The Maxx
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The Maxx is a comic book and animated series written and illustrated by Sam Kieth (with writing assistance from William Messner-Loebs earlier on in the series and from Alan Moore in a later issue), and published by Image Comics. The first issue was published in March, 1993.
The series follows the story of The Maxx, a homeless man who believes he is a superhero. The Maxx shifts between the real world and a dream world, which he refers to as The Outback, which is just as real to him as the real world. Julie Winters is a "freelance social worker", who befriends The Maxx. Little does she know that she and The Maxx have a deeper connection, and it involves the dream world into which The Maxx is constantly drawn.
Plot
After a woman named Julie Winters stops her car to help a man in the street, she is beaten, raped, and left to die. To cope, she starts to hide in what is referred to as her 'Outback' (a primeval landscape situated entirely in Julie's subconscious), where she has control. In The Outback she becomes The Leopard Queen and she rules over everything. She spends so much time dwelling in her Outback, in an effort to block out her real-life trauma, that things in both the real world and The Outback became unstable.One night she is driving and accidentally hits a homeless man with her car. Remembering what happened the last time she stopped to help someone, she ignores it and tries to cover up the incident. She covers the unconscious body with trash, but in doing so she unintentionally opens a link to the Outback. After Julie leaves, a lampshade in the trash (which had brushed the Outback) expands over the man's body, becoming a mask and costume and linking him to Julie. The series starts three years later, and the reader is not initally aware of the deep interconnections between the characters, those being slowly revealed over the course of the series. The homeless man does not remember anything about himself, only that Julie is important to him somehow. He doesn't even know his own name (he now calls himself The Maxx) or what he looks like under his mask.
Mr. Gone, a serial killer and rapist with a telepathic link to Julie and extensive knowledge of and access to people's various Outbacks, starts calling Julie in an effort to contact her. Julie rejects him outright, but Gone is undaunted. Eventually The Maxx gets in his way by 'protecting' Julie, so Mr. Gone tries to kill him. Thinking that Mr. Gone is evil, The Maxx fights him in both The Outback and the real world. In the meantime, Julie leaves Maxx and wanders the countryside, sleeping with any man she meets and eventually, after a long and sordid tale, Mr. Gone makes Julie see the truth about what really happened to her, and how The Maxx came to be. As Julie begins to heal herself and The Outback, the series starts to follow the life of Sarah, a depressed teenager who is the daughter of a friend of Julie's. She is often in conflict with her mother, who disciplines her so she won't grow up to be like her father, Mr. Gone.
After the conclusion of the first storyline, the action leaps forward from 1995 (the then-present) to the then-future year of 2005. Julie and Dave (the former Maxx) having vanished, the action focuses on Sara (as she now spells her name) and a murderous escapee from her Outback. The story also reveals Sara's Outback and the previously-unrevealed backstory of her father, Mr. Gone. A new version of the Maxx, an incarnation of Sara's rather than Julie's spirit animal, also manifested himself. Dave, who dons his Maxx constume once again, returns with Julie and her son, to confront Mr. Gone.
Spirit animals
One of the dominant concepts of The Maxx is that every human being has a spirit animal, which is linked to the person during a pivotal moment in their life. Julie's spirit animal is a rabbit. When she was very young Julie rescued an injured rabbit that lay in the road in front of her house (as seen in The Maxx #10). Julie later witnessed her mother bludgeoning the rabbit to death with a shovel as form of euthanasia. This traumatic event linked the rabbit to Julie's subconscious. Julie projects the rabbit onto Dave as she tries to take care of him like the rabbit she was unable to save. Maxx, who is linked to Julie and her spirit animal, becomes worried that if he removes his mask he will find the head of a rabbit beneath it.Sarah's spirit animal is a horse. In the later half of the series this spirit animal manifests itself as Norbert, a homeless man Sarah takes pity on.
The type of spirit animal a person is linked to also seems to have an effect on what their Outback is like.
Isz
The main creatures that inhabit The Outback are white Isz. White Isz are herbivores but can eat most other Outback creatures because almost none of them have flesh that is considered meat. When white Isz are brought from The Outback into the real world they become black Isz. Black Isz are carnivores. They are also stronger, faster, and have sharper teeth than white Isz. Black Isz assume different appearances depending on the clothes they're wearing, if one is dressed as an old lady, it appears as an old lady to anyone who doesn't know what it really is. All Isz are eyeless. In the latter part of the series, Sara's Isz appear as pink, flying, eyeless fairies that explode if not kept in water.Graphic novels
- The Maxx Book 1: Issues #1-6
- The Maxx Book 2: Issues #7-13
- The Maxx Book 3: Issues #14-20
- The Maxx Book 4: Isuues #21-27
- The Maxx Book 5: Issues #28-35
- The Maxx Book 6: Collects the spin-off series Friends of Maxx
- Other issues include The Maxx #1/2, and the Gen¹³/The Maxx crossover
TV series
The comic book series was adapted into an animated series as part of MTV's Oddities block. It covered Darker Image #1, The Maxx #1/2, and issues #1-11 of the regular series, depicting the introduction of Julie, the original Maxx, Mr. Gone, and, later, Sarah, but little of the revelations of the origins of and interconnections between these characters (which appeared later in the comic). The series was one of the first examples of a drawn animated TV series to not utilize cells, but scanned artwork for coloring and animation with computers. It can be described as a postmodern pastiche, collecting many different types of animation, as well as many different drawing styles (thanks to Kieth's drawing style), making it a unique series. A videotape of the series was released on April 16, 1996, but was strongly criticized by fans for extensive cuts, presumably made to trim the running time for tape. The series has yet to be officially released on DVD, though pirated copies can be found on Internet auction sites like eBay and at many fan conventions.
- Working title: The Maxx
- Other titles: MTV Oddities Presents The Maxx, MTV's The Maxx, Sam Kieth's The Maxx
- Writing credits: Sam Kieth, Bill Messner-Loebs
- Animation Studio: Rough Draft Studios, Inc.
- Directors: Gregg Vanzo (Supervising Director), Yeol Jung Chang, Eugene Salandra, Ilya Skorupsky
- Music: Kurt Vanzo, Miki Navazio
- Average run time: 11 minutes (except episode 11, which was 19 minutes long)
- Aspect ratio: 1.33 : 1
- Original run: April 8, 1995 – June 19, 1995
- No. of episodes: 13
External links
- [Sam Kieth's website]
- [The (almost) complete Sam Kieth checklist]
- [The Maxx's Cardboard Box]
- [TV.com entry for The Maxx]
- [Online petition to bring The Maxx animated series to DVD]
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