Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Sam Kieth is a favorite author - and I avoid his books as long as possible.  He's devastating, partly because he's fearless - mental illness/hallucinations, homelessness, and sexual assault are all delved into at some point in this graphic novel - but the real twist of the knife is that he offers no easy answers.   I end up curled up in bed crying for days straight after reading his works. 

I only come back because he's brutally honest about the world, and he's insightful, and he's brilliant.   His art is, by the way, just as good as his spot on writing.  Part of me wants to push on the Maxx Maximized volume two, and the other half is screaming that it doesn't want to end up in a fugue state, wandering the streets and blubbering.   Alright, enough hyperbole.   Let's just say that no one knows how to punch me in the gut like Kieth.   He does it effectively, consistently, and the most.   I've never had stories stay in my head or haunt me like Kieth's have, to be honest.   They're perfection. 

If only they weren't so cripplingly depressing.   (Although then they wouldn't be as haunting as effective, so nice little Catch-22 there.)

The Maxx - or Maxx - is a looming giant of a man - and purple and yellow.   He's also homeless, and flits back and forth between the city and Pangea, a wilder-than-real-life version of Australia where Julie Winter, his free-lance social worker, is The Leopard Queen and fearless and wild.   In real life, Julie helps whoever she can, but is brutally hard on those who are victims, or see themselves as such.   Especially women who are raped; it's a pretty big constant with her that she victim blames the victims of sexual assault.   At one point a cop even tells her she's victim blaming.    (Julie, by the way, was a victim of sexual assault.   It's why she dropped out of college, and is going broke in her current job.   She copes with her assault - she was raped and beaten - by not allowing herself to be a victim, and by shielding herself by projecting that need onto everyone else.)  I love so much about Julie - how kindhearted she is, how she accepts The Maxx even if she doesn't understand him - but she's got these horrible aspects, too, and I think that's the point.   She's doing what she can to survive, to not lose it herself, but the results aren't very pretty. 

So far, the story is coming together a little, but it's a slow burn.   There's so much about the characters here, so much setting up, that it wasn't until I tried to get to the heart of this that I didn't realize how little had actually gone on in this story.  Kieth is bringing in other characters like Sarah, a high schooler and a writer, and ties her story deftly into that of the Maxx and Julie's stories.   There's enough going on in the background to not mind that you're not really sure what's going on with The Maxx.   (In fact, having everyone treat him as if he's just another bum not only screwed with my mind, it made me want to know more.   It kept me guessing as to whether The Maxx was actually a big purple lunk, or he just presented in that way to the reader: he thought of himself that way and ta-da, that's what we see.   It drives me nuts and makes me want to figure it out - but alas, I can't.)

Brilliant.   Heartbreaking.  

Wants to go on, kinda need a breather.