OUTRAGEOUS magazine Viz was in trouble again last night over a comic strip in its latest edition which features two of the country's most infamous serial killers.

The new edition of Tyneside-based adult comic features Harold and Fred - They Make Ladies Dead, a cartoon strip featuring mass-murderers Harold Shipman and Fred West.

It shows the two men as next-door neighbours competing to murder a woman who has moved in across the road - with Fred West planning to use a drill to carry out the killing.

But the magazine was last night branded "sick and disgusting" by a leading campaigner for victims' families.

Shipman was jailed for life last year after being found guilty of murdering 15 women. It is thought he may have claimed the lives of hundreds more victims.

West killed himself on New Year's Day, 1995, before coming to trial. His wife Rose is serving a life sentence for murder.

Last night, a leading campaigner for victims' rights in the region called for the comic strip to be banned.

David Hines formed the North-East Victims' Association in 1992 after his daughter,, Marie was killed by an ex-boyfriend. He is the organisation's chairman.

He said: "This is disgusting and sick. I cannot believe they would print something like this. It is disgraceful.

"It shows that the value of life is now so low that they are prepared to make sick jokes about it, and lower it to the level of a supposedly amusing cartoon or comic.

"Well, I don't think it is humourous. And I don't think the families of all those who have had loved ones who lost their lives in the worst way humanely possible will either.

"I think it should be banned. It is glamourising the killing of others."

The popular comic has run into trouble several times in the past.

It came under fire for insulting the town of Hartlepool in a strip about Andy Capp creator Reg Smythe and created an uproar among the gipsy community over another of its cartoons.

It also faced criticism over a cartoon portraying the late Princess Diana in a spoof photo strip called Randall and Diana Deceased, a take-off of the 1960s television ser-ies Randall and Hopkirk Deceased.

No one at Viz could be contacted for comment last night.