Skizz first saw the light of day as a serialisation in 2000AD in 1983, when the powers that be there decided they wanted a story to capitalise on the success of the film ET, which had been released in 1982 to enormous box-office success.

Twenty years later they’re re-releasing the film, and more or less by coincidence, re-releasing this collection too. It’s a lot easier to read it in this sort of format, with the entire ninety-six pages of story between two covers, instead of being serialised four pages at a time over twenty-two weeks, meaning the whole thing took five months to unfold. That’s even slower than American comics, with their monthly schedules! But I digress…

Alan Moore’s story follows the established ET storyline at first, even to the point that the protagonist, the eponymous Skizz, is found in a shed in someone’s back garden. From there, though, it starts to veer off in an entirely different direction. For a start, the story is told largely from the point of view of Skizz himself. After having his spacecraft self-destruct following a crash-landing on his way to the Formalhaut Ore Discussions, Interpreter Zhcchz find himself alone on a completely alien planet. What’s worse, he’s in Birmingham. He ends up in Roxy O’Rourke’s garden shed. Roxy is a schoolgirl with post-punk Big Hair and an ex-boyfriend called Darren (or sometimes Darrell). Predictably enough, she takes in Skizz, but he gets taken away from her by the incredibly sinister Inspector Van Owen, who is South African. Roxy sets out to rescue Skizz, aided and abetted by local lads Loz and Cornelius. It all ends happily, and there’s not a dry eye in the house.

But this is Alan Moore we’re talking about, and things are more than they seem, and many of the characters foreshadow much of his later work. Van Owen, the South African policeman, epitomises racism and hate in all its manifestations. No one seems too perturbed when he gets his just deserts in the end. Roxy is simply the first of many strong and wonderful female characters from Moore, and predates Halo Jones by only a year. Moore is still writing these wonderful women. Take a look at Promethea, or, actually, anything he wrote with a female character. Skizz talks in a... halting... manner, much as Swamp Thing would be soon afterwards. Loz, who comes to the aid of Roxy, is startlingly reminiscent of a leather-clad John Constantine. Cornelius, who is an unemployed pipe-fitter, and a little simple, has all the best lines. At one point he commiserates with Roxy on Skizz’s isolation:

"It’s great when you understand things. Sometimes I can’t understand things at all. When I do, it’s great. That’s why I feel sorry for your mate. There’s lots of things he can’t understand. There’s lots of things I can’t understand, and I live here." Even the big rescue scene at the end is a foreshadowing of a similar scene in DR & Quinch.

This is not the most important thing Alan Moore ever wrote, but it’s an intriguing glimpse at his early work, and the end always brings a tear to my eye. But then I cried at ET, too.

Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Jim Baikie
Publisher: Titan Books
Date: May 2002
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 1840234504

Review originally on The Alien Online