Mistigram: The words look gnarly, but the words aren't. WTF? Cth was taken by #DrueLanglois' 2022 video for the #ShoebodyBop song by the Minute Hour. He'd roughed out an #ANSIart sketch depicting a cultist invokation which LDA and @zeusii.bsky.social fleshed out taken in a different direction.
![The second most popular subject (after his Image Comics colleague Spawn) for elite ANSI art of the '90s PC computer art underground, The Maxx was an incredible deconstructionist superhero comic book created by [Sam Kieth]. First appearing in Image's [Darker Image] sampler, the distinctive character went on to feature in 35 monthly issues of his own comic trhough 1998 and a 13-episode 1995 animated adaptation aired on the Oddities segment of MTV's Liquid Television.
What makes the character so distinctive? Well, he's very purple, for one. His face features enormous upper teeth, and his yellow-gloved hands each have a giant punch spike emerging from the knuckle area. The hero's real identity is a homeless man with a tenuous grasp on reality, who enjoys the mutual patronage of social worker Julie Winters -- who has an imaginary alter-ego herself as the Leopard Queen in the Outback, a different, fantastic, plane of existence. The Maxx protects her from the predation of the sinister Mr. Gone and his army of isz, protean little minions who can only say "meep". You will see a lot of scrollers featuring all of these characters, and as a bonus, sometimes the background of a panel will consist entirely of the word CHUNG repeated over and over again. All in all, a memorable milestone from its era!](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bvfpfl5oopdjy4dnv6aqspii/bafkreib6gp2mddu32ryapo327xx7m2d2jhlqcjftcqvc2ekar6akiwpbyy)
![Perhaps anticipating the exodus of the Image Comics founders three years later, Valiant was former Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's 1989 attempt to make a wave in the North American superhero comic book industry without the bloated drag factor and deadweight plaguing the doomed and bankrupt Marvel Comics (bereft of the benign hands-off patronage DC enjoyed from WB) in that period. The biggest splashes the company made were with revived Dell and Gold Key comics characters (eg. Dr. Solar, Turok: Son of Stone, and Magnus, Robot Fighter) but it also managed to make some well-received comics with original characters (for instance Rai, Shadow Man, X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Ninjak, Archer & Armstrong.)
This company's original comics characters haven't, by and large, persisted in the popular imagination, but you do see them represented in early artpacks due to the early-'90s window (through Valiant's 1994 acquisition by video game company [Acclaim Entertainment]) of both coinciding in time. [Wizard Magazine] definitely expected big things from Valiant!](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bvfpfl5oopdjy4dnv6aqspii/bafkreick7mvgzuud27amolcgqif3rjhomffusyhmujxaut3dtrch77d3u4)
