The following first appeared in the ComicsXF newsletter. You can get early access to our editorials, a roundup of the week’s best content and get to know the members of the ComicsXFamily by subscribing right here.
Sounding — at least outside of the purely diagnostic medical procedure — is the sexual practice of inserting objects (usually surgical-grade stainless steel if you’re a pro) into the urethra for pleasure. Riskier choices outside of metal or silicone sounding toys include pencils, screws, wires and — if I’m deciphering WebMD correctly — the handiest bottle of Elmer’s. (I’m guessing you’d want to make sure the cap is screwed on tight, but hey, if the glue is part of your deal, god bless you.)
When it came to his decision of what to stick inside his penis, notoriously ghoulish murderer Ed Gein went with roses.
Roses still with accompanying thorns.
While I don’t have a citation for that (I read it in a book once, never forgot it and now challenge you good readers to try and remove that from your brainspace), it’s the sort of thing readily believable about Gein, a man who has slipped into the realm of dark etherium as Hollywood has liberally borrowed from his life and deeds for such movies as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs. Cleaving the man from myth, pulling an actual story from the cesspool of horror and deviance of Gein’s own design is a challenge I wouldn’t dare undertake, and you get the sense that true crime writer Harold Schechter and artist Eric Powell understand the difficulty of the task; in calling their work Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, it speaks first to the rumors and ghastly gossip associated with his crimes and second to the believability of anything said about the man — including that he inserted thorny-stemmed roses into his penis.
The book is split roughly in half, with the first chunk covering Gein’s life to the point of his mother’s death in 1945 and the second picking up in 1957 with Gein’s second murder and the discovery of his house of horrors. The former spends a great deal of time humanizing the man who would kill at least two women, defile countless graves and construct the skin suit of Buffalo Bill’s dreams — his mother, Augusta, is depicted as a callous and depraved religious fanatic who certainly imparted unto her son many of his complexes, while Gein himself is shown as a generally affable — if perhaps more than a little awkward — weirdo.
The second half of the book, however, takes a much different approach; if the first humanizes Gein, the second simply gawks at him and his crimes. There are certainly ethical pitfalls in depicting any depraved murderer as less than an inhuman monster, and I won’t presume to answer whether something like that should be attempted. What I will say is that I found the chapters dealing with Gein’s early life to be more interesting, compelling and informative. (After all, if I want to learn more about the man’s crimes, all I need to do is fire up Texas Chainsaw Massacre.)
That, though, wasn’t the only problem with the back half. Psycho famously has an over-explainy ending that undercuts the drama of its final shot; why this book closes with an academic talky scene is beyond me. Second — and more importantly — Gein’s tortured relationship with gender deserved more care and sensitivity. I can forgive the outdated “gender reassignment” terminology in the book’s narration, but a scene showing Gein with a pair of scissors and noting his failure to “complete the operation” felt crass and uncaring — not toward the murderer, but toward anyone who has ever wished for a body that matched what they knew to be true.
Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? is ambitious and captivating, if only in how Powell is able to bring so much pain to the face of a man who would become a monster. But it’s that pain that’s the freshest and most daring part of this book.
The rest?
If you’re interested in it, it’s already in your Blu-ray collection.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
