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Here are my impressions of the important plot points of each issue of The Maxx, published by Image Comics. Beware: If you want to be surprised, don't read the summaries of issues you haven't read yet. And don't worry: even if you do read the summary before you read the comic, my summaries don't begin to come close to the total experience. The art, color, lettering and text surpass anything I can convey across the Web.
In this "beta release" of The Maxx, which appeared alongside an issue of Wizard magazine, the Maxx explains something of his origin to two kids who have much grander ideas about where a superhero should come from. He also helps them scare off a crackhead who wants to take their money.
One (March 1993)The Maxx saves a woman from muggers, but gets arrested and can't save her from Mr. Gone. While in the police car Maxx blinks to the Outback, where he finds himself grabbed and held by hundreds of Is hands that sprout from the ground. He forgets the real world and remembers the dream world, including the Leopard Queen.
Meanwhile, Julie is at work and gets a disturbing call from Mr. Gone, which she hangs up on. She learns that Maxx is in jail and goes to get him out. Mr. Gone attacks another girl, this time leaving her alive, and again calls Julie, just as Maxx is leaving her apartment. Maxx sees the Is that Mr. Gone is using to relay the phone call and chases it to find Mr. Gone.
Two (April 1993)Mr. Gone sends his Isz to kidnap Julie. Gone and Maxx fight. Gone shoots and wounds Maxx, then leaves and lets the Isz finish the job. Falling into a dumpster, Maxx passes out from loss of blood and goes to the Outback, where he finds that the Jungle Queen has gone insane.
Tied up by Mr. Gone, Julie finds an Is tooth and keeps him talking while she cuts herself free, then decapitates him. Maxx awakens and kills the Isz attacking him.
Three (May 1993)Maxx chases one of the Isz, hoping it'll lead him to Mr. Gone, but he keeps switching to the Outback, where the Is is white and he forgets what he's doing. Maxx catches the Is, but gets caught in a trap and pulled down to a primitive version of Gone's cow bathroom. Mr. Gone is there. They fight, but Gone convinces Maxx that he has something to tell Maxx. Gone explains many things, but Maxx isn't sure whether to believe him. Maxx and Julie meet up again in the real world, and they talk.
Four (August 1993)Maxx and Sarah talk under an underpass. Sarah tells us about her dad, who lost it and killed many people, including himself, when she was too young to remember. Her mom still can't handle what he did, and Sarah has to support her. Sarah has a friend named Jimmy, who is as unpopular as she is. She passes along a story Jimmy told her about some carjackers who attacked him while he was stealing a car. He claimed that he beat them up, but we see that it was actually the Maxx who did that.
Sarah tells us about Julie, who's a friend of her mom and whom her mother makes her go see in hopes that it'll help. It doesn't seem to help much. Jimmy plays a prank on Sarah at a dance, trying to become more popular, and Sarah doesn't shoot him with her father's gun, which she's started carrying. Sarah goes to see a movie and sees Maxx and Julie there. They offer to take her to the aquarium, but Jimmy's carjackers catch up with them. Maxx sees they're Isz and beats them up. Sarah, unaccustomed to Isz, loses it and threatens to kill herself with her father's gun because nothing is making sense, but Maxx and Julie talk her into toughing out life's trials.
Five (September 1993)While Mr. Gone watches through a telescope, Maxx falls asleep watching cartoons, "The Crappon inna Hat" in particular. He seems to drop into an area of the Outback that resembles that cartoon to a great degree, where he can only talk in rhyme and is chased by his fears, blue creatures that are all named Dave and want to take his mask off. The Crappon claims to know what's behind it, but Maxx doesn't ask what it is, so the Crappon doesn't tell him. The Maxx is afraid that there's something horrible behind his mask, but the fears catch up with him and capture him. Freeing himself, he removes his mask and finds seeds behind it. The seeds sprout into a jungle, similar to his familiar Outback, but somehow different. The Maxx meets Li'l Julie, but she tells him he shouldn't be here, so he leaves. He wakes up and tells Julie about this. She thinks the Outback is a delusion of Maxx's.
Six (October 1993)Sarah's mother Tilly is hanging out with Julie by a lake, talking about violence on TV. Meanwhile, the Savage Dragon is looking for a dangerous psychopath named Mako, who happens to be looking for Maxx. Maxx has glued his hands shut over his claws, so he tries everything to escape with his life. Mr. Gone narrates the show from inside Julie's head, from the place "where she keeps all the stuff she likes that ain't nice." Tilly's car won't start, so she calls a tow truck and waits in the car in the rain with Julie. Maxx falls into a swimming pool and switches to the Outback, where he and Julie find the Jungle Queen changed and her leopard dead. Waking up, Maxx runs and in a lucky break finds some solvent that frees his claws, but a freak explosion puts an end to both Maxx's run and Mako's pursuit. The tow truck arrives and breaks Tilly's windshield, the shock sending Julie into the Outback, where she meets up with Li'l Julie and the Jungle Queen. Maxx is found by Isz pretending to be cops, but he escapes.
I don't have this issue.
I don't have this issue either.
Nine (June 1994)Mr. Gone has the medical examiner tied up, surrounded by Isz, and via a tape recording he tells him what's going on around the city. The Maxx tells Sarah, Glorie and some kids a story about the Outback, which they fail to appreciate properly. Meanwhile, Julie is still locked in the bathroom, wondering about what she saw when Maxx's mask came off. Mr. Gone calls up an Is, and oddly a white Is comes through into the real world without turning dark. Julie finds Gone's head in her apartment, much to her horror, while the white Is watches from the window.
Ten (August 1994)Sarah is helping Julie clean her apartment. The white Is took Mr. Gone's head. Meanwhile the medical examiner sews Mr. Gone's head back onto his body and endures a fairy tale.
When she was little, Julie pretended she was a Jungle Queen and had adventures. Julie's mother did a lot of things that had to be done, but didn't take credit for it. Julie found a rabbit in the road and brought it home, where it lay dying for days until her mother decided they had to kill it. Back in the real world, Sarah and Julie are wondering how to tell the Maxx that Julie's leaving town.
Eleven (October 1994)Julie tries to convince Maxx that she has to leave, then tries to convince herself. Mr. Gone appears and tells Maxx that Julie has to leave, but he still doesn't accept it. Julie and Maxx have one last talk, but it doesn't solve anything, and she finally just leaves, dropping Sarah off at home on the way out of town.
Don't have it; sorry.
Thirteen (January 1995)Sarah struggles with her self-image ... and the images other people have of her. Her grandmother has recently died, and her grandfather is now in a home, where nobody believes in the spaceship of his dreams. And who is this mysterious woman named "Jill?"
Fourteen (February 1995)The boy with the hand stuck in the Outback finds a way to get free. Maxx travels through an Outback that is oddly filled with quilts, linoleum, giant lawn chairs, and talking toys and meets a short Mr. Gone and another Maxx who looks like a horse. He wakes up to find that he and Sarah have been sleeping together. Just as they learn that they've dreamed each other's dreams, a pregnant, red-haired Julie returns.
Fifteen (February 1995)Julie explains what she's been doing, and Maxx and Sarah try to accept it. Sarah deals with it better than Maxx does. Maxx gets mugged. Sarah listens to the tape her father gave her. Meanwhile, in jail somewhere, Fridge watches a dark Is kill prisoner after prisoner in the next cell over. Julie finally succeeds in driving Sarah off as well.
Sixteen (February 1995)Sarah gets in trouble and is thrown in jail with the dark Is. She uses what her father told her on the tape to kill it, but not before it eats Fridge.
Seventeen (July 1995)The Maxx is in the Outback, finding it a desert full of Isz' skulls. Julie is in the bathroom, being sick. Workmen are on scaffolds, remodeling Julie's building. Sarah is traveling with Maxx, calling him Dave and helping him voluntarily go to the Outback to heal the damage. Maxx, the Jungle Queen and a white Is climb aboard a rock and fly to the volcano, where the healing will occur.
Eighteen (August 1995)In the real world, Maxx and Sarah are at the place where it all started, where something blue and wet happened, turned Dave into the Maxx, and split Julie into real-Julie and the Leopard Queen. At the same time, in the Outback, Maxx and the Jungle Queen are at the volcano. Julie is still in the bathroom being sick. The truth comes up, but Mr. Gone arrives to complicate matters. Maxx unwittingly awakens the giant Hooly, possessed by Mr. Gone.
Nineteen (September 1995)A dark Is brings Julie a bunch of her childhood drawings, and Gone tells her more about her childhood and how she hit Dave with her car. Maxx and the Jungle Queen continue flying one step ahead of the Hooly.
Twenty (November 1995)Maxx, the Jungle Queen and the white Is finally escape the Hooly. Her Outback cleansed, her building remodeled, and her stomach no longer nauseated, Julie still doesn't feel any better. Julie summarizes her life story. Mr. Gone appears to be, well, gone. Maxx leaves, but Sarah stays to talk. Somewhere Julie's better self is healing.
At the end a banana slug from Sarah's Outback somehow makes it to the the real world, but gets squashed.
Twenty-One (January 1996)It is ten years later. Sara tries to get her government assistance check and discovers that the law has changed; her father is still alive, and he must support her. With help from her mother, she goes looking for him, but it's really all a government plot to find him and kill him.
She finds him, but he doesn't look like the evil, powerful Mr. Gone we all know and loathe -- he looks like an old man, Artie Pender, living in a trailer park with a woman named Gaynor. He claims that he wasn't Mr. Gone, that Mr. Gone was a creation of Sara's own mind, and that he had been looking for her in the dream world but had never known whether he had gotten through to her. Unable to accept this, Sara leaves.
That night Sara dreams that she goes back to see her father, only to see him shot dead by a group of CIA agents, something Sara's wanted to do for years. In reality the CIA agents did come to kill him that night, but Artie somehow got rid of them. Sara goes to see him again and doesn't know what to think upon finding him alive. She goes home, leaving Artie and Gaynor to wonder whether she loves him or not.
Twenty-Two (February 1996)As a giant yellow slug methodically nabs everyone and marks them off his list, Sara learns that she spends too much time dealing with "other people's crap."
In the middle of the night Sara finds her roommate Steve passed out on the floor. Certain that he has psychokinetic powers, Steve has been binging on nicotine- and sugar-laced candy bars, trying to up his metabolism to the point where he can finally move that glass of water he stares at constantly. Norbert arrives, tells Sara that he's the Maxx, and helps her get Steve to the hospital. As they wait, Norbert/Maxx tells Sara about the slug, whose name is Iago; Maxx has come into this world to save it from Iago's rampages. Skye, Steve's ex-girlfriend, shows up for no apparent reason, blames Sara for all Steve's troubles, and tells Sara and Norbert to get lost, then leaves Steve there all alone.
Sara goes to see her father, but talks to Gaynor instead, finding out that Artie told Gaynor long ago about his rape-and-murder spree from years back. Convinced that Artie's lying to Gaynor too, Sara leaves. Sara wants a new roommate, but Steve promises he'll cut back on his fantasies. Skye reappears and talks Steve into going somewhere with her.
Sara goes to see Artie again and learns that the reason why she's always dealing with other people's crap is that she doesn't think she deserves intimacy with anybody unless she's cleaning up after them. She returns to find a message on her phone; Skye used Steve again and left him in bad shape. Sara brings him back.
In the end, Sara learns that she does indeed have "other powers at her disposal."
Twenty-Three (March 1996)Norbert tries to bring Sara back to Pangea, but her disbelief is too strong. She falls, passes out, and dreams about Maxx and Julie ... and her father ... and Iago. Norbert, her Maxx, brings her home.
Norbert proposes they go to the pier so he can prove that Iago exists. Sara and Steve go along, but after Norbert explains things to Steve, who is constantly trying to develop psychic powers, Steve gets upset and leaves. Norbert reveals his face to Sara, hoping that she will believe once she sees that he's an equine elemental, but Sara doesn't want to look.
Twenty-Four (May 1996)Norbert has left Sara at the pier, where she kicks the urn into the water. Iago finds her and tries to kill her. She escapes using her wits and some other resources.
Julie Winters' son Mark comes to Artie, looking for his mom. Artie sends him to find Dave, who might know where she is. Then Sara comes to him with many questions. He reveals that he is working on his memoirs. He also reveals that the urn contained half of Iago's list, and that Iago would be harmless if he didn't have it.
Twenty-Five (July 1996)Sara and her Maxx are busy: they are capturing exploding fairies, icing them down, transporting them to Sara's apartment, and cutting them open, so they can recover the body parts Iago has been feeding them. They hope to use the fingerprints to identify the victims, since there is now no other way to know who is on the list. Sara reveals how she and Julie went their separate ways. Steve walks in during their operations and has quite a shock.
Mark finds Dave, who says he might be able to find Julie. Mark says Julie thought someone was trying to kill her.
When Sara finds out who the fingerprints belonged to, she is speechless.
Twenty-Six (August 1996)Sara reads Artie's memoirs: his childhood abuse, his magical researches, why he left her mother. More about this in my character sketch about him.
Twenty-Seven (September 1996)Sara continues reading Artie's life story: he met Gaynor and tried to deal with his trauma.
Dave meets with Julie, who is missing a few fingers. Then he meets with Mark, where Artie finds both of them and takes them to his trailer to meet Sara and her Maxx. Julie is in trouble, says Artie, and Sara is the only one who can help her. He is right: Iago draws Julie into Sara's Outback moments before they arrive to rescue her.
Twenty-Eight (January 1997)Using symbolism from Sara's childhood, Artie guides her into her Outback to rescue Julie. But a land where water was once as plentiful and breathable as air is now a barren desert. Li'l Sara and her ideal self, the Princess of the Castle of Quilts, go on a quest for Julie. But Iago tricks and traps Sara. The Princess summons the Maxx.
Twenty-Nine (April 1997)Sara's Maxx destroys Iago, sending Julie back to the real world and releasing Sara. Artie takes it upon himself to try to help Sara heal her Outback, but he does too good a job, and her spirit leaves this earth. In the real world, her power overloads, destroying her and everything nearby, except for Artie. Julie returns to Sara's apartment and breaks the news to Steve, who denies it at first, but then accepts it and leaves disconsolately. He moves out, and Julie and Mark move in, bringing all their problems with them. Whose voice is it that Julie hears coming from the kitchen faucet?
Artie brings Dave his old Maxx costume, saying he has a plan to save them all.
Thirty (June 1997)Dave, dressed in his old Maxx costume, visits Julie and Mark. Julie is listening to the plumbing. Mark is watching a favorite cartoon, "Fred Flower And Uncle Italian Moose." Julie confides to Dave that she's hearing voices. And there's something pink in the locked closet, something that goes "Meep."
Thirty-One (July 1997)Dave breaks open the closet door, revealing a giant exploding fairy ... or perhaps a giant Is, or a giant football, depending on whether you ask Dave, Julie, or Mark. They get it to the bathtub and turn on the shower to keep it wet, and Mark goes to get Artie. While they're waiting, Julie tells Dave a story about Megan, a 14-year-old girl she once knew. Megan tried to find a comfortable place to escape from a world that didn't understand her and didn't want to. Dave thinks that Julie is really telling a story about herself, although she denies it.
Mark brings Artie, who has brought someone else ... but before we can find out who, a touch to Dave's mask brings back the old Maxx, and the giant Is sits up and speaks ... with Sara's voice.
Thirty-Two (September 1997)Artie has brought Glorie, who opens the urn (last seen in issue 24), and suddenly we're reliving her past, when she worked in security at a hotel/casino in Reno. She catches a con man who says he knew her father and who teaches her a few things. A man named Eddie has something on her, since he can make her look the other way while he steals money from the hotel.
Thirty-Three (October 1997)Dude Japan and Mickey (from Friends of Maxx #1) find themselves in the clutches of Uncle Freddie, the only guy who scares Artie, and his weird cult of followers. Is Uncle Freddie out to torture and kill them, or is he there to force them to deal with ... what *did* happen at that party ten years ago? All to the tune of "Love for Three Oranges."
Thirty-FourJulie continues telling us about Megan. Megan's still not dealing well with growing up, becoming a woman, her budding sexuality, or the idiot boys at the library. To top it all off, her grandfather is going to the hospital to begin chemotherapy, so caring for her grandmother will become Megan's full-time job. Meanwhile, Artie lights a candle; as soon as it burns down, everyone will disappear.
Thirty-FiveAs our six characters (Julie, Mark, Sara, Artie, Dave, and Glorie) disappear from the world one by one, Artie clears some things up for us, then gets shot (in the head, of course) by the FBI agents, who have returned as giant sowbugs. In Pangea, the Jungle Queen and the Maxx see Artie and Sara, reunited at last. Then it's on to the next bubble of reality, where Dave and Dr. Pender work at the same community college, and Julie and Mark live on a farm. Julie continues telling Mark a story about a girl named Megan ...
This was a short-lived series in which Sam told extended stories that involved Julie and Maxx only peripherally or not at all. After this title ended, Sam started mixing these stories into the regular Maxx plotline, somewhere around issue 30 or 31.
One (Featuring Dude Japan)Dude Japan is an artist who can't get his work noticed. Mickey drives a tow truck for her dad's company. Dude tries to get the approval of the art-viewing public while Mickey tries to get her father's approval. And somehow they manage to maintain a relationship despite secrets, lies and recriminations.
Two (Featuring Broadminded)Charley gets his liberal-minded but weak-willed nephew Ira out of prison and expounds upon his Neanderthal views on masculinity during their road trip home. Meanwhile, somebody has taken their car, killed somebody with it, hidden the body in their trunk, and run away.
Three (Featuring Broadminded)Cops, serial killers, and Hispanic gangs can't keep Charley and Ira from solving their problems and getting home. Along the way Ira learns about himself and winds up being the one who saves the day. Not even Ira can save the family farm, but sometimes winning lies in how you lose.
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