the Maxx: 01
The Cover
I've never been a fan of the first issues cover. I never felt it conveyed anything of the subtly and humour you are going to be treated to inside. It looks like yet another masked super-hero, with a ridiculously over developed body and a blood splash to show this is a little more brutal than your usual Marvel/DC gay romp through the park.The Story
Like many people, I suspect, my first experience of Sam Kieth's The Maxx was from the MTV show that took the comic and reproduced the feel of it so perfectly. So When i found the original comic i was utterly delighted and immediately felt at home in the Maxx's world.The Maxx can be a very wordy affair and to their credit the narrative is split up into manageable chunks, dotted around so as not to block out whole sections of page and give the art room to breath. Its because theres so much narration in The Maxx you can feel it screaming out to be on TV where that will work so much better.
Artwork
The art is distinctive and charming throughout, all bold shapes and pastels with dramatic lighting and one of my favourite things... black pages. When the background is totally black for the first few pages the content seems all the darker and menacing.We are guided into the strange cross world/metaphyisical existence of The Maxx, which could so easily be lost on us, with the change of background page colours from black to white and back again.
Right from page one we have an abstract little cell with notches and curves cut from the edges, narration dotted all around, shouting this isn't your normal world or indeed comic.
You can see Sam Kieth loves to use the page space in ways that suit the feeling of a scene: from stark single image pages to choppy slivers of action, curved edge panels of quieter moments and jagged chaotic cells when menace looms. Its shows Sam isn't afraid to use the whole of the medium to get his meaning across, the whole page is part of the story as much as the content of any one cell.
Conclusion
For many people i think The Maxx brings back smiles and memories of that strange show you used to watch on MTV that was really rather good even if the ending was rather vague and something to do with greenhouses.Its a tour-de-force of concept, pacing and originality thats rarely so well executed... The Maxx 1 is a thing of beauty.
Recommending
There are adult themes of crime, rape and dark menacing characters but the comic avoid graphically showing these so a mature mind is required. The dimension hopping nature of the story and wordy narration means its not a casual read and you need to invest a bit of time reading and digesting but the rewards are there.This first issue is a solid start for what is to come and i do highly recommend it to any viewer of the show and those who like a bit of thought in their stories. Its more fantasy than sci-fi so you have to like a pinch of surreal and mysteries that aren't fully explained anytime soon.