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hakimbriki's review against another edition
4.0
I picked this up at a local comic convention last year, on a whim. I did not regret it. Skizz is a short, straight-forward E.T.esque story that is compelling and funny. The perfect read if you are looking for something not too challenging yet gripping.
Alan Moore's characters are very well-crafted, that is no secret. Cornelius, who is very reminiscent of Tom Cullen (Stephen King's The Stand), is the stand-out character in the book as far as I'm concerned.
4 out of 5 mostly because, for a moment, I felt like a kid again.
Alan Moore's characters are very well-crafted, that is no secret. Cornelius, who is very reminiscent of Tom Cullen (Stephen King's The Stand), is the stand-out character in the book as far as I'm concerned.
4 out of 5 mostly because, for a moment, I felt like a kid again.
shane_tiernan's review against another edition
3.0
A darker, more adult, more English, version of E.T. Fun and I like the art, but nothing Earth-shattering.
ivan_tw's review against another edition
3.0
I have to admit, I wasn't looking forward to Skizz when I picked it up. I had never even heard of it prior to doing this read-through, and my little bit of research told me it was Alan Moore's attempt at writing E.T., with the same basic starting premise. I should state here that I loathe E.T. as one of the most pure examples of the cinematic 'cheap shot' that goes for emotion over depth. So how was Skizz? Far from great, but actually not too bad. The story is fairly similar to E.T., but it takes place in lower-class Birmingham, so there's a great dollop of working-class angst, with two of the adult characters being out-of-work pipe-fitters. Skizz' keeper is mid-80s punk girl Roxy, who came off as impulsive, defiant, strong-willed, but ultimately good, and who I probably would've had a crush on, had I been that age in mid-1983. The dialogue is great, surprisingly funny given the nasty setting, Jim Baikie's art is sort of angular but passable, considering most of the deck that came out in the issues of 2000 A.D. Moore does commit the ultimate comic writer sin of denying pathos by bringing back an apparently-dead character with the ol' "he's alright after all!" line, but then the same guy gave us Marvelman and Watchmen so I'll cut him some slack for now. All in all, Skizz is weaker than anything else I've read of Moore's, but I still have a whole lot to go, and the dialogue is written well enough that you might be surprised by it.
thecommonswings's review
5.0
Many things annoy me now about Alan Moore: the grudges, the flogging of a dead horse in League to the extent it became utterly joyless, that occasional sense his comics are too constructed to simply just enjoy... but for me, most annoying is his dismissal of his juvenilia. Because for some of us that juvenilia is guileless and spontaneous and joyful, all things I think Moore would lose the further into his career he got
Skizz is, predictably, scathing about it now but I think this is not only wrong of him, but also quite sad because it’s a sweet tale of a misplaced alien that surprisingly unfolds into a story about people who think they’re somehow unworthy or useless discovering a sense of pride in themselves. As someone born in Northampton I sometimes find Moore’s constant evoking of the town as a mystical wonderland a bit silly, but Birmingham is perfect as the location here: the second city, but unloved and depressed and full of people struggling to find beauty in a tarnished home. It’s got a real sense of time and place and for some 2000AD readers the politics - which Moore happily admits were stolen from Bleasdale - must have been something of a shock
But this is where the story is so good: the sense of people trying to recover dignity - most perfectly embodied in the fantastically named Cornelius Cardew - robbed from them. It’s in many ways a dry run for Halo Jones (Baikie’s lovingly scratchy art is very close to Gibson’s) with a grounded female lead in a very real world. It also has a surprising and wonderfully matter of fact black characters which again was unheard of outside of Harlem Heroes and Judge Giant in the Prog. The only hamfisted addition is our villain - it’s nicely pointed that he’s South African but his accent is particularly overdone and where Moore quietly drops some of these affectations Van Owen is still way too obvious to really work. I guess it makes sense as our titular hero is a translator but it feels like a rare misstep in what is otherwise Moore at his very best
Skizz is, predictably, scathing about it now but I think this is not only wrong of him, but also quite sad because it’s a sweet tale of a misplaced alien that surprisingly unfolds into a story about people who think they’re somehow unworthy or useless discovering a sense of pride in themselves. As someone born in Northampton I sometimes find Moore’s constant evoking of the town as a mystical wonderland a bit silly, but Birmingham is perfect as the location here: the second city, but unloved and depressed and full of people struggling to find beauty in a tarnished home. It’s got a real sense of time and place and for some 2000AD readers the politics - which Moore happily admits were stolen from Bleasdale - must have been something of a shock
But this is where the story is so good: the sense of people trying to recover dignity - most perfectly embodied in the fantastically named Cornelius Cardew - robbed from them. It’s in many ways a dry run for Halo Jones (Baikie’s lovingly scratchy art is very close to Gibson’s) with a grounded female lead in a very real world. It also has a surprising and wonderfully matter of fact black characters which again was unheard of outside of Harlem Heroes and Judge Giant in the Prog. The only hamfisted addition is our villain - it’s nicely pointed that he’s South African but his accent is particularly overdone and where Moore quietly drops some of these affectations Van Owen is still way too obvious to really work. I guess it makes sense as our titular hero is a translator but it feels like a rare misstep in what is otherwise Moore at his very best
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