's Cardboard Box

Julie Winters

When Julie was little she used to pretend she was a jungle queen and have adventures in the Outback, inspired by stories that her Uncle Artie told her. As she grew up she forgot about the Outback, until the time arose when she needed it.

One day she found a dying rabbit that had been hit by a car. She put it in a box and brought it home, hoping to help it. It didn't get better, and its presence only upset Julie and in turn her parents. They tried to explain death to her, but she retreated into combing her doll's hair and didn't listen. Finally her mother took it upon herself to kill the rabbit, doing what nobody else would do as she always did. Rather than face the truth, Julie suppressed this memory, but the rabbit became her spirit animal and protector.

Her doll now seems to symbolize Mr. Gone. When her parents told her things she didn't want to hear, she combed its hair until it fell out, and later when Uncle Artie forced the truth upon Julie she combed its head right off. This pattern occurred at least twice more later in her life (in issue #2 and either issue #7 or #8).

Six weeks after she started college she was raped, beaten and left for dead by some guy who pretended he had car trouble. The Outback world resurfaced, and she spent less and less time in reality as she tried to bury what had happened. Three weeks later she hit Dave with her car, unknowingly involving him in her crisis. She dropped out of school and used her tuition money to start what she called "free-lance social work," trying to save people from the horrors of the city, but what she was really doing was creating a fantasy world in which she was the only one around with control over his or her life. This is the situation we find her in when the comic and cartoon start.

Julie seems about average height and tends to have a potbelly. She has long, straight blond hair (although she dyed it red before she went to college and again after she leaves in issue #12). She tends to wear bellbottoms and revealing clothes, sometimes going barefoot even in trash-filled alleys. She is good friends with Tilly, Sara's mother and Artie's one-time wife. Because she turned Dave into the Maxx, I theorize that Julie has some of whatever dream-power that Mr. Gone has, but she doesn't know how to use it, so it only manifests itself in moments of emotional crisis. Julie always tries to help others, but she changes the rules when she gets hurt -- first she tried to help the rabbit, but it couldn't be helped. Then she tried to help the guy with car trouble, but he raped her. Now she helps people who can be helped, but who also pose no threat to her, in her free-lance social work. Her tendency to bury pain rather than face it is still around, too; she buried Dave after she hit him with her car instead of trying to help him, and she runs from the truth every time Mr. Gone presents it to her.

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