's Cardboard
Box
Timeline of Events in the World of The Maxx
The following table lists what I consider the important events in the
Maxx plotline. Afterwards is a list of all the references
I could find to the passage of time in the comic. "Current" events seem
to follow real time pretty closely in #1-20, although this will change
when we jump ten years into the future for #21.
If you have any observations or information, please send me email. If you help me
revise the timeline, I'll give you credit in the list of
acknowledgments.
| Year | Comic Issue | Event |
| ? | 10,19 | Sent by the U.S. government, Artemus Pender goes to investigate the
religion of the Australian aboriginals |
| 1972 | - | Julie
Winters born |
| ? | 10,19,20 | Julie creates her Outback based on her
own imagination and Uncle Artie's
stories |
| 1980 | - | Sara(h)
James born |
| 1980 | 10 | Julie finds dying rabbit; her mom has to kill it; the
rabbit becomes Julie's spirit
animal |
| ? | 10 | Sarah's dad leaves |
| ca. 1984 | 14 | Quilt-castle dream sequence is
flashback to this time |
| 1990 | 3,19,20 | Julie is beaten, raped and left for
dead |
| 1990 | 9,19 | Julie hits Dave with her car, hides him with trash
from alley; Dave becomes Maxx |
| 1990 | 1,2,3,4,20 | Julie drops out of college, starts
"free-lance social work" |
| 1993 | 1 | Comic and cartoon start |
| 1993 | 1 | Mr. Gone starts calling Julie |
| 1993 | 1 | Maxx
starts seeing Isz |
| 1993 | 1-2 | Maxx first meets Mr. Gone; they fight |
| 1993 | 2 | Mr.
Gone kidnaps Julie, but she
escapes and cuts his head off |
| 1993 | 3 | Maxx
meets Mr. Gone in the Outback; they
fight, then talk |
| 1993 | 6 | Julie visits her Outback for the first
time in years, meets Li'l Julie,
and starts healing |
| 1993-4 | 7-8 | Mr. Gone coaxes Sarah into putting his head in Julie's apartment |
| 1993-4 | 7-8 | Maxx and Julie visit Outback together; Outback Maxx visits this world |
| 1993-4 | 7-8 | Sarah finds her spirit animal: the
horse |
| 1994 | 9-10 | Julie plans to leave; a white Is comes from Outback to get Mr. Gone's head |
| 1994 | 10 | Mr. Gone gets his head sewn back
on |
| 1994 | 11 | Julie leaves town; cartoon
ends |
| 1994-5 | 12-13 | Julie gets pregnant |
| 1994-5 | 12-13 | Sarah gets a tape from her father |
| 1995 | 14 | Maxx
and Sarah swap dreams; Julie comes back |
| 1995 | 17-20 | Maxx, Sarah, Is heal the despoiled Outback with both help
and hindrance from Mr. Gone |
| 1995 | 20 | Maxx
leaves |
| 1995 | - | Julie's baby born |
| 2006 | 21 | Sara goes to see her father; the CIA tries to assassinate
him |
Notes:
The comics seem to follow real time, more or less. In #6 Maxx says that
Julie told him the other day that they cancelled Cheers.
#6 was published in October 1993, and Cheers' last episode
was in May 1993, so at least in #6 we could be in real time.
The earlier issues seem to have been in real time as well. In #6 Tilly
says that Glorie was attacked a few months ago. The attack happened in
#1, published in March 1993, so that seems plausible. However, issues
#1-3 occur in rapid succession, so we should be careful not to be too
literal about the publication dates.
Although issues #1-3 clearly occur one right after another, there's an
unspecified break between #3 and #4, then again between #4 and #5, and
#5 and #6. I can't say much about #7-8, because I don't have them, but
#8-11 appear to take place one after another. In #15, Sarah says that
Julie just came off a six-month love binge, so six months pass between
the end of #11 and the beginning of #14. #15 follows close on the heels
of #14, but #16 seems discontinuous, like #4. There are unspecified
breaks before and after #16, but #18 seems to follow immediately after
#17. If you judge from the Outback story going on, #17-20 seem to
follow one right after another, but time may flow differently in the
real world -- there could be a break between #18 and #19, and between
#19 and #20, and we need extra time there, because Julie's estimates
about how far along her pregnancy is change. So, the coverage looks
kind of like this:
1-3, 4, 5, 6 (?) 8-11 (?) 14-15, 16, 17-18, 19, 20, 21
(where a comma represents a break, and a hyphen represents no break)
In #3 Maxx says that Mr. Gone told him that Julie was attacked three
years ago (which would be 1990), then in #19 Mr. Gone tells Julie that
she was attacked six weeks after she started college (which would place
the attack in the middle of October 1990). Most people start college
around age 18, so if Julie followed that pattern she was born around
1972, and she is 21 as the comic begins. Since in #10 Mr. Gone seems to
be saying that Julie's rabbit incident happened when she was 8, that
would place the incident around 1980.
In #21, which probably takes place in late 2005 or early 2006, Sarah
states that she's 25 years old. That makes her 15 in 1995, and she was
therefore born between late 1979 and early 1981. If the end of the
quilt-castle dream sequence from #14 is a memory of Sarah's, then it
probably took place in 1982 or 1983, since she's not talking very well
yet, so she's probably 2 or 3. It cannot possibly happen any later than
about 1985, because Sarah's dad was probably living with Gaynor by
then.
Time references in the comic:
- #1 (published March 1993):
- p. 2: Maxx knows Renny, Teego and Fridge's racket, but he's
never done anything about it until now. Perhaps he only recently became
the Maxx?
- pp. 15, 19: Julie's gotten Maxx out of jail several times before
- p. 24: Maxx speaks of the woman he saved yesterday
- #2 (published April 1993):
- p. 1: Julie has been dieting for three weeks
- p. 2-5: This one begins minutes before #1 ends
- p. 3: The guy at the gas station says he went to see Glorie in the
hospital "a couple of days" earlier
- #3 (published May 1993):
- p. 2: This is taking place immediately after #2
- p. 20: Three years ago a young architectural student (we assume
this is Julie) was beaten and raped and left for dead
- #4 (published August 1993):
- p. 2: Mr. Gone left Tilly and Sarah when Sarah was too young to
remember; Tilly told Sarah he killed everybody at his office, then
killed himself
- p. 4: The night of Tilly's crying jag is around the time Sarah
started carrying a gun
- p. 8: Sarah found one of her dad's guns the previous week
- #5 (published September 1993):
- p. 4: Maxx has been camping out at Julie's for several
Saturdays, at least
- #6 (published October 1993):
- p. 1: Before she met the Maxx, Julie wasn't able to sleep for
years
- p. 1: Sarah's picking up a friend who was attacked by a serial
rapist a few months before (later we see that the friend is Glorie, and
thus the rapist is Mr. Gone)
- p. 19: Li'l Julie says this stuff will take Julie years to work
through
- p. 21: Just the other day Julie told Maxx they canceled
Cheers (the last episode aired May 20, 1993)
- #9 (published June 1994):
- p. 2: Sarah asks Glorie if she's coming back to school this
year; it is probably late summer
- p. 5: Julie is still locked in the bathroom, so it can't be too
long since #8
- #10 (published August 1994):
- p. 1: This takes place the day after #9
- p. 16: Julie combs her doll's head off several days after the
adults try to tell her about death; that night her mom kills the rabbit
- p. 18: The rabbit incident occurred when Julie was eight years old
- #14 (published February 1995):
- p. 1: Jasper says he's been stuck for three weeks
- p. 13: Tilly tells Sarah her father's dead
- p. 19: Maxx thinks Sarah is 16 or 17
- p. 26: Page 1 of this issue was supposed to be the last page of
#12 and happened 6 seconds before page 1 of #12
- #15 (published February 1995):
- p. 14: Julie just came off a six-month love binge
- p. 16: Julie thinks she's due in approximately one month (I don't
believe this)
- p. 17: Sarah's mom lived in a free-love commune in 1971
- #17 (published July 1995):
- p. 22: In #15 Julie is 5 months along (I believe this)
- #19 (published September 1995):
- p. 9: Julie hadn't been at college more than 6 weeks when she
was raped
- p. 12: Julie ran into Dave three weeks after she was attacked
- #20 (published November 1995):
- p. 6: Maxx knocked the rock chip off the volcano (#17) one day
ago (although this is Outback time, so #17-20 may occur over more than a
day of real-world time)
- p. 10: Julie says many years passed between her attack and when
she hit Dave (I think this is a goof, because both the attack and the
accident happened while Julie was in college, and Dave's metamorphosis
into the Maxx was mostly a direct consequence of the attack)
- p. 18: Julie estimates that she'll have the baby in three days
- p. 22: #21 will occur 10 years later
- p. 24: Back in #4 Sarah says that her dad killed himself when she
was "too young to remember" and also "three years ago;" "three years
ago" is wrong
- #21 (published January 1996):
- p. 1: This is ten years later, presumably early 2006
- p. 2: Skit Bickers was first in trouble eight years ago (1998) for
adding nicotine to food, but has just been acquitted
- p. 5: Sarah is now 25
- p. 14: Artie met Gaynor at least 20 years ago
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