Comic book scribe Will Pfeifer (Catwoman) posted a true gem on his blog awhile back. Apparently even before Watchmen Alan Moore had no love for his contemporary comic creators, but at least back then he had a sense of humor about it. Presented below is a 4-page satire of Frank Miller’s grim and gritty Daredevil run featuring Dourdevil: The Man without a Sense of Humor. Oddly prescient, but after all Mr. Moore is a wizard. Overall the script does a good job mocking the overblown prose style of Miller and the art by Mike Collins is a fantastic facsimile of the early 1980’s Miller pencils, especially on the latter two pages. Check it out (click the pages to embiggenate), give yourself a hearty chuckle then head over to Will Pfeifer’s blog X-Ray Spex for some insightful analysis and commentary. Speaking of comments, be sure to call Pfeifer (and Moore) to thank them or they’ll never do anything for you every again. Lousy ingrates.
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Started off funny and then the second page happened. and the third. and the fourth. First one was really good though!
I remember this, in fact I have it in my loft somewhere. It was from Daredevils, Marvel UK. Only lasted 11 issues and was basically an Alan Moore fanzine/magazine. It had some cracking stuff in there.
Most of my copies were damaged in a senior school cookery class incident, every couple of years I try and steam the pages apart. What were we trying to cook that has still got sticking power to this day? (Ramble over)
Alan Moore clearly missed out on a promising comedy career.
Anyone else spot the visual nod to the Spirit in the second panel? Pretty neat.
Grim, gritty & realistic? I thought Alan Moore created that! (Or was it actually Stan Lee, 25 years eariler?)
That is AWESOME!
Dourdevil gained his powers by being hit in the head by a radioactive Ray Charles record. That shit is funny.
Ha! It says Miller eats babies on the wall. Nice.
That fourth page is in Understanding Comics.
Did anybody read "Will Pfeifer (Catwoman)" and, just for a split second, wonder if Michelle got a sex change before remembering Will wrote for the book? Anyone? Anyone?
Matt and all his loves are marked through on the first page and the Batman in the night sky, awesome..
too many words, on the first page alone. . . will try to read . . . later
Before you get too excited thinking that Alan Moore had little respect for Frank Miller, read his essay on Frank Miller "The Importance of Being Frank" from 1983. You can find a CBZ of it at this page:
http://fourcolorheroes.home.insightbb.com/free.html
Worryingly I too have the issue this came from, back in the 80s. It’s weird to see it doing the rounds again.
You know, Alan Moore strikes as a brilliant writer with a non-pareil intellect. But he doesn’t play well with others does he?
Pretty amusing. Who’s Frank Miller & Alan Moore? Sort of reminded me of a few of those Mad magazine movie send-ups. Oh well, good parady anyway. Thanks for sharing.
@LostArtist – that’s part of the joke. 😉