"Aeon Flux" and "The Maxx"

Once upon a time in the 1990s, MTV was the home of some of the most interesting experiments in adult-oriented American animation. "Liquid Television" was their showcase for indie shorts that launched several series, including "Beavis and Butt-head." However, I was more interested in the less conventional titles, particularly two shows that I took the trouble to track down when I was in college: "Æon Flux" and "The Maxx." These days animation aimed at adults isn't a rarity. But as much as I enjoy "Archer" and the recently returned "Venture Brothers," it's still these two MTV shows that serve as my benchmark for what mature, ambitious animation can be.

Let's start with "The Maxx," based on the Sam Kieth comics. Though it looks like a superhero story, featuring a titular hero with superhuman powers and a hidden identity, he's not your standard crime-fighter. The Maxx in the real world is a homeless bum, but he also exists in another world linked to his subconscious mind, and perhaps others, called the Outback. The Outback is full of monsters and fantastic creatures, and the Maxx is charged with protecting the Jungle Queen, who in reality is a social worker named Julie. Most of the too-brief series is spent unraveling the various traumas that brought these characters together, and battling the various evils that the Outback is spilling into the real world.

This is a story that could conceivably be told in live action, but it would be pointless. The joy of "The Maxx" is in its wildly exaggerated characters and its anarchic cartoon violence, paired with some very dark and twisted explorations of the human psyche. I saw most of the show in a single sitting, but I expect the individual episodes must have played just as well in their original eleven-minute installments. Despite the more adult subject matter, they have all the energy and the outsized emotion of a purely comic cartoon shorts like "Tom and Jerry" or "Looney Toons," more than enough to make a big impression on the viewer in only a few minutes. What especially impressed me is that the characters feel like real people, underneath all the layers of comic-book fantasy. Maxx fixates on "Cheers." Julie has a feminist streak. Sarah is too miserable even for the Goth crowd. So at the show's core is some really good, solid character drama that is more than enough to make up for the rougher spots.

Moving on to "Æon Fluxx," which was originally created by Peter Chung as a series of five-minute shorts, and then eventually expanded into half-hour episodes. This one took advantage of cartoon logic to some wild extremes. The series is set in a dystopian future that looks like something out of Moebius comic, where the female rebel freedom fighter Æon, dressed in outfits that tend to resemble leather fetish gear, is perpetually at war with the forces of her arch-nemesis (and occasional lover), the dictator Trevor Goodchild. In the original series of "Æon" shorts, the main character died violently in every episode. In the longer episodes, her survival rate was a little better, though none of the endings could be called happy in any sense. As you might expect, there is no continuity of story from one episode to the next, and really no constants aside from the two main characters and the basic premise. One of the best stories doesn't even feature Æon as the main character.

I find it difficult to describe "Æon Flux." It resembles "Heavy Metal" on a surface level, full of sex and violence, but it's far more intelligent, more bizarre, and more ambitious. Watching it felt akin to reading a really good anthology of science-fiction short stories, full of strange existential conundrums and ironic concepts. It's one of the few shows where I honestly never knew where any of the stories were going, where there didn't seem to be any boundaries at all. Not only could Æon die, but she could be fundamentally changed in different ways, depending on the episode. She could really and truly fall in love with Trevor. She could turn out to be from a different universe or reality, or simply a clever ruse that never actually existed at all. Moreover, some of the concepts are so alien, like mind-warping astral beings and artificial consciences, they can be off-putting to sci-fi novices. The animation is particularly helpful here in giving form to some really wild and avant garde ideas.

It's been nearly two decades since these series went off the air, and I've rarely seen anything in American animation that has come close since in terms of sheer daring and maturity. And I find it sad that they've become so obscure now, and that few people remember or reference them when talking about television animation. Sure, "The Simpsons" and "South Park" undeniably had the most impact in the 90s, but they weren't the only trailblazers. And I hope that someday we'll be in a time and place where commercial animation can venture down that path again.
---