2000 AD #319
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeProg 319 falls in the heart of Alan Moore and Jim Baikie's Skizz serial (progs 308–330, 1983), which holds a distinct place in British comics history as Moore's first regular ongoing strip for 2000 AD — the creative laboratory where he began stretching beyond short-form work toward the sustained character writing that would define his career. Set in a grimly credible Thatcherite Birmingham, the story transplanted the premise of E.T. into working-class social realism, introducing teenage protagonist Roxy O'Rourke as a lead supporting character at a time when female-centred perspectives were rare in the anthology. The prog also continued the Rogue Trooper strip, one of 2000 AD's signature war-science-fiction serials of its early-1980s golden period, running alongside Sam Slade's Robo-Hunter comedy-detective strip and the fictional editor Tharg the Mighty's long-running Nerve Centre — a line-up that captures the anthology firing on all cylinders.
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Skizz came about not from Moore's own initiative but from an editorial commission: as one source documents, the 2000 AD editorial staff suggested a strip about an alien stranded on Earth, fully aware that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was due for release, though Moore grounded it in the register of Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff rather than Spielberg's sentimentality. Moore had spent the previous three years contributing more than fifty one-off strips to the anthology under umbrella titles such as Tharg's Future Shocks; Skizz was the promotion to sustained serial storytelling. Jim Baikie, a Scottish artist whose detailed black-and-white linework was well suited to the strip's dual demands of alien spectacle and urban grime, collaborated on all twelve episodes of the original run and later returned to write and draw two sequel serials on his own.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Prog 319 (1983, IPC) falls within the original Skizz serial run, which spanned progs 308 to 330 — Alan Moore's first ongoing series for 2000 AD, written by Moore with art by Jim Baikie.
- The Skizz concept was editorially mandated: Moore was instructed to write a story about a stranded alien to capitalise on the then-England-unreleased E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but Moore gave it a distinctly British social-realist tone rooted in Thatcher-era unemployment and working-class Birmingham.
- Skizz introduced Roxanne 'Roxy' O'Rourke, a teenage girl, as the story's primary human protagonist — an unusual choice of lead supporting character for the predominantly male-skewing 2000 AD anthology of the period.
- The alien protagonist's full designation is Interpreter Zhcchz of the Tau Ceti Imperium; 'Skizz' is the nickname given by Roxy because his true name is unpronounceable.
- The issue also carries a chapter of Rogue Trooper, the Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons-created military science fiction strip (debuted prog 228, 1981), which at this point in 1983 was deep in its original 'hunt the Traitor General' storyline.
- Venus Bluegenes, indexed as a character present in this issue, is a GI Doll — a genetically engineered female counterpart to Rogue's class of Genetic Infantrymen — who later earned her own solo spin-off strip with stories by writers including Grant Morrison, Steve White, and Dan Abnett.
- Sam Slade, the Robo-Hunter protagonist created by John Wagner, appears in this prog; the strip was a long-running comedy-detective series at the core of the anthology's early-1980s line-up.
- Tharg the Mighty, 2000 AD's fictional green alien editor from Betelgeuse, is a recurring presence across the anthology's Nerve Centre letters and editorial pages — a sustained in-universe conceit that has run since the comic's 1977 launch.
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