's Cardboard Box

The Maxx

Before we get into the Maxx, let's talk about what a Maxx is. A Maxx is one's protector, although this protection is usually spiritual in nature, and one's Maxx usually dwells only in one's Outback. We have seen two Maxxes exist outside Pangea: Julie's Maxx, who merged with a man from the real world, and Sara's Maxx, who was forced to come to the real world after all other attemps to stop Iago had failed.

In order to understand one's Outback, it is necessary to find a spirit guide, usually an animal of some sort. It appears that one's Maxx is a manifestation of this spirit animal, as Julie's Maxx is a rabbit (merged with a human in some metaphysical way) and Sara's is a horse.

Julie's Maxx (Dave)

Since he was the Maxx the series was originally about, Julie's Maxx is the one most commonly called simply "The Maxx." Before he became the Maxx, Dave was a bum who lived in an alley (although there are hints that that wasn't always the case). We don't know much about his identity, except that he seems to know an awful lot about plumbing and construction (we know he wasn't a plumber, though). He seems to have had desire to do good in the world and also to hide his face from the world, although it is unclear why he would want to hide.

One night Julie Winters hit him with her car, then covered him with alley trash and went on her way, burying him as she'd buried so many other problems. In the alley was an old floor lamp with a purple lampshade, and as she looked to see who she'd hit she knocked it over and through a wall into the Outback. Uncle Artie happened to be nearby and pushed it back through, then observed what happened next. Not even he knew what had enabled the lamp to break through into the other world -- some latent ability of Julie's or Dave's, or something about the lamp itself. But Julie used the lampshade to cover Dave's head, and after she left something strange happened. The material expanded to cover Dave's whole body, and from that moment on he was the Maxx.

At some point the Maxx visited the Outback and got his claws by plunging his hands into volcanic lava. They emerged changed, bright yellow, leaving lava-spatter marks on his arms.

By the time the comic begins, something like three years later, the Maxx believes he is a superhero, here to fight evil. He almost never succeeds in making a dent, though, and usually ends up in jail, where Julie bribes his way out, in her quest to save others from the streets.

More esoterically, when Julie covered him up, she also thrust a great deal of confusion upon Dave. The Maxx is the part of Julie that protects her, and it takes the form of a rabbit, her spirit animal, in the Outback. It is possible that the Maxx already existed inside her Outback, but when Dave became the Maxx, the Maxx certainly began to exist in this world too, and Dave/Maxx began to switch consciousness between the dream world and the real world, uncontrollably. This is one of the reasons why he keeps getting arrested -- to others it appears that he hallucinates and has seizures, and he talks out loud when he thinks he's thinking to himself.

The Maxx is afraid to take off his mask, because he's afraid of what might be under it. In the Outback, he seems to be a rabbit under the costume, although the rabbit is really just Julie's projection. He appears to have removed the costume after the events of issues 1-20 played themselves out; he is dressed in street clothes and calling himself Dave when we see him again in issue 27.

The Maxx is short, but this could be because he's always hunched over. He is physically pretty strong and fast. He has a purple costume, huge brown shoes with some sort of round decoration on them, and yellow claws erupting from the backs of his hands. His mask, which covers his entire face, is purple and yellow with white teeth on the bottom. The mask apparently crawls, feeds off his face, and bites people if they touch the teeth. In the Outback he wears a straw headdress; in the real world only the fabric of his costume covers his head. His claws do not break and can cut through anything, as long as he's strong enough to drive them through it. Since his costume is magical, it repairs itself when it gets torn, and it may heal his wounds as well. If he tries, he can switch voluntarily between the real world and the dream world, and he may or may not have some amount of the dream-power that Mr. Gone and Julie have. He is never fooled by Isz' disguises; he always sees them as Isz. His greatest liability seems to be his memory -- he tends to forget the real world when he's in the dream world, and vice-versa. This may, however, merely be what happens when anyone switches worlds involuntarily.

Sara's Maxx

Sara's Maxx is an entirely different matter. He is a horse, an equine elemental, who has come from her Outback to stop Iago after all other emissaries were killed. He initially hides under heavy overcoats and calls himself Norbert, but later he makes a mask for himself and wears a quilt -- far more impressive looking and appropriate, in my opinion. In issue 29 he appears to have gone back to Sara's Outback for good.

Page maintained by Tom Lee (flint@kiva.net).

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