On his blog, Will Pfeifer shares a four-page parody of Frank Miller’s Daredevil called “Grit,” written by Alan Moore and published in an old Marvel British comic anthology in 1983:
If you’re only familiar with Miller’s work from ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, DARK KNIGHT or even his later run on DAREDEVIL (with David Mazzucchelli), it’s hard to convey just how accurately Moore captures the feeling of those early ’80s issues. Everything from the overblown narration to the armies of bag ladies and guys with boomboxes on their shoulders is right out of Miller’s initial run on the book. Even the background jokes (Josie’s Bar, “Vote for Cherryh”) refer to long-forgotten bits of business. Some of the art by Moore’s partner in satire Mike Collins (especially the “Pigseye” panels on page 3 and the “Eretkra” close-up on page 4) are dead-on images from the original, and the use of Zip-a-tone, silhouetted skylines and abundance of water towers are straight out of the Miller/Janson ambience.
But is it funny? Well, sort of. The jokes are juvenille, but not too bad, and Moore is clearly paying tribute to the throw-in-every-joke-that-fits style of Kurtzman’s MAD. But it’s not exactly a perceptive, startling satire that questions the use of comic book violence and forecasts the dark trends to come in both comics in general and Miller’s work in particular.
