wanted to tell the story of Eddie Gein?