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Underground > Comic Books >

The Maxx

Bubblegum Death

01:49 / 24.02.06

So did anyone else read this book? It's my favorite comic book of all time.(at least the first 20 issues, anyway).
I even got my senior quote from high school out of this book.
It's a shame how it just kind of fizzled out. Does anyone know how it ended?

06:42 / 24.02.06

I loved the book when it started, but never got round to the end either. I'm slowly collecting the trades though, and the final one has come out now or is due out very soon. Beautiful art work and nightmarishly disconcerting writing. Did you see the MTV cartoon, almost an exact translation of the book. I think I got to about the end of the seeming first run, or about 16 issues in before I stopped reading comics all together for a long while. It was coming out very infrequently though I seem to remember.

08:15 / 24.02.06

The Maxx was one of the great comic series of the 90s and one that really deserves to be brought to a wider audience's attention.

There were 35 issues of the Maxx all told plus three larger Friend's of Maxx specials.

The first 11 issues were adapted into an MTV cartoon, but it's really the first 20 issues that form the main narrative block, with the sceond 15 issues forming another, less focused narrative with numerous interludes. These interludes were quite entertaining in their own right...

The Maxx is pretty much unlike any other comic series out there...

11:40 / 24.02.06

In what way, sleaze?

And are there trades available? Would you feel I'd be a better man for having purchased them, rather than trades of Kirby's Fourth World books (my next aim) ?

13:02 / 24.02.06

To be honest I'm not the man to talk to about comparisons to Kirby because his work hasn't really grabbed me. Don't get me wrong, he undoubtedly had a massive impact on comic art particularly in adding dynamism and and a certain element of surrealism, but his work just hasn't done it for me on a visceral level so far...

But back to the topic in hand... Yes, trades for the whole of The Maxx has recently been collected into a series of five or six trades...

As for what they are like... a surrealist acid trip into a world of Jungian analysis, (post)-feminist politics and Dr Seuss inspired creatures...

It's about, the Maxx, a man who thinks he's a superhero. But the Maxx can't even save himself, let alone anyone else. And then there is Julie, a woman who styles herself as a 'freelance socialworker'. Julie dreams of a idyllic savannah world ruled of strange creatures rule by a jungle queen... And then we have the rapist Mr Gone, a fantasist whose fantasies are more than they might first appear...

13:37 / 24.02.06

So Sam Kieth is a secret genius? And Image produced this? I'll see about Amazoning them straight away.

13:47 / 24.02.06

Oh man, I loved the Maxx! I have such fond memories of this comic and now thinking back it was like this big shamanic journey.

14:26 / 24.02.06

Image orginally published The Maxx, and the original printings of the first two collections... after that I think they have come out from a variety of publishers from Cliffhangeer to Wildstorm and now, I think, DC...

But yes, The Maxx was the least Image-like Image book. The ideas and plots came from Sam Kieth, but most of the dialoging was from Bill Messner Loebs...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:28 / 24.02.06

The trades do amazingly well in the library system I work for.

The Maxx is quite a bit better than Kieth's later project Zero Girl, which was sort of interesting in theory but failed a little bit.

Julie was a far more intriguing protagonist, I think - the scene I recall the best was early on when Gone had her kidnapped and tied up in his rubber cement factory (I think it was rubber cement?) and trying to break her by undercutting feminist theory and going on about how she wasn't a feminist just because she quoted Camille Paglia and then Julie reaction, summoning all this rage was perfect.

I liked her because she was a strong character without having to let go of her all her weaknesses, and she's got them -- her avoidance issues, spending an entire week in the bathroom rather than deal with Gone and the Maxx and all her mental bullshit...

Maxx at times felt like a bit of a cypher, even after we find out who he was...his monologues were beautiful things, but I always preferred Julie or even Sara, when Sara wasn't too overblown with the angst. And you've got to like the series for being so quietly intelligent within the sea of the badly drawn bad babes.

14:28 / 24.02.06

Has anyone seen the cartoon series? Was it successful in communicating the themes of the book?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:31 / 24.02.06

The cartoon was a pretty successful intepretation, and is why I don't see Sin City reproducing the comic shot-for-shot as any big thing; MTV's version of The Maxx too full advantage of both media and managed to make use of inset panels and all kinds of mad things. Thematically, it was well in line, although for some reason it ends the story before it's actually meant to end. Boo-rns on that.

14:39 / 24.02.06

I still have the cartoon version on VHS (this was back in the pre-DVD days)...

The animation isn't the most fluid in the world, but it is certainly both fun and true to the spirit of the comic (though the ending is subtlly different from how issue 11 actually ends...)

20:12 / 24.02.06

Yeah, got it on VHS as well - it is almost exactly realised (I think that the cross over with Pitt is kind of fudged and the ending - it's been a while since I watched it). It was shown along with the excellent The Head, which was as much fun. But yeah, back to the book, the last collection just came out, I've got 1-3. but not the rest yet, well worth the 8 or 9.99 per book though.

Bubblegum Death

22:06 / 24.02.06

Speaking of the TV show, does anyone know what the deal was with Maxx gardening in the greenhouse? I know in the letters column, a reader theorized that Maxx was tending his Outback now that Julie left; but it still seems kind of an odd ending.