Legendary Cartoonist Eric Powell and Edgar Award-nominated Writer Harold Schechter are joining forces to create DID YOU HEAR WHAT EDDIE GEIN DONE?--an original graphic novel about the serial killer whose disturbing crimes inspired the likes of Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Starting today, Powell’s company Albatross Funnybooks has launched a Kickstarter campaign for DID YOU HEAR WHAT EDDIE GEIN DONE? Signed Special Edition, featuring a Kickstarter-exclusive paperback edition of the book, with a cover by acclaimed horror artist William Stout, a hardcover edition with a Kickstarter-exclusive dust jacket by Eric Powell, limited edition prints, and more. The book itself is set to arrive in comic shops on July 21st, 2021 and bookstores on August 3rd, 2021. And Screen Rant is pleased to offer Powell and Schechter's own description of the book, their motivations, and just what readers should prepare themselves for.

RELATED: The Joker Profiled as a REAL Serial Killer in DC's Criminal Sanity

The collaboration between Powell, creator of comics like The Goon and Hillbilly, and Harold Schechter, author of true crime classics including Deviant and The Serial Killer Files will be bringing fans of true crime an all new, 200-page, original graphic novel chronicling the twisted history of the Gein family. Painstakingly researched and illustrated, Schechter and Powell’s true-crime graphic novel offers a brand new, and one of a kind perspective on one of the most notoriously deranged murderers in American history, Ed Gein. Readers can find our full interview, as well as the first preview of DID YOU HEAR WHAT EDDIE GEIN DONE? embedded below.

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done Comic Cover

Screen Rant: The idea of 'a graphic novel about Ed Gein' is going to turn heads, but can you both speak to the origins of this project? How you each connected for this collaboration, and what ideas, if any, you already had brewing that ultimately made this graphic novel a reality?

Harold Schechter: Eric reached out to my agent and proposed the project. As a lifelong comic book aficionado who has written books on the subject, I regard Eric as arguably the greatest comic book artist of his generation, so I leapt at the offer.

Eric Powell: I got the idea to do a graphic novel on Gein while driving through Wisconsin on my Goon 20th anniversary book tour. The isolated landscape really got my mind going on how an unbalanced and abused person like Gein would deal with it. Well, we know how he dealt with it, and it wasn’t good. The family dynamic and the extreme isolation are what I thought could really be explored in this case. But, being a huge fan of Harold, I was well aware of his work on the topic. I thought there was no point in trying to explore the case of Gein since I would never be able to top what Harold had already done. But then the idea of trying to collaborate with my favorite true-crime author came to me. If I could get him on board, I’d do it. If not, it would go onto the pile of unfinished ideas. I was giddy to find he was equally excited about the idea and an enthusiastic fan of the comic book medium.

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 1

SR: While the average person may know the name, and movie fans likely know what Ed Gein's crimes inspired, can you discuss the decision or the reasons behind telling a larger story, a larger history of the Gein family?

HS: While many people have a general idea of Gein's crimes, the story of what led to those horrors--and their impact on late-twentieth-century American culture--is so compelling that it deserves the kind of graphic treatment we are aiming for in our book.

EP: Exactly. We’re really examining the creation of Gein and the psychological impact of his crimes. And I’m proud of the fact that we don’t cram one view down the reader’s throats. We present the evidence as we understand it, and through characters in the book present different perspectives. As Harold and I have discussed many times, Gein doesn’t quite fit the mold of traditional serial killers. He wasn’t a sexual sadist. His motivation, as much as we can understand it, was to gather bodies for companionship and to recreate his mother. So he ends up being a bit more complex than the other serial killers we know of whose motivations were to inflict pain and suffering on a victim to feel power over them. And while history is full of monsters who have inflicted much worse pain and suffering on many more victims than Gein did, why is it this disturbed individual who killed two people that still haunts us?

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 2

SR: Just from the title alone, this story is going to be concerned with the response to Ed Gein's crimes. What about that part of this story, or more importantly this real-life, historical account is of particular interest, or significance, to you?

HS: I became aware of the cultural significance of the Gein story over thirty years ago. My first true crime book, DEVIANT, was (and, if I may immodestly say so, remains) the definitive account of his life and crimes. What drew me to the case was my awareness of how Gein transformed the American horror genre. Before him, all the monsters that terrorized the movies were foreign: European vampires and werewolves and the Frankenstein monster, invaders from Mars, creatures from a South American Black Lagoon, etc. Gein, in the form of his fictional avatar Norman Bates, was the first all-American monster, as well as the precursor of all the "slasher" movies that followed in the wake of PSYCHO. It might be said that he Americanized the horror movie in the way that Walt Whitman Americanized poetry.

EP: I was born in the 70’s so I didn’t experience the culture shock when Gein’s crimes came to light. But he was always a topic among kids at school when anything gruesome was discussed. "Did you know Leatherface was a real guy?”, and things like that. So Gein was somewhat my childhood bogeyman. There’s a song, more of a spoken word poem, by Tom Waits called What’s He Building. It’s someone speculating about the bizarre activity of a neighbor. Growing up in a rural community myself, there were always morbid speculations about the somewhat odd people living around you. In the case of Gein, it was a rare instance of the truth being far worse than rumor.

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 3

SR: Entire novels, films, and TV shows have been created with the sole purpose of understanding the mind of a serial killer -- what is it about a graphic novel that alters the challenge, or presents a new lens?

HS: To state the obvious, the graphic novel is now recognized as one of the most significant artistic genres of our age. Part of the reason for that is its unique power to visualize and evoke the interior life of the subject. One of the features of our Gein collaboration that I'm proudest of is the way we've been able to take the reader into the phantasmagoric workings of Ed Gein's mind.

EP: Being that I’m a cartoonist, it’s just my chosen medium. So there is no other option for me when I envision a story. Thankfully, people are now seeing the format as a legitimate form of art like film. We can cover topics like this and readers will understand we aren’t taking the subject matter and these crimes lightly or being flippant just because there are illustrations that go along with our words.

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 4

SR: Can you each speak to what the process has been like thus far, working together with someone who comes from a different skill set, or a different perspective, and collaborating on this project?

HS: For me, the collaboration has been a total pleasure. Eric and I began by having long discussions about Gein, what we wanted to accomplish, etc. I then wrote a version of the script that Eric heavily (and brilliantly) revised and cast in the appropriate format. I then got to review his script, offer editorial suggestions, supply documents I gathered while researching my Gein book, DEVIANT.

Eric has taken it from there, transforming our words into his stunning images.

EP: I’ve been able to discuss one of the most fascinating true-crime cases with my favorite true-crime author on a daily basis. It’s been pretty amazing. I did have to get past the intimidation of working with someone so knowledgable, intelligent and educated. He’s a professor and I’m a barely schooled goober that doodles, after all. But Harold put me at ease early on and has been an amazingly generous collaborator. I’m still amazed I’m getting to do this book with him.

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 5

SR: For you Eric, since illustration is so often used to present the intangible, or to exaggerate, heighten, or make the unreal 'real,' how does that process change when you're dealing with very real, and very sensitive events?

EP: Very much so. Because this really breaks down to psychology, I’m taking full advantage of the artistic freedom the graphic novel format provides. If there is something Ed is feeling in his psychosis, I can manipulate the reader’s experience by warping the perspective and environment to convey those feelings. I’m also taking a cue from Hitchcock and keeping in mind that what the viewer, in our case reader, envisions is probably more shocking that being shown a bunch of gore. Psychological horror is what I’m trying to achieve. Not exploitative gore.

SR: For you Harold, given your own experience in true crime writing, and the large audience that genre enjoys, is there something different you're hoping to capture, or communicate through the graphic novel medium with this project?

HS: You have to understand my lifelong passion for comics. Until I had to sell them to pay for my (first) divorce, I had an amazing collection of Silver Age Marvel comics, including the first fifty issues of SPIDER-MAN in mint condition. Also original artwork by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and other idols of mine. I regard the graphic novel as the greatest innovation in narrative storytelling since, well, I suppose, the non-graphic novel. So it's long been a dream of mine to turn one of my books into a graphic novel. That I am now able to do so with an artist of Eric's stature and brilliance is more than I hoped for.

What Eddie Gein Done Graphic Novel Preview 6

DID YOU HEAR WHAT EDDIE GEIN DONE? will be published by Albatross Funnybooks in comic shops on July 21, 2021 and in bookstores on August 3rd, 2021. Those looking to support the campaign can head directly to Kickstarter now.

MORE: Harley Quinn & Joker Meet MINDHUNTER in Mature New Series