Customer Reviews

Smax

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
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In case you missed Top Ten (I'd recommend you go pick uop the Trade Paper Back) Smax was a blue skinned cop who had a habit of talking to his closet. In his own series we get to find out why.(along with the name confusion in Top Ten) Alan Moore and Zander Cannon(who finally gets some credit)
shine in this tale. Just as in Top Ten both Moore and Cannon let the in-jokes fly and have a romp through the magic kingdom.

What could I say about Alan Moore that hasn't been said yet? After a 12-issue run of Top Ten, Moore takes us to Smax's homeworld, a place where technology doesn't exist and there are dragons to be killed. Smax takes his partner, ToyBox, with him and we get to learn more than we could have hoped for about the previous life of Jeff Smax, or Jaafs Smackson, the dragonslayer. It is funny (there is a bureau that oversees all kinds of quests; quotas must be met, so Smax has to take with him some dwarfs, elves and sorcerers!), it is smart, it is Alan Moore! The art is cartoony, but it works.

I was never that much of a fan of the original Top Ten series. But I really enjoyed this fun and engaging spin off. In this series we follow Top Ten character Smax back to the "Sword and Sorcery" style parallel universe where he grew up. This book is fairly different from Top Ten - this is pretty much Alan Moore doing humorous fantasy in the style of Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" novels - although Moore can be a little bit more dark and nasty than Pratchett. Readers who haven't read Top Ten should be able to pick this one up and enjoy it, although they may be slightly confused the first five or ten pages. But after that this is completely its own story. And it's all very enjoyable.

Once again, Alan Moore for the win. Like The Forty-Niners, this is a spinoff of his excellent Top 10 series. Smax and Toy Box head to Smax's homeworld, a place brimming with all the hallmarks of a fairy tale world, as well as wink wink, nudge nudge fantasy humor. Essentially, it's a fairy tale in a fairy tale land filled with all the tropes of fairy tales, but with Moore's little twists. Entirely different than Top 10, but just as enjoyable.

Despite having a very childish, cartoonish look, just like Top 10 the art is bursting with references to everything under the sun, from Harry Potter to Winnie the Pooh to Bob The Angry Flower to Star Wars and lots more. Great fun (though don't let the look fool you; the story deals a bit with rape and incest, so this isn't for kids).

SMAX is a spinoff from Moore's wonderful Top 10 series. Moore is the only comic book writer who can make me laugh out loud and shudder in fear (and in the same book!) and SMAX certainly doesn't disappoint; it's a mostly light-hearted and hilarious story with moments of true horror. Moore's take on the dragon seems very fresh and interesting; Moore, as is typical, seems to know what he's talking about. It's also a nice exploration of people who leave their backward homes for the big city and what happens when they return.

The artwork is good and suits the generally light and "magical" story, although I prefer the more realistic artwork on the original Top 10.

Highly recommended!

So I finally ordered SMAX, a 5 issue miniseries that comes right from the pages of Alan Moore's Top Ten, Book 1. I know I should review Top Ten but that will have to be next month. Suffice to say, though, that Top Ten is about Precinct Ten, about a group of police officers that have to deal with an entire world of super-powered beings, a world with aliens with strange powers, ultra-technologically enhanced citizens, magic based creatures and even a few divine pantheons. So, of course, in this planet, and in this city, being a cop is extremely complicated.

The officers in Top Ten represent a very rich and unique cast of characters, with different powers and very distinct personalities. One of the main characters was Jeff Smax, a tall, blue-skinned alien with super strength, invulnerability and the `strong light', an energy projection ability. In the first issue of Top Ten he's paired with Robyn, AKA Toybox. She is just a normal girl but she possesses a box filled with super-advanced miniaturized robots, shaped like toys, which function like a small army in battles.

I don't know why it took me so long to order SMAX. Top Ten had been so wonderful that I guess I was afraid that this spin-off wouldn't live up to the level of quality of the original series. A reasonable preoccupation, after all, most spin-offs are rarely good. But I'm glad that I finally read it. Yes, it's a wonderful series and it works precisely because it's different from Top Ten: you don't need to read any previous issue to connect with the characters or understand what's going on.

In the first issue Jeff Smax must return to his home planet, to assist to his uncle's funeral. Robyn, probably his only friend on Earth, decides to tag along. One of the things that I loved the most about Top Ten's artistic approach was the amount of details and hidden homages / references to comics or movies hidden (or in plain view) in every frame, in every page. Here artist Zander Cannon manages to accomplish the same feat. Take a look at the splash page of the first issue: we have Mick Anglo's classic British super-hero; an obvious The Matrix reference in one of the billboards (`why didn't I take the blue pill?', it's an ad for a pharmacy); Rorschach from Watchmen talking with Steve Ditko's The Question from Charleston Comics / DC Comics, and many more (in fact, who else can find other references / homages in this page?).

Smax feels ashamed of his world, he describes it to Robyn as an underdeveloped planet, outside the commercial interstellar routes. It's world of magic, outside the boundaries of science: it's a world in which transportation takes place thanks to wizardry or mythical flying creatures, a world inhabited by gnomes, elves, dwarves, trolls, ogres, fairies, talking animals, dragons, etc. A world absolutely charming; and here, very much like in Top Ten, there are constant references to the literary genre of fantasy as well as fairy tales. It's a quite a delight, not only as a metatextual insight of literary categories and therefore unyielding structures and clichés but also as a metaphor of Smax's own necessity to fit in a certain role, an specific classification. His understandable urge, of course, comes from his own hybrid condition: he's the son of an ogre and a powerful, magical female warrior. And so is his sister.

The folklore and the magical creatures of Smax's home leave Robyn in awe. But as they seek for a suitable lodging they find themselves trapped in a very peculiar situation. They stay in a tavern that works according to every genre convention of children's narrative, Robyn is given a bed with dozens of mattresses piled up and a pea underneath them, as if she were the princess from bedtime stories. And Smax finds himself in a typical dungeon with torture instruments. However, it's the food what shocks them the most: mermaid, unicorn, cherubim, the goose of the golden eggs, the three piggies. Like I said before, the more you remember the stories your parents told you before going to sleep, the more you can laugh about the irony in Smax's pages.

The evolution of the characters is quite rewarding. The perpetually silent and serious Smax from Top Ten gives way to a more communicative albeit insecure and guilty man. Robyn is stunned as she finds out one revelation after another. Back in Earth, Smax would barely say his full name; in his planet, though, he ends up confessing his innermost secrets.

Guilt, according to Jacques Lacan, disassociates the concept of the self and the superego. Guilt comes when one gives into desire. To give in means not to carry out that which is represented as our desire. Smax feels guilty for his incestuous relationship with his sister. But at the same time, he blames himself for failing miserably as a dragon-slayer.

Top Ten had superb art by Gene Ha, but I think Zander Cannon was just the right artist for such an extravagant and yet funny and fantastic miniseries as Smax. With a very clean, `cartoony' style, Cannon delivers both the horror and the humor, the light and the darkness, the perennial dichotomy inherent to all bedtime stories. At the same time, he also manages to provide the reader with plenty of visual details, insinuations and jokes that make this world of fantasy more cohesive than anything else.

"Isn't it good to be lost in the wood...and isn't it bad, so quiet there, in the wood?", is what you get if you combine the titles of the first and second issue of this miniseries (coincidentally, every issue is titled following the lyrics of Syd Barrett's Octopus, check the 5 splash pages I've posted and see for yourselves). And certainly it's a nice way of helping the reader to get in touch with the protagonists dilemmas.

Smax is a troubled man. He's lost, but at the same time he cannot reclaim his own identity. He's Jeff Smax, respected police officer from precinct ten, but he's also Jaafs, the infamous dragon-slayer. He abandoned his home world for several reasons, chief amongst them the remorse he feels for failing in his most important quest as a dragon-slayer. In world populated by magical creatures, killing dragons can be quite a profitable career. You rescue the princess and you get a percentage of the gold that is found in the dragon's cave. Again, Alan Moore plays with genre conventions, in such a witty and refreshing way that one can burst into laughter at the turn of the page.

Robyn convinces Smax that in order to vanquish the ghosts from his past, he must go on another quest. Ominous signs are bequeathed, presages are foreseen. He has no choice but to obey the dictations of fate. That's when Smax decides to go to town and reactivate his license as a dragon-slayer. The town displays many of the typical vices that one would find in any large city. Just like it was seen in the first issue, this is not a `happily ever after' reality. You can see a tooth fairy buying drugs, magical creatures prostituting themselves to earn enough to survive, alcoholism and so on. But Moore only shows us this as peripheral activities.

There are some hilarious scenes there, as Robyn meets one of the many iterations of Death. If anybody has read Terry Pratchett's book about Death (Mort) then a lighthearted, humorous and yet enthralling portrayal of Death will be familiar... In Smax's world, death is a part of the bureaucratic machinery. There is a personification of death for each instance and species, there is a death for animals, another one for elves, another one for dwarves; there is a death for minor characters, there is a death for epic, glorious and larger than life heroes. Robyn meets one of the most insignificant deaths, one that deals only with the most irrelevant demises. Nonetheless, they get along, and thanks to their conversation, Robyn learns that she only has one Death to fear, the dark one called `Dennis'.

Once their quest is approved by every office and every functionary, Smax, Robyn and a fellowship of elves, dwarves and others travel across the woods, in search of Morning Bright's lair. Morning Bright is one of the original dragons, one of the most powerful creatures that planet has ever seen. And although Smax is indestructible he lacks the power to defeat such a powerful foe. And that's when Robyn offers her help. In a world of magical talismans, secret potions, ancient spells and magical solutions, she offers one whacky alternative: science. Now, for the elves and dwarves, science is as uncanny and incomprehensible as magic to Robyn. And precisely because of that, science is their only alternative, after all that' the only thing that Morning Bright will find unpredictable.

But despite the results of the battle, there will be one very delicate matter to attend: Smax incestuous relationship with his sister Rexa. He knows once he comes back to Earth he must do that alone, as incest is forbidden by Earthly law. Surviving the monstrosity (literal monstrosity) of his father, a vicious and cruel ogre that would rape his daughter constantly, meant that at a young age Smax had to kill the ogre and run away with Rexa. He has shared a live with her, and it will be difficult to leave her behind once again.

Why is their relationship so important? They seem to surpass the idealized brotherly relationship as seen in Sophocles Antigone. Smax and Rexa are 'autadelphos' (Greek term: autos- "same"; adelphos- "sisterly", related to delphus- "womb"), not only have they shared the mother's womb but they also share every physical trait, except for gender they're identical to one another in physical appearance and superpowers. According to Saussure's linguistics, brother and sister would only be able to articulate themselves into the symbolic order by functioning as mutually supplementary properties. Here the signifier (the body) is the same, but the signified (the personality) is not. If they see themselves as irreplaceable, if they actually complement each other, what should they do? Live together thus validating incest? Or part ways again, perhaps forever?

One of the better stories from Alan Moore I read. Really liked it, it added a lot to the whole Top 10 saga. If you like top 10, this is a must read!

If you haven't read any Alan Moore, start! This book is a follow up to Top Ten Book 2. I won't include spoilers, and you don't need to have read Top Ten to appreciate this novel. Watch the panels closely - there are so many nods to pop culture that it would be hard to start a list! It's funny and sad and worth every penny.

A knight off to kill the Dragon, and sleep with his sister, or a knight off to sleep with his sister and kill the Dragon. The knight, however, is Officer Jeff Smax of the Neopolis police force. There are some secrets about his family and his past he does not want his co-workers to know about, and of course, his partner is pissed.

jeff (jaafs) smax was first introduced in top 10, which this is an offshoot of. i didn't really care too much for top 10, maybe i just don't like the setting. but smax is great. it's funny and the story is very good. i'd recommend this to all comics and alan moore fans.