Vampira

Drew Friedman brought this Vampira to life in 1985 through Fantagraphics — the fiercely independent publisher that defined alternative comics at their most daring — making her a genuine artifact of the Bronze Age underground. She surfaces in the gloriously titled Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental, a series whose very name winks at the reader, and later haunts the pages of John Carpenter's Tales for a HalloweeNight, keeping wonderfully strange company alongside the likes of Shemp Howard, Bob Hope, and Tor Johnson. With only three catalog appearances she's a rare find, the kind of deep-cut discovery that makes digging through Fantagraphics back issues so rewarding for collectors who love their comics weird, smart, and soaked in pop-culture atmosphere.