I don’t remember where I saw the recommendation, but I decided to use a Christmas gift card to order a copy of the “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” graphic novel by Harold Schechter and Eric Powell. I’m not a fan of true crime, but given the significance of the Gein case as an inspiration for Psycho and other horror films, I decided to give it a read. I’m glad I did. It is very well done, taking a well researched approach to the story, and combining it with good graphics.

There was one particular aspect of this treatment that I didn’t expect. Near the end of the story there is a conversation between two characters, one a professor of comparative religion at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and the other a journalist with The Chicago Tribune. The two discuss Gein’s case, and the professor suggests that Gein’s mental condition allowed him to tap into religious death rituals involving corpses. In the notes the authors state that the professor of religion character is fictitious, “who serves as a spokesperson for our theory (itself based on deep research) about the ritualistic nature of Gein’s grotesque practices” (p. 215). A part of their theory involves finding a parallel between Gein’s criminal practices and “A statue of human skin-wearing Aztec god called Xipe Totec – whose name means ‘our lord, the flayed one’…” (p. 216).

I’m not sure that I find the connection between a set of criminal acts by an individual and the religious rituals of different groups of people in other cultures credible, but it certainly was an unexpected twist in this worthwhile graphic novel.