Let us go on a journey through the world of comic books. They have been around since the nineteenth century’s close. They have aided us in delving deeper into a world populated by superheroes and creatures that appear to be out of place in this realm. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another Marvelous Videos video.
Prepare to be enthralled by an intriguing story. You could argue that how skillfully the superhero or main character is constructed is what sells a decent comic book. But, no matter how powerful a hero is, they all require one thing to show themselves to the rest of the world. And it is a very fantastic villain. A superb villain gives the plot that much-needed kick while also allowing the viewer to empathize with it.
With today’s film, you are in for a treat because we have given you a glimpse into the world and mind of a sick supervillain. For the time being, forget about the heroes. Who will they safeguard the planet from if there has never been any evil? After all, everyone enjoys a well-crafted enemy who can make a superhero’s life a little more difficult than usual. The evil villains are hell-bent on mentally as well as physically harming their targets, which is the oldest ploy in the book. Why leave your victim injured when you can rewire their brains and punish them psychologically indefinitely?
That is precisely the type of villain story we have in store for you. What you are about to find, however, is considerably more sinister and cruel than a normal predator-prey hunt in the woods. Doctor Edmund Gross is a villain who first appeared in the Hack/Slash comic book series. It was first released by Image Comics and began with a series of one-shots with the same title. The series was created by Tim Seeley, a writer, and penciler.
Cassie Hack, a horror victim in Atlanta, Georgia, fights and goes on the offensive against the demons who prey on teenagers in the series. These creatures are known as “slashers,” and they are a mix of original villains and villains who appear in multiple films. The Re-Animator from Herbert West–Reanimator, who appears in Volume 1–is one such example.
Land of Lost Troys was the first-ever Hack/slash miniseries, and it was penciled by Dave Crosland. Later, in a special 2006 issue called Trailers, it was followed by the publication of a collection of new short stories with art by writer Stefano Caselli and Tim Seeley. This series deserved a lot more praise and attention than it received. Hack/Slash is an underappreciated genre.
Who were the slashers?
Slashers are also known as paladins and revenants. Primarily, they are divided into two different categories. The first and most widely available kind are the ones who are undead people. They have been brought back to life by bits of black ambrosia extract that run through their systems. These are the people who died with violent rage and hatred for life and have returned from the dead with the feeling of just that murderous rage, that leads them to slaughter everybody they come across.
Although their specific talents differ, they all have damage resistance and must suffer serious physical harm to actually be destroyed. This kind can easily be controlled with the right magic, and after their bodies have been severely damaged, they normally die. The other type of slashers consists of people who are still alive but are psychotic which leads them to indulge in Slasher behavior. Since these are otherwise normal people, they can be killed using traditional techniques. Slashers are the main antagonists of Hack/Slash, and Cassie and Vlad have devoted their lives to tracking them down and killing every single one of them.
Now, these beings actually originate from a hidden village deep in Africa. There was a remote tribe that found a black flower that held the ability to resurrect corpses by liquefying and injecting it into the body. Even though for a brief period, the revived retained some resemblance to life, they soon developed into soulless, cannibalistic creatures.
The story then took a turn when a Greek philosopher called Akakios found that tribe while travelling to Africa, along with the black flowers, which he renamed as black ambrosia. Akakios then destroyed their village, as well as the tribe, collected all the black flowers, and returned to Greece. There he decided to do experiments on them, in order to improve the techniques of the tribe by generating an oil-like substance that was imbued with the same qualities as the tribe’s recipe, but with the extra effect of granting unique powers and mildly reducing the usual mental degeneration of the resurrected.
Akakios, a lunatic, believed in two kinds of humanity: one that was innately smarter both ethically and intellectually, and one that was vulnerable to crime and cruelty, which were termed “the Children of Dionysus”. He was convinced that the Children of Dionysus would indeed bring about the apocalypse. So, Akakios preached that the revived, whom he called “the paladins” were the only messiahs of humanity, capable enough of completely destroying the Children of Dionysus and the disaster that they would bring.
The Black Lamp Society, Akakios’ disciples, were among the first who became paladins, and it is believed that all current slashers have apparently descended from them. Although slashers have been present for generations, their numbers grew in the 1980s for reasons unknown. This brought increased attention from the government, who later decided to name these creatures “revenants” and then began researching and investigating them, as well as those who held the ability to become them.
The slasher that we are going to explore in this video is Doctor Edmund Gross.
Who is this psychologist turned slasher?
The life of Doctor Edmund Gross, who is a former psychologist was completely destroyed after many of his students reported him for the cruel things he did. Gross chose an empty, abandoned construction site as his hideout. He stripped off his skin all by himself to make it unclear if he was technically alive or not. Probably that is why he appears as if he is made of only muscles without any skin. He decided to take revenge on the students who destroyed him by slowly tormenting them to death while also psychoanalyzing them.
Now, in order to track down the location of Gross, Cassie decided to wear a tracking device and let herself be abducted by Gross so that Vlad could locate her. Being the tortured genius that he is, Gross chained her to a chair in his lair and brutally tortured her by punching her. Who could get more deranged than that!
Gross tortured Cassie by forcing her to keep reliving events from her past, such as her mother’s suicide, meeting Vlad, and even the day her father vanished. After evaluating Cassie with antisocial personality disorder and telling her that she had severe issues with her father, Gross became bored and stated that she was untreatable. He surely possessed a lot of intellectual knowledge along with stamina. But after all, his fate was sealed in the hands of the heroes, Cassie and Vlad.
Doctor Gross in the comic series
The place is Atlanta, Georgia and we have before our eyes a skinless Doctor Edmund Gross. From the looks of it, he seems to be torturing Cassie as she is locked up in a secluded area. He confesses to Cassie that he indeed was the one who did “sick things” to his students. But since she is not one of his students, why would Cassie seek him out? He starts to get into her head by psychologically messing with her and asking her about her mother.
That is when we are taken to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Cassie’s hometown. Cassie, a tiny girl, is being bullied by some hunky boys who push her on the ground in the mud. Just then her mother appears on the scene to rescue her. We then find out that Cassie’s father abandoned both of them. Is her mother trying to protect her from getting hurt, or is she ashamed of her daughter? It is quite unclear due to her condescending tone.
Doctor Gross has invented his own method of torturing his victims by damaging their psyche. Although this does not mean that he stays away from physically harming his hostages. Because he evidently chopped off two of Cassie’s toes with a mechanical saw only because he was bored of using other torture techniques. But after doing this, he did not feel as much pleasure as he had hoped for. So, like a switch, he turned on his unconventional methods of torture by targeting Cassie’s mind.
He believes that “physical pain unlocks psychological pain.” The look on Cassie’s face when he mentioned her mother brought him way more delight than her expression when he removed her toe. Then we get to see more details about Cassie’s mother.
It turns out, that she is no ordinary mother who cares for her daughter but in fact, a complete and total lunatic. After the incident with Cassie’s bullies, her mother brought them to her house and literally chopped them into pieces. And what is their crime? It is bullying her sweet little innocent girl. Blood has been spattered all across the kitchen and sliced body parts are hanging here and there.
After Cassie sees her mother committing such a gruesome and menacing deed, she tries to make her stop, but is forced to call the mother. Because clearly, Mrs. Hack has gone rogue. However, before the police can arrest her, she puts her head inside a boiling pot of soup right in front of her daughter.
During the process of his brutal assessment of Cassie, Doctor Gross, using his technical expertise in the field of psychology starts listing things about Cassie that make her a patient with an antisocial personality disorder. He states that Cassie has an impulsive attraction to violence, a lack of concern for her own well-being, as well as a failure to conform to social norms. He goes on to demean Cassie further by telling her that when such a condition is untreated, it ends up with the patient engaging in risky behavior that might lead them to get maimed.
It strikes up a nerve in Cassie after Gross asks her about her friends and then we are taken to Chicago, Illinois, where we are about to meet a very unique friend of Cassie’s. So, Cassie has been on a hunt for all the slashers, traveling from one place to another, killing them. And she has just killed a slasher who was known for murdering a whole group of kids. It is the Meatman Killer. But she did not do it all by herself. There was someone to help her with this kill.
We are now introduced to Vlad, who has a rather disfigured face on top of a bulky huge body which often gets him in trouble. Cassie asks Vlad to join her as she goes around the world taking care of slashers for good. And once again we are back to the present time, where Cassie is being tortured and Vlad has just been able to track her down using a pet tracker. He is on his way to save his friend, Cassandra.
On the other side, Gross still continues to torture her by any means necessary. He diagnoses her with having a stifled Electra complex and points towards her daddy issues. We go further back in time to the day when Cassie’s father never came back home from work. The story gets darker because now Gross wants to kill Cassie by cutting her from chin to belly button. But before he can cause any further harm to Cassie, Vlad bursts in through a broken window behind him and chops both of Gross’s arms off with huge knives.
After Vlad has successfully untied Cassie, she takes revenge on Gross by throwing him out the window onto the top of a mountain of cinderblocks. At last, Gross meets his death. Vlad and Cassie go back home, but it is visible that in order to take down Doctor Gross, Cassie ended up paying a huge price with her sanity and mental health.
So, as it turns out, Doctor Edmund Gross is not an easy slasher to kill. He will make sure to possibly drive you far off the edge before he will kill you. It is quite tragic that enduring the mental torture caused by Doctor Gross will literally make the victim wish for death because, at that point, death seems easier than continuing a life of misery.
Now with that, guys, we have come to the end of another origin video with Marvelous Videos. We hope you enjoyed watching it, as much as we enjoyed making it for you. Make sure to drop a like and hit that subscribe button on your way out. Comment down below and tell us what you like most about this story. Until then everyone, stay safe, take care, and see you in the next video. Hope you have a fantastic day!