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"