The very premise of Daredevil lends itself to parody. I mean, he’s a blind superhero. While the way this actually works in the comic is pretty neat, the concept seems strange at first glance and it’s perfectly understandable if the general public is a little confused about the hows and whys of Daredevils power set.
Daredevil parodies tend to zero in on Daredevil’s blindness, and many of them are quite cute. Then there are those which are in the Mr. Magoo vein, making fun of blind people in general. Not quite as cute, if you ask me. This post includes instances of both, though it features only a handful of examples. For a very comprehensive list of parodies that runs up until the last few years, see this page on the Daredevil Resource.
Okay, let’s get going. I should mention that these pics have been saved on my hard drive and then uploaded. This is because I don’t want to be guilty of bandwidth theft. Full credit, as well as the source, is clearly listed. I want to advertise other people’s work, not steal it.
Foxtrot (dated March 2003, just after the Daredevil movie came out)
This one was lifted directly from the Daredevil Resource, though not from the parody section. My bad. Original credit goes to the creator Bill Amend, of course. This cartoon pretty much reminds us of why there are so few kids out there playing Daredevil. Although I guess we can blame at least some of that on the devil horns…
The Mini Marvels cartoons by Chris Giarrusso
These are well known and quite funny. Everything Mini Marvels related, as well as info on the digests available for purchase can be found HERE. If you look in the Bullpen Bits section (under “comic strips”), know that strips 2, 9 and 57 contain DD appearances. There is also the image below, advertising a Civil War segment from the most recent digest. If you can’t find our little guy in red, he’s in the bottom left corner. Facing the wrong way…
Year One by M. Parkinson
This strip, which has sadly been discontinued, is a personal favorite of mine. It’s just so gosh darn it cute, featuring Marvel characters as first graders. Parkinson’s take on Civil War is just hilarious and I recommend that you read through the whole thing actually. There are quite a few Daredevil appearances in Year One, and I listed a lot of them in a post on the ManWithoutFear message board. Here are a couple of my favorites, both featuring Daredevil and Moon Knight, the latter seeking out the former and, over a series of posts, gets some tips on how to become a more popular “dark” hero:
Commercial for the Comic Vault in Chicago
This one definitely falls in the “magooesque” category, but there’s a related one starring Aqua Man that’s actually pretty funny.
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed at least a few of these. I’ll catch you later!
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Alan Moore’s “Dourdevil” parody of Frank Miller’s work.
You can find it in this Newsarama thread.
Yeah, I’m familiar with it. Actually, when I started this post, there were a lot more things in the back of my mind that got lost along the way. I think that, ultimately, I just went with some of the examples I knew right away where to locate.
Speaking of Frank Miller, I just love that Miller parody of what his Charlie Brown would look like Sin City style. Let’s see if I can find that somewhere. *goes to look* Right, HERE it is.
Yeah, that one’s hilarious.
I read the first issue of TNMT thanks to FCBD and I learned that their origin is a direct parody from Daredevil’s origin.
thanks for the laughs. i remember one from “what the..?” called “what if DD had a dishonest tailor?” DD was wearing a green and pink suit.
funny and it also made me wonder, who makes matts suits?
Merzah from Prague
Merzah, are you the same Merzah from Prague who used to write on the Marvel Appendix website?
If so, we are about to do an anniversary event for the website and we’re trying to locate all of the past writers to see if they’d write a new profile to celebrate the impending Profile#10,000! We’d start with the most recent writer and go backwards through time until we hit #10,000 by the site’s founder, Snood.
If this is you, any chance you’d be willing to join us for the event? We’d love to have you onboard! We’ve already gotten about 3/4 of the old gang back together! If so, shoot me an email at protoman20xx@gmail.com