Written by Sam Keith and William Messner Loebs
Artwork by Sam Kieth
Colored by Ronda Pattison
Covers by Sam Keith
Published by IDW
The 90’s was an interesting time for comics. Artists were treasured over writers and the artists that were the most successful were those that had a splashy larger than life style. Very often that style put a greater importance on what looked cool rather than fundamentals such as anatomy and and scale. In 1992 six of these rock star artists left Marvel to found their own publishing company Image. Most of these artists decided in addition to drawing they would also write their comic’s as well. The result was some beautiful looking books that were poorly plotted and abysmally written. Sure, there were some definite successes, Todd McFarlane hit a home run with Spawn and Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon was popular as well. The rest though was mostly all flash and no substance. Times have obviously changed where now we have the writer as rock star and names like Garth Ennis and Mark Millar are mentioned first and foremost before anyone even asks who the artist is. All of this brings us to The Maxx.
The Maxx Maxximized vol.1 was recently released by IDW but The Maxx is and always will be an Image comic through and through. Sam Kieth describes in the foreword for The Maxx Maxximized his reasoning for coming out with a new collection of his original Maxx run (Vol.1 is comprised of issues #1-4) and it’s apparently all about the color. Many older books such as The Killing Joke and Watchmen have been recolored using today’s more versatile coloring techniques. Sadly, the phrase “Four color page” is one destined to become obsolete just like “broken record” or “busy signal”. The coloring does look much better now, but the art has never been the problem with The Maxx. Sam Kieth’s art has always looked almost grotesquely beautiful, cartoony yet grungy at the same time. Given that The Maxx originally came out in 1993 grungy is probably an appropriate description. No the problem with The Maxx is in the writing. Now granted, The Maxx isn’t on the same level as Youngblood when it comes to a poor script, but it’s still not good. The Maxx is a homeless man who may or may not be a superhero. His only friend appears to be Julie Winters a freelance social worker with many issues of her own. When the story starts there is a man named Mr. Gone who is going around raping and or killing several young women throughout the city only to call Julie after every heinous act and tell her that he did it all for her. The Maxx tries to stop Mr. Gone only to be plagued by little carnivorous creatures called Isz that Gone brings from the Outback to the real world. The Outback as The Maxx calls it is an alternate dream world where he looks the same except for long flowing hair and Julie is the supposed Jungle Queen. Slowly, painfully slowly, Mr. Gone reveals clues to the Maxx about his real nature, Julies real nature and, what the heck, Gone’s real nature as well. Rather than have a real story structure the comics, at least for the first four issues just serve up random encounters between The Maxx and Mr. Gone and Julie that serve no purpose but to allow Mr.Gone to repeatedly tease The Maxx and Julie about their supposed shared past. The real problem here is that Mr. Gone’s motives are never made clear. He starts out seeming to be a villain: kidnapping Julie, shooting The Maxx, but a few issues later is telling The Maxx that they must help Julie. It’s all so confusing but not in the way of a good mystery more in the way of a story that is trying too hard to seem really deep and darkly meaningful. In short The Maxx feels like a fourteen year old Goth kid wrote it while listening to Nine Inch Nails. Even if you haven’t read The Maxx before you might remember The Maxx as a cartoon that ran on MTV in the 90’s. The cartoon though visually compelling, wasn’t much better than the book unfortunately as it followed the story pretty closely.
If you’re a comic fan who values artwork over writing or even just a comic fan who’s nostalgic for the 90’s you may want to pick up The Maxx Maxximized Vol.1. If you already have the old comics though it’s really your call, do the colors bother you enough to buy the same book again? If the answer is yes, then by all means pick it up. If you find the colors of the original issues wholly unoffensive to your ocular palate than you should probably skip the new collection all together.
