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Does anybody remember The Maxx?

air_show

air_show

elementary my dear baxter
I'm talking about the animated show, specifically. I saw it a few times as a kid, it bamboozled yet intrigued me. Read the comics, or most of them anyway, years later. And beyond that and probably some influence on how I design characters, I haven't thought about it in quite a while.

Well I picked up the show and started watching it. Going slow so as to not burn through it too fast and to let it digest, so I'm only four episodes in. But it's kind of blowing my mind that this happened on MTV in 1995. The animation and art direction is incredible. I'm starting to realize I've never seen anything like it before and never seen anything like it after. It's amazingly unique.
 
Issun

Issun

Chumpy
(He/Him)
I taped it off of MTV when it aired and watched it several times over the next year or so. Haven't gone back to it since, though I probably should. It was so unique in the world of animation.
 
SpoonyBard

SpoonyBard

Threat Rhyme
(He/Him)
I thought this was a thread about the fictional cafe on Saved by the Bell.

I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not.
 
John

John

(he/him)
I thought I had seen The Maxx before, but turns out I was thinking of the other MTV cartoon, Aeon Flux. Gonna have to look for this one!
 
Johnny Unusual

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
MTV was definitely trying shit in the 90s that I can't imagine in any other decade. I will say that FXX's Cake does feel like it's trying to be a successor to Liquid Television, though.
 
estragon

estragon

The MTV show is one of those situations like Akira or Nausicaa where the animated adaptation happened before the comic had an ending, and picking up the comic to see a fuller version of the story was my first exposure to independent comics as a teenager. It was published through Image, but very different from the superhero knock off books that got huge sales. Floppies of The Maxx had something like 5-6 pages of letters and a very unique classified ads section and cultivated a real sense of community, with a lot of people writing very personally about their experiences with abuse or struggles with their sexuality. Even compared to the show, later issues of the comic go to some pretty dark places as Kieth explores cycles of abuse. He also gradually spends more time exploring side-stories completely unrelated to the magical/supernatural elements, including a Friends of the Maxx spinoff that just put a spotlight on other characters in the world. Particularly formative for me was that issue #31 in the main series was one of the first times I saw a depiction of being a gay teenager that felt real to me in media.

It's definitely extremely messy and not beyond criticism, but I appreciate what it was trying to do, warts and all, both for the comic itself and the discussions and connections created through its initial publication. (I really think it's hard to separate the comic itself from the letters section and classifieds in this case...)
 
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