The Maxx's Cardboard Box

Timeline of Events in the World of The Maxx

The following table lists what I consider the important events in the Maxx plotline. Afterwards is a list of all the references I could find to the passage of time in the comic. "Current" events seem to follow real time pretty closely in #1-20, although this will change when we jump ten years into the future for #21.

If you have any observations or information, please send me email. If you help me revise the timeline, I'll give you credit in the list of acknowledgments.

YearComic IssueEvent
?10,19Sent by the U.S. government, Artemus Pender goes to investigate the religion of the Australian aboriginals
1972-Julie Winters born
?10,19,20Julie creates her Outback based on her own imagination and Uncle Artie's stories
1980-Sara(h) James born
198010Julie finds dying rabbit; her mom has to kill it; the rabbit becomes Julie's spirit animal
?10Sarah's dad leaves
ca. 198414Quilt-castle dream sequence is flashback to this time
19903,19,20Julie is beaten, raped and left for dead
19909,19Julie hits Dave with her car, hides him with trash from alley; Dave becomes Maxx
19901,2,3,4,20Julie drops out of college, starts "free-lance social work"
19931Comic and cartoon start
19931Mr. Gone starts calling Julie
19931Maxx starts seeing Isz
19931-2Maxx first meets Mr. Gone; they fight
19932Mr. Gone kidnaps Julie, but she escapes and cuts his head off
19933Maxx meets Mr. Gone in the Outback; they fight, then talk
19936Julie visits her Outback for the first time in years, meets Li'l Julie, and starts healing
1993-47-8Mr. Gone coaxes Sarah into putting his head in Julie's apartment
1993-47-8Maxx and Julie visit Outback together; Outback Maxx visits this world
1993-47-8Sarah finds her spirit animal: the horse
19949-10Julie plans to leave; a white Is comes from Outback to get Mr. Gone's head
199410Mr. Gone gets his head sewn back on
199411Julie leaves town; cartoon ends
1994-512-13Julie gets pregnant
1994-512-13Sarah gets a tape from her father
199514Maxx and Sarah swap dreams; Julie comes back
199517-20Maxx, Sarah, Is heal the despoiled Outback with both help and hindrance from Mr. Gone
199520Maxx leaves
1995-Julie's baby born
200621Sara goes to see her father; the CIA tries to assassinate him

Notes:

The comics seem to follow real time, more or less. In #6 Maxx says that Julie told him the other day that they cancelled Cheers. #6 was published in October 1993, and Cheers' last episode was in May 1993, so at least in #6 we could be in real time.

The earlier issues seem to have been in real time as well. In #6 Tilly says that Glorie was attacked a few months ago. The attack happened in #1, published in March 1993, so that seems plausible. However, issues #1-3 occur in rapid succession, so we should be careful not to be too literal about the publication dates.

Although issues #1-3 clearly occur one right after another, there's an unspecified break between #3 and #4, then again between #4 and #5, and #5 and #6. I can't say much about #7-8, because I don't have them, but #8-11 appear to take place one after another. In #15, Sarah says that Julie just came off a six-month love binge, so six months pass between the end of #11 and the beginning of #14. #15 follows close on the heels of #14, but #16 seems discontinuous, like #4. There are unspecified breaks before and after #16, but #18 seems to follow immediately after #17. If you judge from the Outback story going on, #17-20 seem to follow one right after another, but time may flow differently in the real world -- there could be a break between #18 and #19, and between #19 and #20, and we need extra time there, because Julie's estimates about how far along her pregnancy is change. So, the coverage looks kind of like this:

1-3, 4, 5, 6 (?) 8-11 (?) 14-15, 16, 17-18, 19, 20, 21
(where a comma represents a break, and a hyphen represents no break)

In #3 Maxx says that Mr. Gone told him that Julie was attacked three years ago (which would be 1990), then in #19 Mr. Gone tells Julie that she was attacked six weeks after she started college (which would place the attack in the middle of October 1990). Most people start college around age 18, so if Julie followed that pattern she was born around 1972, and she is 21 as the comic begins. Since in #10 Mr. Gone seems to be saying that Julie's rabbit incident happened when she was 8, that would place the incident around 1980.

In #21, which probably takes place in late 2005 or early 2006, Sarah states that she's 25 years old. That makes her 15 in 1995, and she was therefore born between late 1979 and early 1981. If the end of the quilt-castle dream sequence from #14 is a memory of Sarah's, then it probably took place in 1982 or 1983, since she's not talking very well yet, so she's probably 2 or 3. It cannot possibly happen any later than about 1985, because Sarah's dad was probably living with Gaynor by then.

Time references in the comic:


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