Sometimes they come back...

An interesting thing happened a few days ago. Something that uncovered a forgotten collection of treasured experiences. A long story I know... I said short entries but I lied.

When I was young, I didn't collect comics. People around me collected comics and quickly forgot about them. Sometimes I'd inherit a forgotten collection from some friend of the family. (That's how I got my nearly complete Conan series). Most of my stuff came from my brother who was interested in drawing before he got into hip hop culture.

Sometimes when I was on a long road trip my dad would let me pick out a few, not realizing that gas stations didn't usually stock first issues of anything. I would find myself peeking into a tiny sliver of an artists vision, reading it over 20 times in a vain attempt to understand the characters and plots. For those of you who have never read a comic. Imagine having only episode 25 of Six Feet Under to keep you busy for a 15 hour car ride.

Looking back, it's funny how I adapted to my strange 1 shot collection. I learned to fill in the back story of the characters, letting my imagination run wild and justify all their actions. I'd then project a future scenario and figure out how the story would end. This turned into a habit that I still carry with me.

Somehow The Maxx #8 made its way into the Britton household in the mid 90s. I must have read that 25 page comic 100 times. Nothing made any sense, it was well written, clever and amazingly well illustrated. At that point in my life, the fact that Maxx was big, yellow, purple was was good enough for me.
A few days ago The Maxx entered my life again, this time as a complete series. I had wondered about this guy for 14 years and now was my chance to see what he was about. As I started reading I realized why I had so much trouble with this one when I was a kid. The surreal and complex narrative was far deeper than my little kid brain could have imagined. Serial rapists, social workers, mental patients, vagrants and drop outs... I had no idea the story would be this gritty. The best part was seeing where my projected back stories differed from the real deal.

Don't let the yellow claws and blood smears fool you. The Maxx is one hell of an interesting examination of the human condition. Very little violence, mostly surreal and introspective. Maxx is one of the most tragic and bizarre heroes I've ever encountered. It joins the list of comics I actually like. (Far shorter than most people would expect)

Maus
Hellboy
The Maxx

Maxx was animated at some point. They dropped out the really messed up stuff and cut a lot of corners with the story. The animation is fun to watch.
...

But it's not as good as interesting.