Introducing CIMITERIA

Cimiteria is another of those outrageous anti-heroines of the italian fumetti of the 70s and 80s. After voluptuous vampiress Zora, sucking her way through all continents – and outer space, no, really! - and a flood of all kinds of other horror series, the publishers evidently thought that there could be always room for another horror-heroine.



So after Zora and before Sukia there was Cimiteria. Not as succesful as Zora, but still she made 119 issues of horror, torture and sex.






(Insert of boring facts: One can only speculate about sales, but they must have been healthy. In March 1981 for instance publisher Edifumetto, publisher of Zora, Cimiteria and Sukia among others, alone published 20 different books. Plus some reprints. And this was only one of a few publishers. Most of these books were horror or crime, done with heavy doses of porn.)

But who is Cimiteria?

According to the first issues Cimiteria is – a revived corpse. A Magus raised her from the dead with the help of dwarfish Quasimodo. Hence the name Cimiteria. From il cimitero. The Cemetary. The cadaver as heroine – how revolting can you get? Sure, vampires are also technically dead, but still … it isn´t just the same, I guess.

Quasimodo has the hots for her. Unfortunatly poor Cimiteria has a little problem. Besides being a non-decomposing corpse. If she has sex – at least the conventional way - she kills or maims the partner. No wonder she is a bit unstable. The first storylines concerns Cimiterias love for Lord James. Ever the practical – and sligthly murderous – gal of a typical fumetti she kills his bride to be before the altar. Out of jealousy Quasimodo frames the lord for the murder. And the melodram can start.

(Cimiteria´s "little" problem)


















In the course of the series Cimiteria gets better, her little sex-problem gets solved. Each issue is the usual fumetti mayhem. She – and Quasimodo, who ends up as her on and off lover, so love wins – gets involved in all kinds of bizarre adventures. She fights robots and monsters, gets kidnapped quite often, has sex and kills.


















As the series debuted some years later than Zora, it is outright pornographic in nature from the beginging and the violence is cranked more than a few notches up. It could be argued that all fumetti are disturbingly mysogynystic in nature, on the other hand these comics are as equal as you can get when it gets to violence. Men are as often maimed or raped. Or have sex with each other. One should think that the audience of these books were your typical young heterosexuals you had to make your product for, but interestingly in the fumettis gay sex was quite a common thing.

(Cimiteria and Quasimodo - a relationship made in hell)

Cimiteria revels in breaking taboos for plain titilation. Here you get it all. Torture, violence. Necrophilism. And a bit of black humor, as this picture demonstrates. Not to mention a disregard for things like copyright or taste. Breakfast at 221 B Baker Street - fumetti style. Everything you always thought about Holmes and Watson, eh? No idea was too far out, too gross or too juvenile for the writers and artists to do a story.

The art is at times less refined than in Zora. But the cover-art is surely as beautiful and often quite spectacular. Not surprisingly the element of necrophilism is a often recurring theme on the covers. Cemetarys, nude corpses, Quasimodo digging.

The stories are in the typical fumetti style, but the tone is somehow much darker than Zora, the content often downright unpleasant. There is a truly mean streak in Cimiteria, the in-your-face atrocities can get as wearying as the ever present nihilism. Where you can chuckle about Zoras mayhem, with Cimiteria this chuckle often dies. One wonders how they managed to get this in the shops and kept it published for a few years. In many regards Cimiteria is beyond the pale. But it is also an example of a horror-comic which could only be created in the fumetti-era. Where horror is not equated only with tons of gore but with story-telling which recognized no taboos whatsoever.