Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120852 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 104 pages

sci-fi-online 30 APril 2002
While Alan Moore's warped brain comes up with a mighty fine plot it is Jim Baike's art that, as always, shines through.

Synopsis
Zhcchz is a Tau Cetian interpreter travelling home through the stars; Roxy is just another Birmingham schoolgirl heading home after another boring day. But when the two collide, both their lives will change forever! Now Roxy must protect her new alien friend, "Skizz"...and try to find a way to send him home. To help, she's got Loz, the laconic biker, and slow-witted, unemployed pipe-fitter Cornelius - but standing in their way is obsessive Government alien-hunter Van Owen...

Customer Reviews

ET cloned?
Back in the 80s, 2000AD script writer Alan Moore was asked to come up with a response to ET, in the style of the comic at that time. Moore, being a lateral thinking kinda guy decided to put a spin on the whole thing. The result was Skizz, which far from being a cuddly 'family' alien movie on paper became a somewhat depressing, emotional and classic tale. It is unmistakably British in both attitude and realism. From the Fonz-like Loz to schoolgirl Roxy, the characters are fascinating, albeit stylised caricatures crafted to perfectly fit the scenario they are in.

Alan Moore is arguably the greatest comics author in history and Skizz does nothing to taint that.

Jim Baikie's art is superb and really does fit the story. You know an artist is right for a script when you simply can't imagine anyone else drawing it, even 'better' artists such as Bolland or Gibbons.

One thing I must point out, is that this really is a piece of its time. It is set in the 1980s under Thatcherism with anti-establishment feeling rife throughout the piece. The references are easy to pick up on if you lived through that dark decade, but perhaps a little tough for a teenager today to fully understand what the underlying feeling behind some of the dialogue is. There are lovely little moments such as (from memory):

Van Owen "The police? now we're getting somewhere. What did she tell you about the police?"
Skizz: "She said... they're not as good as Madness."

ET meets Boys from the Blackstuff
A real piece of 1980s culture but none-the-worse for it. Pre Watchmen, Moore was writing stuff like this for 2000AD and it is only right that a larger audience gets to savour such a classic. Suprisingly for Moore lots of feel-good mixed in with the gritty - From Hell it certainly isn't but not every book needs that level of darkness. There's still a bad guy - a typical apartheid era South African - and loads of ordinary folk who when pushed become heroes.

Be warned it's in Black & White but the art is as good as the plot and dialogue.