The Maxx

The Maxx is an American comic book series created by Sam Kieth in 1993 and originally published monthly until 1998 by Image Comics for 35 issues, before being collected in trade paperback by DC Comics' Wildstorm imprint. The first appearance of the character was in Darker Image #1 by Image Comics in March 1993. The comic book, starring an eponymous purple-skinned hero, spawned a 13-episode animated series on MTV that originally aired April–June 1995.

The series follows the adventures of the titular hero in the real world and in a dream world, referred to as the Outback. In the real world, the Maxx is a vagrant, a "homeless man living in a box", while in the Outback, he is the powerful protector of the Jungle Queen, who exists in the real world as Julie Winters, a freelance social worker who regularly bails the Maxx out of jail. While the Maxx is always aware of the Outback, Julie does not remember ever being there.

Comic book

#1

• Maxx: The skinny one’s Teego. The Big one’s fridge. They beat people up, take their money, kill them sometimes. The cab driver gets a third. One woman, they beat her head so hard against the sidewalk, they crack the concrete. Another got away by running three blocks on a broken foot. Sometimes that’s the only way people get saved, suicidal bravery. Sometimes it’s luck that saves them. Sometimes it’s fate. Yeah, usually it’s fate…
  But, sometimes, it’s me.

Cops: And sometimes it’s us! Okay, everybody freeze!

Maxx: Damn. I was talking out loud again.

• Maxx: Oh God. It’s started again. The pounding. God I wish I was a drunk. At least that would explain this!
• Maxx: Starting to fade…it’s starting to come back to me now…back to Australia. Not the Australia they teach you about…Melbourne, Sydney, The Outback…
  No the real Australia. The smoking caves. The gods who eat mountains, the flying dragons, the rivers of gold, the Leopard Queen. Taunting me…almost an enemy…beautiful and feral as the great beasts she runs with, still she inspires me…
  For her I can be…
  …A hero!
• Julie: Hi, Ocono. You gotta package here for me?

Ocono: Yeah. You shouldn’t hang around with these creeps Miss Julie. There was another rape last night.

Julie: If you don’t act stupid you don’t get raped.

Ocono: Blame the victim why doncha?

Julie: It’s a hard world out there Ocono, there’s always enough blame to go around.

• Maxx: The woman I saved yesterday was raped and mutilated, it said so on the news. I have to do something about that.

Julie: Spoken like a true fanatic! A few women who can’t take care of themselves get messed with and you ride to the rescue! Who are you to assume responsibility for their lives?

Maxx: I am The Maxx. Answer your phone.

• Mr. Gone: Amazing…You really don’t remember any of it! Not the girl or the !sz or the bloodworms or me.

Maxx: Then it wasn’t all a dream! Unless I was dreaming now.

Mr. Gone: Too bad. I normally hate killing amnesiacs.

#2

• Mr. Gone: Give it up Br’er Lappin! You…gasp… know Julie Winters is the one I want! She’s….wheezz the strong one…The one who pulls …hant your strings!
• Mr. Gone: You really don’t remember anything important, do you Br’er lappin? I’m Mr. Gone!...A student of the mystic arts. Unfortunately an untalented student, or I wouldn’t have to keep shooting fools like you.
• Maxx: Blacking out…lost too much blood…pain…have to find…Julia…
  It feels good to run and leap again! To feel the soft loam under my heels! To know tat I am king in this savage place…but even a king must have his jungle queen! If I can just find her, then everything will be all right.

Jungle Queen?: Bad doll.

Maxx: There she is…but changed… Even her voice is different. What has happened to her?

Jungle Queen: This is a bad doll. It keeps telling me things I don’t want to hear! And if this bad doll doesn’t shut up, I’m going to brush it’s hair right out!

• Mr. Gone: I ran into your friend Maxx today, Julie. He still hasn’t got a clue that you’re the key to all this. He thinks he’s some kind of superhero on this world. Can you ‘’’imagine?’’’’ I killed him of course. Shot him and locked him in a dumpster with a handful of the dark Ises. They turn meat-eaters when you bring them over. Did you know that? Ahh….life is good! This Ises are pretty interesting…Did you know that to humans they appear as whatever you dress them as?
• Julie: Oh, Gawwwd! Let me guess! I’m supposed to be dressed as every cheer leader, prom queen and circus acrobat who ever turned you down for a date! And as I beg and whimper you finally achieve some sort of tawdry sexual revenge?
• Julie: If all this baroque posturing is supposed to be threatening me, it’s pretty lamo-o. I mean, you can kill me sure…so can every crackhead on my block…nut you sure aren’t scaring me me!

Mr. Gone: You think I don’t know you? I’ve stalked you!

Julie: So? You see me as some little miss perfect some madonna to be seduced and absorbed! Actually I’m pretty flawed. I’ve got a fat stomach and chaff marks where my jeans cut in and bad breath from eating the wrong stuff! And my underarms are stubbly! But I can see through you like glass pal! You’ve got a problem with women!

Mr. Gone: How perceptive! Did you figure that out when I kidnapped you …or when I tied you up with leather straps? of course I’ve got a problem with women! Everyone has a problem with women…because women taunt and tease! Because they are attractive and then they punish you for being attracted! Do you deny it? After all, I’m not the one who wears underwear outside her clothes! You claim to be a “pro-sex feminist!” You quote Camille Pagila …endlessly, I might add. But would a feminist of any stripe be so deliberately risk-taking? Or are you only a feminist when it suits you? You dropped out of college, set up this “free lance social work” of yours, started bailing people out of jail, trying to reform them….You’re nearly broke, surrounded by dangerous desperate men…and look where it’s gotten you!

Julie: So this is my fault? You broke into my locked house and kidnapped me! This has nothing to do with the clothes I wear!

• Maxx: Dead. I awoke from the daydream of the wild place and teeth were at my throat! So I awoke and slew. But Julie is still kidnapped and the Jungle Queen is insane! I didn’t protect either of them. I failed. I wish it was time for Cheers but it’s not. It’s time for vengeance!

#3

• Maxx: The pounding in my head is like an ice pick, but I can’t stop! One minute I saw Julie Winters in my mind, dressed as the Leopard Queen and insane…The next I was back here, still chasing this little monster! The gawkers glare at me. Since to them the Isz looks like a 96 year old grand mother…But I know it is a tool of the evil sorcerer, Mr. Gone, who is a serial rapist and murderer! He will destroy the city unless I stop him! Of course, maybe they are all staring at me cause I think I just said that all of that out loud, oops .
• Maxx: I hate to wake up to someone else’s nightmare. I especially hate waking up in someone else’s bathroom. And what’s worse, that bathroom has leaky pipes! I don’t know why I know this is a bathroom. I am king of the wildplaces. I shouldn’t know anything, about pipes and gashets and traps and valves…but I do. Just like I know that dream was not my dream! It belonged to the Leopard Queen, in some way I can’t explain.

Mr. Gone: Maxx! We can’t waste our time like this!

Maxx: Why not? I fight evil…and you are evil!

Mr. Gone: No, no! That’s just it! You’re no superhero! You’re a protector…Julie Win…I mean the Lepoard Queen’s protector.

Maxx: Huh?

Mr. Gone: The two of you are soul linked! What she feels, you feel! And she is lost. Lost in the city and in own mind!

Maxx: Why should I believe you vile sorcerer?

• Mr. Gone: You see, I know about the dream… about the doll…about everything! I know who you really are…Who you were before you found the mask lying in the mud, and what you are now, behind the mask, though you’ve been too cowardly to look!

Maxx: Tell me.

Mr. Gone: Maybe later, the truth about you is only embarrassing…Julie's truth could destroy her.

Maxx: And this Julie and the Queen of the Leopard women…are one?

Mr. Gone: Yep, man, this is gonna be a long night! This primitive plane, which you think is Australia and I call Pangea, is all that is real…the other world is a dream, where we are trapped playing out……our deepest fantasies.

Maxx: When Julia Winters was hurt….never mind how…she created a fantasy world for herself. A place where she would have control. At least that’s what the villain told me. But who can believe a villain? You’ve got to go back there, to the city…find her and protect her keep her from knowing too much of the truth all at once, for the truth will destroy her! Still as I as I talk to Julie, I can’t help remembering his words, he never told me anything straight out, only in riddles, but…he implied a lot, he hinted she was in danger, maybe from herself…she seems a lot quieter since her encounter with Mr. Gone, more pensive, calmer…weirder.

• Maxx (thinking): Gone told me how three years ago a young architectural student was beaten and raped and left for dead.

Maxx: Julie, are you gonna be okay? I mean being kidnapped ‘n’ all…

Julie: Hey, gone tried his tricks on me, but I got the best of him . S it’s history!

Maxx (thinking): When she got out of the hospital, she used up all of her tuition money to set up a new life as a free-lance “social worker”, trying to help other victims of the urban nightmare.

Julie: I hate whining! And I hate professional victims! All day long I hear sob stories from idiots who can’t cope and so they pick something to blame! I was robbed…I was raped! Nobody loved me! Pheet! Time out!

Maxx (thinking): This woman used her position to build a wall around herself.

Julie: Everybody’s got to take responsibility for their own life’, y’know

Maxx (thinking): She helped people by controlling them…hoping to smother her own pain…something like that. And somewhere in the wild land, in the land of dreams, in Pangea,…her better self was imprisoned, by her own self loathing.

Maxx: I dunnno, seems like, if somebody’s raped, it’s not like a test you failed or a job where you get fired… It’s somebody else’s guilt for once! You get to have your own anger and…

Maxx (thinking): At least that’s what Gone told me, I don’t know if I believed anything he said, least of all about Julie.

Julie: Hey, Maxx, save the liberal feminist garbage for someone who cares ‘kay? Sorry, I know, you’re just trying to watch out for me, like you always do. But it’s over now. I cut the bastards head free, you chased him back to God knows where. It's over.

Maxx (thinking): In fact, I was already having trouble remembering, the details of what he said. It was like a dream.

Julie: And I’m going t’be just fine.

Maxx (thinking): A really bad dream.

Animated Series

The Maxx

• Pain lasts, kid. It's how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management.
• To be first in the soil, which erupts in the coil, of trees veins and grasses all brought to a boil. Wait, it's different somehow, cause this land isn't mine, and my brain has been freed, I'm not thinking in... poetry stuff.

Mr. Gone

• The others cry out for you, Julie Winters. Their screams of agony are the kisses I place along your neck.
• I'm Mr. Gone, a student of the mystic arts! Unfortunately, an untalented student, or else I wouldn't have to keep shooting fools like you.

Julie

• Somebody once said that a liberal is a conservative that's never been mugged. A few years ago I would have laughed. But today, I'm not so sure.
• This doll is telling me things I don't want to hear and if it doesn't shut up in going brush it's head, I'm going to brush and brush until I brush off it's head.
• Cartoons are so pretentious.
• I can't believe you want to get involved in that censorship crap.

Sara

• They're all necro-nerds and Sand freaks. They think death is romantic. Death is hard and cold and ugly, not some cute chick.
• Did my saying that shock you? GOOD! Writers are supposed to shock people.
• No matter how low you are on the food chain, there's always somebody lower.
• I was sitting under the Jones Street underpass yesterday. That's because I want to be a writer and writers gotta have experiences, like underpasses.
• Life is pretty pathetic when even your own hallucinations lie to you.
• What a cruel world, letting something this profound be conveyed in words this trite!

The Jungle Queen

• I'm that part of you that escapes, Julie. I reflect what's deep inside, the image of strength and independence you felt before you were... violated. But as I absorb more misery and bitterness, I change. I fear what I am becoming, Julie. But now that you have seen this, the world can never be the same size again.

Dialogue

---

Julie: You, however, have a problem with women.

Mr. Gone: [scoff] How perceptive... did you figure that one out when I kidnapped you, or tied you up with leather straps? OF COURSE I'VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN!

---

The Maxx: Funny, but I keep seeing that doll she made of Mr. Gone... beheaded! That must mean something. The things that could be under my mask.

Julie: Look, Maxx, that freak nearly killed us. And just because you imagine you have a rabbit's head in the Outback is certainly no reason to fear you might actually have one here. It's so classic, Maxx. You see yourself as some jungle avenger because in your in real life you're powerless. And I can't blame you. We all need some place to go away to; some place we can be who we should have been instead of who we are; some safe place where we can escape reality. Hide. I know there are things to hide from.

The Maxx: My mask. I can feel it crawling... .

Julie: Shush.

The Maxx: Please! Make it stop!

Julie: Just rest now. It's okay. It's okay.

---

(The reincarnated Dave and Pender's dialogue in the comics final issue)

Dave: Dr. Pender? You in here?

Pender: Yeah, Dave. Just thought I'd work a little late tonight.

Dave: Kinda dark to be grading papers, isn't it?

Pender: Oh...right. Go ahead and turn on the light. I was just thinking.

Dave: 'Bout what?

Pender: About life. I never planned to teach at a community college--I just wound up doing it. Just makes ya think. Don't you ever regret the road your life has taken?

Dave: I didn't plan on being a janitor, either, but I don't beat myself up about it. Hey doc, what'd you always want to be when you were a kid?

Pender: Oh, I dunno. Maybe something exotic--a magician. Maybe an Indian. I always hated cowboys.

Dave: Me too. Maybe you already are a magician, but you just don't know it. Heh heh. Listen, doc, when I was a little boy, and the girl nest door moved away, I thought my whole life had ended.

Pender: And now that you're older, you see otherwise.

Dave: I've told you this already, huh?

Pender: Yeah, but tell me again...

Dave: Hey, where'd that snow globe on your desk come from?

Pender: I don't know. It wasn't there a minute ago...

(a snow globe of Gone's trailer is shown)

Voice Cast

• Michael Haley as The Maxx
• Glynnis Talken as Julie Winters and Glorie
• Amy Danles as Sara
• Barry Stigler as Mr. Gone
• Jason Schwartzman as Dave
• Andrea Martin as Pender
• Kurtwood Smith as Jerry