's Cardboard Box

Revelations from the Letters Page

One

Two

• The Maxx never stands up straight.
• Maxx's "superpowers," if you can call them that, are his claws and the fact that his mask feeds off his face.
• "Chung" means Maxx has a headache.
• Maxx's height: short. His weight: heavy.
• Mr. Gone is Maxx's archrival and is the only one who can travel freely between the two worlds and who doesn't forget the real world when he's in the Outback.
• Julie's got many things buried inside her that make her appear cold.
• One Is is an "Is;" more than one are "Isz."
• Maxx's mask is alive and tries to eat the fingers of anyone who tries to remove it. Maxx has dreams that he's something other than normal behind the mask.

Three

• Maxx's favorite foods are Pez and toast.
• Isz have no eyes; they rely on their sense of smell.
• Julie wants Maxx more spiritually than emotionally or physically, since Maxx is really just a part of Julie, at least in the spirit world.

Four

Five

• The Maxx erroneously thinks he rules the Outback, but he hasn't a clue. This is "only the first of many mistakes to come."
• Maxx hasn't had any pets since he's been homeless.

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

• Maxx is only a rabbit in the Outback. We still don't know what he looks like behind the mask in the real world.
• "Nothing in Pangaea has any meat in it."
• The black stuff between Maxx's purple arms and his yellow claws is "splattered, dried lava from Maxx sticking his hands into a volcano," and is also a neat effect you get when you blow India ink across paper with a straw.
• The Maxx has had the same pair of shoes since he found his mask.
• Maxx does not like the way the mask feeds off his face.
• The thing Maxx has on his head in the Outback is not hair; it is a headdress.

Ten

• The Isz tend to appear to normal humans as whatever they're dressed as. Whatever magic they have takes advantage of the fact that ordinary people aren't equipped to deal with foot-and-a-half-tall dark blue eyeless creatures with huge teeth.
• Back in #7 or 8, the shrunken Maxx didn't know about the real world because he was the Outback Maxx, used to the primitive Outback world.
• If Julie remembers her childhood around Mr. Gone, she'll cut his head off, as she tends to do when people tell her things she doesn't want to hear.
• Maxx dreams himself involuntarily into the Outback. His actions there don't have direct correlations to real life; they affect Julie's psyche. When Julie was locked in the bathroom, she was really in the Outback.
• Maxx hasn't had time to find his own spirit animal, since he's been so caught up with Julie's problems.
• Maxx is not the most powerful character in this book. He ran away from Mako (in #6) because he knew he couldn't beat him. Mr. Gone wouldn't get into a fight he couldn't win either -- "only Julie's that delusional."

Eleven

• Julie has left for San Francisco.
• We haven't seen the last of Julie.
• The childhood incident with the rabbit caused the rabbit to become Julie's spirit animal.
• Mr. Gone is going to turn his attention to Sarah.

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

• "Why is a Buick the only real-world thing that has appeared in the Outback?"
• The events on page 1 of this issue were supposed to happen at the end of #12.
• Julie was in #13.
• Julie escaped from the bathroom using a screwdriver behind the toilet.
• Sam wants to keep going after #20.

Fifteen

• All the characters in The Maxx have problems and pain and fears and need protectors.
• With issue #21, Sam wants things to change, but stay the same, and he thinks he knows how to do it.
• Mr. Gone is Sarah's dad.

Sixteen

• Maxx and Sarah didn't have sex in #14; they just swapped dreams.
• Mr. Gone's head will appear again, minus body.
• Gone has something called the Hooly as his ultimate ace in the hole.
• Everything in the Outback is made of vegetables; Isz are vegetarians there.
• Issues #17-20 are "the climax to the Maxx story, a kind of ending." The rabbit will go back to being the Jungle Queen's protector, and Julie will stop projecting stuff onto the man who became the Maxx.
• Issues after #20 will focus on Sarah and her spirit animal, the horse. Julie and Maxx will be around, but the new story will mostly be about Sarah and her dad.

Seventeen

• Julie was five months pregnant in #15.
• When Maxx got mugged in #15, it hurt mostly just his pride.
• That was in fact Fridge in jail.
• We may haver see the Maxx's face in this world.

Eighteen

• Isz communicate mentally and verbally with one another.
• Maybe the Maxx is tending his own Outback at the end of the cartoon, and maybe he isn't.

Nineteen

• In #14, Sarah's Outback was undeveloped. We'll see how it turns out when #21 comes around.
• It's unlikely that the Jungle Queen's "sacrificial magic" line (#17) means that she'll have an abortion or a miscarriage.
• Mr. Gone gets uglier for Julie the longer she puts off hearing the truth.
• Once Julie hears the truth, Gone may return to normal, but he'll probably leave Julie alone, and he has different meanings for Sarah.
• Sam is reluctant to reveal what Dave was before he became the Maxx, or what his spirit animal is. He even puts Dave's name in quotation marks, possibly meaning that his name isn't really Dave.
• "Maxx's mask is that thing that each person's spirit animal hides behind."

Twenty

• The old story will continue with #21, but it will no longer be the main focus.
• When Julie left (#11) she took her record collection with her, and she brought it back when she returned (#14).
• In #4, Sarah says her dad killed himself when she was too young to remember, then turns around and says it was three years ago. "Three years ago" was a mistake.
• Starting with #21, Mr. Gone will just be Sarah's dad, no longer a villain. There will be a new villain, and it has something to do with the slug that got squashed at the end of this issue.

Twenty-One

No great revelations.

Twenty-Two

• Everybody has their own Outback.
• Way back when (in #1/2, I believe), the Maxx said he found a mask in the mud and put it on, but later Julie said she put a lampshade on his head and it turned into a mask. Sam says the lamp was in the mud, and that's how this all fits together. OK.

Twenty-Three

• Sara doesn't buy Artie's story.
• Mr. Gone did somehow recover from being a blob of goo on Julie's bathroom ceiling.
• Sara's childhood rocking horse was called Norbert.
• Everybody's spirit animal is named The Maxx, but behind the mask the animal varies from person to person.
• Gone used the bugs that used to be government agents for fish bait (so why do they show back up, still bugs, in #32?).

Twenty-Four

• Iago feeds the fairies in an attempt to appease them.
• Sara's power comes from her subconscious, so at this point she has no conscious control over it, and her conscious mind has trouble dealing with it.

Twenty-Five

• Artie called himself "Mr. Gone" when he became unhinged and started committing crimes.

Twenty-Six

• Sara's fairies and Julie's isz are the same thing; it depends on the viewer.

Twenty-Seven

• Julie's Outback may be healing inside, but her exterior life is another matter.

Twenty-Eight

No particular revelations

Twenty-Nine

• The other caves in the circle go to other people's Outbacks, most of whom have been killed by Iago by now.
• Dee and Dum are the binge/purge part of Sara's psyche.
• The Cheshire Cat (Sara's old toy Pumpkin) is the only creature in her Outback that speaks the truth, the Self.
• Sara's whole Outback has to do with things that go in or out of her body and return to a "frozen" or cold daddy (which is why the mushroom is cold). The more fluid there is in her Outback, the more "digestion" and clarity is possible.
• Artie wants to go back and fix the past, change things so that the bad stuff didn't happen. Things probably won't go the way he wants, though.

Thirty

No particular revelations

Thirty-One

No particular revelations

Thirty-Two

• Bloodworms turn into waterworms, and only show up in the Maxx movie screenplay, and it looks like that won't be produced.
• Glorie has let Major Rosteval escape from the urn.

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