Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?

True-crime writer Schechter teams up with acclaimed comic-book artist Powell in this thoroughly researched account of Ed Gein, the notorious murderer who inspired the horror icon Norman Bates (and others). Schechter and Powell start there, with a portly Alfred Hitchcock setting the scene. Then, they cover Gein's childhood under the thumb of his puritanical, misogynistic, and violently oppressive mother; the investigation into his crimes; and the trial that led to his lifelong incarceration. Powell's soft, realistic art, in a green-tinged grayscale recalling the aesthetic quality of Hitchcock's black-and-white films, renders faces beautifully, keeping them distinct and recognizable even as they age over the decades-long timeframe of the book, and though there's plenty of gruesomeness, he only toes the line of luridness (an inevitability, for sure, in any book about Gein). While Schechter and Powell necessarily spend plenty of time on Gein, they don't dwell sensationally on the horrors of his crimes but turn their attention to his impact not only on the culture but, importantly, on the lives of his neighbors. A natural choice for true-crime fans.

One of America's most enduring bogeymen gets another feature role in this punishingly gruesome graphic novel from true crime writer Schechter (Deviant) and Powell (The Goon series). Ed Gein was raised in dismal small-town Wisconsin by a reportedly feckless father and domineering, fanatically religious mother (who here, as in most portrayals, is shown as the subject of Gein's own religious/sexual obsession). In 1957, Gein was arrested after human remains were found at his farmhouse (the "incubator for madness" of his dysfunctional childhood). There, he used a skull as a bowl and refashioned the skin of corpses (some from grave-robbing) into furniture, masks, and a female body suit. Grotesque dramatizations from Gein's stunted life, drawn in a gritty noirish fashion, run just shy of comic exaggeration, and are amply skin-crawling. The exposition-heavy attempts to plumb his madness include a professor's lecture to a cynical newsman about Gein being driven less by Freudian mother attachment than by being a "classic necrophile" who was perhaps "in the grip of his own creepy religion." The comic also examines how Gein became Patient Zero for much of modern horror--the muse of Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs, among others. This squirmy, nightmarish portrayal should appeal to the fans of the type of films Gein inspired. (Aug.)