Expert: Chris Brown - 10/17/2009

Question
In the late 70's early 80's my mother had these horror comics. I remember one issue had a man in the forest with a lady bent over the man had a hatchet/ax raised. A man/hunter came by with a shotgun and shot the man to save the girl as he ran over to help the girl she looked up and her face was like a zombie. The woman was stalking him and finally he took her to the forest to do the same thing the other man did and another hunter showed up and killed him and rescued the girl and etc. These comics usually had girls with zombie looking faces usually the bottom half of the face messed up. I was under eight when I read these crazy comics. I was born in 74. I think these comics were seventies but they could have come out in the very early eighties. My mother has a bad memory and cannot recall any information about these comics. I do remember the stories always had twisted endings. Any information you could give me would greatly be appreciated.

Answer
Hi Shina

The story you describe sounds like "Jenifer," which was written by Bruce Jones and drawn by Berni Wrightson.  It orignally appeared in Creepy #63 (7/74).  It was also reprinted in Vampirella #63 (9/77) and then in Berni Wrightson: Master of the Macabre #2 (8/83).

Here is a scan of the cover of Creepy #63:

http://www.comics.org/issue/27588/cover/4/?style=default

The story you describe was certainly one of the better ones of this publisher.  However, they were a good publisher with a good amount of quality material and their issues are of interest to collectors.  The comics were put out by Warren publishing, which had three main titles: Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.

There were also some other publishers who put out similar black-and-white magazine-sized comics in this time period but none of the others were of the same quality as Warren.  You can look at covers of the Warren comics by going to

www.comics.org

and entering the titles listed above.  Then click on the "Gallery" hypertext to see several covers on one page.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Chris