Refresh My Memory

In an effort to blog more often, and to have more comics content, I've decided to start an occasional feature dedicated to the half-remembered stories of my youth, in the hopes that somebody out there can fill in the gaps.

A bit of background: When I was very young, we had a family friend with a very large comics collection, and he would let me read them. Sadly, he passed away at a pretty young age (lung cancer), and most of his collection was given to me. (It would probably be incredibly valuable, if it weren't for the fact that, generally speaking, a 7-year-old has no clue how to take care of comics...) I say "most" of the collection...I got his super-hero books, but the horror titles (Warren and otherwise) were kept away from my tender little mind. Unfortunately, I had already read many of them, and there are many vague grotesqueries etched in my brain.

So, to pin down these partially-forgotten horrors, I'll share my best recollections of them. Hopefully, there's somebody out there who knows what I'm talking about...and if not, I hope you'll be entertained by my vague reconstructions.

To start off:

I remember a story that began with a man waking up surrounded by robed, chanting women. A metal ring had been placed around his neck, and as the women chanted, it slowly began to shrink, eventually strangling him. Then, the story introduced the protagonist, who was trying to find out what had happened to the guy in the opening sequence. (Was he a reporter, a detective, or just a friend of the first guy? That, I don't remember.) In the end, our hero found himself in the coven's clutches, with the same metal ring around his neck. As the chanting began and the ring began to shrink, we got the shock ending...a shot of the hero's girlfriend among the women, with the caption: "[Whatever her name was] was among them, and she was crying."

So...ring any bells?