Long before Alan Moore became the comic book superstar that he is today he slaved away in underground and alternative fanzines before moving into the music press where he created a couple of excellent weekly strips including “The Star my Degradation“ for “Sounds” in 1980 (see my
previous post ). However, before this in March 1979 Moore created the underground comix type private eye known as Rosco Moscow under the pseudonym Curt Vile. Although on the face of it Roscoe Moscow’s was a fun character whose only role was to find the “killer of Rock n’ Roll” the strip also dealt with darker subject matter including, mental illness, the occult and Nazi iconography. Below is the first episode of "Roscoe Moscow" from Sounds, 31 March 1979.
In the strip Moore deals with the music industry through the use of three parodies of major artists at the time: Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and the Sex Pistols. In the strip Iggy Pop becomes Wiggy Pulp, a subservient figure to Bowie who is called David Boko - the “Master” and a many tentacled monster. The Sex Pistols become the “Stick Pimples.”
In other areas Moore deals with superheroes where he ruthlessly parodies numerous characters including The Human Torch (The Human Safetymatch), Plastic Man ( Plasticene Man), Batman (Wombat Man), The Silver Surfer (The Silver Sufferer), The Green Lantern (The Green Latrine) and Dr. Strange (Doctor Marginally Abnormal). Other comic book references inluded Archie, Will Eisner and Dr Sivana and the Marvel family.
At the end of the strip we find out that there was no Wombat Man or Iggly Pop and David Bowie was not a many tentacles monster, instead we realise that Roscoe was undergoing a complete mental breakdown and it was all in his mind. Roscoe Moscow was a sad dark comedy expertly written with compassion, anger and a lot of humour by a man that would soon take British comics by storm before moving onto the US.
Episode 57 & 60: Images taken from "The Sounds Project"
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This is all completely unknown by me. I am not the greatest Alan Moore booster out there, but I've come under his spell more and more as the years have rolled by.
ReplyDeleteI was really only aware of Alan Moore's US comic work through Swamp Thing which I loved. I ve picked up some of his other American work and most has been pretty enjoyable so I get the "attraction" others have in his work.
ReplyDeleteThat was an interesting read, McScotty. I squinted at the pages you posted and they were pretty amusing - certainly the humour that I would have responded to had I read them back in the early 80s. Deserves to be in a collected edition. I wonder if DC were aware of this side of Alan Moore's work before they brought him on-board a few years later. Reading that final page featuring Moore himself, I first thought "What is Roy Wood doing here?".
ReplyDeleteAlso, Alan Moore may have been a Woody Allen fan, as many of the readers would have been familiar with the "man who thinks he's a chicken" joke from the 1977 film Annie Hall. And Allen had also written a number of surrealistic books in the early 70s.
Anyway, a great choice for a blog. I love it when I learn something new.
Glad this was of interest baggsey. The humour was certainly it of its time which was what attracted me to it in the late 70s early 80s. As far as I am aware it hasn't been collected and I suspect it may be to dated. There were quite a few music paper strips at this time and my favourite was probably J Edward Oliver's weekly strip in Disc\ Record Morror which I may add later if I can find the few pages I cut out the papers. I doubt DC had heard of these Alan Moore strips and focused more on his 2000AD stories.
ReplyDeleteI thought the very same thing about Roy Wood when I saw that last strip .