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The Maxx - Portrait of a Young Man as The Artist — LiveJournal
The Maxx
The following is the most fun I've ever had writing a paper. It's a first draft. No I haven't run grammar and spell check. No I don't want suggestions, I'll look at it later. This paper is for Art Robson, it's supposed to be sensational sounding.

Here is the panel I used for it as seen through webcam. It's a two page splash panel at the end of the first Maxx comic.

The splash page - king among comic pages; it is the most ferocious and powerfully charged panel of any comic page. Inside a single splash page… the smallest detail is exploded in a grand fire of emotion! All minute detail becomes godly powerful and the impact is endless. It is the equalizer of characters, putting even the dastardliest men on par with the hero when they are featured in the splash page. Not only does "The Maxx" love the splash page, but here we investigate a two page spread of a splash page where
Top left of he page we see the bulbous and grizzled, massive shoulder (or is that his back?) bursting the seams of the Maxx's clothing. It rips our attention as we begin to gaze at the panel. It says, "I am strong! I am mighty! I am so strong and mighty that I burst through my clothing and have no discernable body parts! I am MUSCLE!" The Maxx is so formidable that he breaks the barrier of his confined reality, flowing decidedly over the panel's constraints and into our world. This small detail in itself is enough to inform us that the Maxx rides two worlds, be they our's and his or two other worlds entirely; it beautifully alludes to the caracter's trapped state, stuck in this mundane world where he is being terrorized by the second figure in the panel – but I digress.
The fabric of the Maxx's costume, a royal (but dirty) purple hue draws our eye downward as the tattered remanents drip down Maxx's truck-like arms. The tatters themselves waver ever so slightly with the wind we cannot feel, bur know in our hearts would blow regally through Maxx's hair (if he had any to see). They look primal. like grass sewn to an aboriginal mask, making the Maxx that much more animalistic, vicious and mystical all at once. As we trace the sinewy biceps we are drawn up now seeing the Maxx's mask… What is this? The accentuated teeth gnash at the man across, even more animak than we thought before! His mask, so tribal like the tatters of his costume, is so sharp but sadly so small. This man uses his fists more than his mind, but ten his bulbous arm appropriates two-thirds of the first page of the splash panel. Come now, Maxx? Must you always fight?
As if to answer his claws scream for attention in bright, neon yellow! Trails of black ichors, warning us of the doom ahead leads us to the pristinely clean killing apparatus. So pointed, so sharp that it hurts to look and we leap ahead fearing that we may cut ourselves…. only to find the villain, the focus of all the moment of Maxx's Mack truck arms, Mr. Gone. Shadows, midnight blue. We do not know this man, but we understand he is evil. In the quiet darkness of his half the panel we can only just see his head, on outline. He is a smart man, but jaded. He is powerful for he stands up right against the massive Maxx. He even has a higher elevation enforcing his more powerful stature. An important reason his is not taken as the hero (for he does half the right half of the panel) is because not only does he sit in darkness but upon it as well.
At his feet, and obviously his total beck and call are the obvious spawn of shadow, minions of the dark master. The Isz, in all their toothed glory. But, they are only teeth! They are nothing but killing and hate? Why does the Maxx not point his erect phallus massive claw at these obvious harbingers of doom? They must not be as deadly. However, we knew that already. The arc of the page wraps down, around, through Maxx's phallus arm and up into Mr. Gone smaller, sleeker, bald phallus head. The panel doesn't care about the Isz and their, tiny, pointy phalluses teeth. To even notice them we must break off the momentum, which flings us to the next page (in this case the next comic as this is the last page). They are an afterthought, a tool to bring suspense and a reason to buy the next comic. They aren't even drawn well, they are sketchy c=oval with broken teeth. They have to power, no import, they are negative space filler. Darkness would have been just as ominous, but the hanger text of "Next Month…" would have been too bright against a straight black background. We would have seen that before we finished the rippling curves of Maxx. Beyond that, they are secondary even to the miniscule text at the center of the panel and the text is tertiary to anything else in this panel.
The text is dwarfed both by the Maxx (maybe a little by Gone simply because his cape billows in that metaphorical breeze mentioned before) and the sheer size of the panel. We don't even see the text until we leap from Maxx's sharp claws to Gone's blurred face. we get caught in Gone's mind, if you will, and are spit out of his mouth. We surge from his mouth as the darkness around his word bubble, word shadow more exactly. We are stuck in him, cannot escape his shadow and must forcefully choose with caption to read next. The Maxx, speaking to himself looks less and less powerful now that we are Gone, enveloped in the shadow. We laugh at the Maxx, whose thoughts are as apparent as the captions are now. If he can not even think to himself, how can he ever hope to defend him self from Gone? How can he win… THere is only despair as our eyes drop through the little text. We finish the panal seeing only defeat as we must first pass through Gone's harsh words, our words, before we can finall escape. But what is left for us? We fall away, distraught, only to be gobbled up by the hungry, toothed darkness that is(z).

Current Mood: chipper chipper
Current Music: I keep forgetting to turn winamp on! Damn it.

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