The Maxx #21
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Maxx #21 is the formal pivot point of Sam Kieth's series, launching what readers call the 'second arc' by leaping the story roughly a decade forward in time and handing narrative center stage from Julie Winters to her former client Sara, who now grapples with her own Outback and her own version of the Maxx in the form of Norbert. It is also the sole issue across the entire 35-issue run in which Kieth ceded the plotting function to another writer — Alan Moore, who co-scripted — making it a singular creative experiment inside an already unconventional series. That pairing of two of the era's most idiosyncratic voices produced a chapter that interrogates whether the entire first arc was 'real' within the story's already-slippery metaphysics, a move that deepens the series' longstanding meditation on trauma, memory, and subjective reality.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Sam Kieth created and illustrated every issue of The Maxx for Image Comics from 1993 to 1998, with William Messner-Loebs scripting the first fifteen issues before Kieth took over dialogue duties. For issue #21 alone, Kieth brought in Alan Moore — who contributed dialogue over Kieth's plot — making this the one exception to Kieth's otherwise unbroken plotting credit across the run. The issue arrived in January/February 1996, positioned immediately after the Gen13/The Maxx crossover one-shot that bridged the gap between issues #20 and #21, and it carried cover art by Kieth with inks finished by Jim Sinclair.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published January/February 1996 by Image Comics; cover art and pencils by Sam Kieth, inks by Sam Kieth and Jim Sinclair (finishes).
- Story title: 'Ten Years After' (also rendered '10 Years After') — the chapter that formally opens the series' second arc, set approximately a decade after the events of the first storyline.
- Script credited to Sam Kieth (plot & dialogue) and Alan Moore (dialogue); this is the only issue in the entire 35-issue run for which Kieth did not serve as plotter.
- Narrative pivot: the story shifts primary focus from Julie Winters to Sara (daughter of Mr. Gone), who has her own Outback and her own surrogate Maxx in the homeless man Norbert.
- Key story beat: CIA agents are pursuing Artie Pender (Artemus Pender), while Artie tells Sara that everything that happened in the first series was all in her imagination — a meta-destabilization of the entire preceding story.
- Characters appearing include the Maxx, Sara, Norbert, Julie Winters, Artemus Pender, Gaynor, Glynn Franklin, John Foster Parnes, Larry Mattox, Steve, Tilly James, and the Isz.
- Collected in The Maxx Vol. 4 trade paperback (DC/WildStorm, 2005, ISBN 978-1401206130), which gathers issues #21–27.
- The issue was subsequently reprinted as part of IDW's The Maxx: Maxximized remastered series (beginning November 2013), with new coloring by Ronda Pattison overseen by Kieth.
Cast · 14 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Maxx #4 (2005), The Maxx: Maxximized #21 (2015), The Maxx: Maxximized #21 (2015)
Key issues in The Maxx
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