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A review by thecommonswings
Skizz by Alan Moore, Jim Baikie
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