Oh, so you thought the first comic book to detail the misdeeds of famed London killer Jack The Ripper was Moore & Campbell's FROM HELL, or perhaps Rick Geary's Ripper-focused edition of his TREASURY OF VICTORIAN MURDER? Well you thought wrong. The horrific Whitechapel prostitute murders of 1888-89, commonly attributed to Jack The Ripper, have been an inspiration to comic book writers for decades.


Here we go with a 1970s reprint of a 1950s story all about that saucy Jack and his talent for murder so horrifying it shocked even the desperate, cynical, large-breasted residents of one of the worst slums in the world!


Now as we all know, Jack The Ripper was never caught and no one knows who he was or why he did what he did to those ladies. So it stands to reason that while he's probably dead by now, his tombstone isn't marked "Jack The Ripper". And if it WAS - we're saying it's really unlikely, but just for the sake of argument, if we DID know his identity and his burial site and if we DID mark his grave with a tombstone that read "Jack The Ripper" instead of his real name, and - work with me here - and if his ghost DID rise from the grave to commit murders once again, would he be killing bald old guys instead of the prostitutes he loved so dearly to kill?

THAT, comic book, is WHERE YA LOST ME.


JACK THE RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN! MURDER VICTIM FOUND MURDERED IN A WAY NOT AT ALL LIKE THE WAY JACK THE RIPPER USED TO KILL PEOPLE 70 YEARS AGO, SO OBVIOUSLY WE'RE BLAMING JACK THE RIPPER FOR EVERY MURDER THAT HAPPENS IN ENGLAND! Meanwhile in America, Americans are disgusted with the British tabloid press and their obvious attempts to make fools of us! It's a hoax! They're trying to make us think Jack The Ripper is still killing people, and in some inscrutable way profit by this falsehood. Isn't that just like the British.


Here's one American who won't stand for the English papers making fools of Americans with their gullible Jack The Ripper accepting beliefs. He's going to go to England and prove Jack The Ripper is really dead!


Yup, flew in an airplane to London in the '50s to prove the death of somebody who's obviously dead by this time. While I'm here I'm gonna check up on that William Shakespeare fella and make sure HE'S really dead too. People are still writing plays, ya know!


First stop - Scotland Yard! Drawn without photo reference, obviously, unless Scotland Yard's entrance is decorated with a statue of a laughing hell-pony with a suspiciously limp wrist. And furthermore I suggest you take the next plane back to America because it's the 1950s and we're pretty sure Jack The Ripper is long dead by now!

WELL I NEVER.


After much diligent searching, Henry locates the graveyard where they buried Jack The Ripper 20 years ago. Yup, one of the most baffling mysteries of criminology was solved, they found out who Jack The Ripper was, he died, and they buried him sometime in the mid 1930s. Didn't you read about it? It was in all the papers. I guess people just forgot.

CONTINUED AFTER NEXT PAGE


Invite your friends over for a haunting, play flip-up baseball, learn kung-fu, hypnotize, be taller, learn how to be a motorcycle mechanic, cartoon for money, play guitar in 7 days, and buy comic books from Howard M. Rogofsky! And now back to our story.


I've got a strange feeling I can almost feel the presence of Jack The Ripper! Lucky for me, his deep psychological problems manifested themselves as destructive urges aimed only at women. So I'm perfectly safe!


JACK THE RIPPER! IT'S NOT POSSIBLE because you're dead, and even if you were a ghost, and even if ghosts could kill people with ghost knives, why kill me? I'm not an East End prostitute! Jack! Think about what you're doing! This totally ruins your legacy as a woman-hating sex killer! Aieee!


EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT WE'RE STILL BLAMING ALL MURDERS ON THIS ONE DEAD GUY

And meanwhile back in America...


Bah! What do those Britishers take us for? FOOLS? This is just another one of those British hoaxes, like the Loch Ness Monster or the Spice Girls. I'm going to go to England and prove Jack The Ripper is dead! You stay home in the meantime and write a comic book story about Jack The Ripper without doing even the slightest bit of research as to who Jack The Ripper was, what he did, when he did it, and whether or not he was ever caught. That'll show 'em!

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