This was one of the freebies from our recent visit to BICS 2009. Skizz written by Alan Moore and drawn by Jim Baikie was first published in 1983, serialised over a number of 2000AD issues. The main character is Skizz an alien that crash lands on Earth and is helped by a school girl called Roxy. Its set in Birmingham UK which is very appropriate considering I picked up the book at the Birmingham Comic Con and I have lived in Brum for 11 years so have a certain attachment to it. I can confidently say that this definitely helped me along when reading it. It was nice to see that not only was there recognisable land marks in the art but also regional accents in the script.

When I started reading this book I didn't really know how old it was. I should have appreciated that Moore (see what I did there...), as at first I was feeling a little disappointed that all of the characters were utterly familiar. We have all met them all before and they were pretty unoriginal. The odd thing though was that although I felt like that I still wanted to read on. I think this is testament to actually how good Alan Moore's writing is, not only was I hooked but after checking out when it was written it made me think that the reason we are so familiar with these sorts of characters is because of Moore.

The artwork is not really quite to my taste. I didn't hate it but I felt there was a lot of unnecessary detail that confused the page more than it did anything stylistic. I generally like black and white though and after reading a few pages I got in to reading the art work.

On the whole I enjoyed this. Its a quick hit short story that is well told and has a definite end conclusion, even if it was pretty predictable. I wouldn't say rush out and buy this as its definitely showing its age but if you see it for cheap some where and fancy a quick story in between something a bit heavier then do it. I guess its a bit like picking up a cheap DVD from the corner shop although that does read a lot harsher than it sounded in my head.