Red Max

From Jenny Everywhere Wiki

Red Max was a British “professional anarchist” and explosives expert from Dimension 331, and an on-and-off companion to one incarnation of Jenny Everywhere. At home, he worked for a British “Department of Anarchy” which somehow existed as a branch of the British government.

Description

Physical appearance

Red Max was an average-looking white man. He originally had sandy blond hair, which he kept short, with a curious “ridge” in the middle. He always wore sunglasses and (true to his nick name) a red shirt, paired with a beige waistcoat, a black tie, and a pair of jeans. He also wore his professional Department of Anarchy badge on his lapel. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere) After the retcon, his appearance was altered to now have brown hair in a less conspicuous style, though with side-burns; a brown leather jacket with the anarchy symbol on the lapels; and a floral-patterned teal shirt. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere's Rules of the Multiverse 3

Personality

Despite the inherent contradiction in his job, Max seemed to genuinely consider himself an anarchist. He had a sense of humour, bantering back and forth with Jenny. He was a redoubtable planner, always keeping multiple aces up his sleeves (usually in the form of concealed explosives) no matter the situation. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Powers & abilities

Max had no supernatural abilities, although, through the Department, he was aware of the existence of other dimensions. He was a competent physical fighter, used to thinking on his feet, and was skilled at manipulating explosives, always carrying necessary items on his person. He also had some skills as a computer hacker. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Biography

Early life

Max started out as an insurance salesman working in New York until his potential was spotted by the British Department of Anarchy, who recruited him as a “professional anarchist”. He quickly gained recognition by his superiors as the Department's best agents. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Meeting Jenny Everywhere

Red Max is told about Jenny Everywhere for the first time. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

On one occasion, he was called to the Department of Anarchy's head office in London to receive a special assignment: to locate and befriend Jenny Everywhere, in the hope that he would be able to recruit her to help the Department's agenda, or else, to leverage the friendship to obtain advanced interdimensional technology from Jenny and bring it back to the Department. His subsequent meeting or meetings with Jenny, which also involved the Man With No Name, left the two on moderately good terms, but with Jenny fully aware of Red Max's true allegiance and thinking of him as a “troublemaker”. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Against the Brotherhood of Multiversal Oneness

Six months after Max was first told to befriend Jenny, she returned to Dimension 331 to meet up with the Man With No Name due to rumours that agents of Chaos had been spotted in this dimension. The Man With No Name reminded Jenny that this was Max's home, leading her to drop in on him to see what he was up to lately. Max subsequently followed Jenny to her more serious appointment with the Man With No Name after they began their investigation. When he got there, Man With No Name had been attacked by an assassin, who, it soon became clear, was not working for Chaos at all but for a malevolent interdimensional cult called the Brotherhood of Multiversal Oneness. Analysing the dimensional trail coming from the downed assassin, Jenny prepared to shift the Man With No Name to his home dimension, and, to the Man With No Name's annoyance, insisted on taking Max too. The Man was surprised to learn that Max knew who he really was (most notably, the fact that he truly didn't have a name).

They found themselves in Chernobyl in Dimension 672's Ukraine. The trio soon reached a locked metal door. Before Max could use his explosives to get through, Jenny shifted to another universe where the building was an ice-cream-cone factory and the door was therefore unlocked and unguarded; walking through, she then shifted back to Dimension 672, and opened it from the inside to the two men's confusion — even offering them complimentary ice cream cones. As they found some computer terminals, Jenny instructed Max to “do his fine stuff”. Max indeed found data on the villains' plans, which mentioned New York, an island, and “a lure”. Looking out the window into the courtyard to find five warriors with the same tattoos as the New York assassin standing in front of them, they belatedly realised they had walked into a trap. A battle broke out, but the Man and Max's efforts soon proved of little importance when Jenny enters the field and, one by one, shifted the attackers away with a single touch, sending them off to a WWI battlefield.

The Man retrieved the D-Jump device used by the assassins, which was still keyed to their home base, and made his way there through the portal the device creates. He was mildly put out when he found Jenny and Max already waiting for him, having simply shifted there. The location, at any rate, turned out to be an island in the South Pacific — where they were immediately surrounded by forces of the organisation at fault in all of this: the Brotherhood of Multiversal Oneness. Before long, the prisoners were brought inside the Brotherhood's fortress and Jenny cuffed to a pillar in the middle of their courtyard. The Grandmaster of the Brotherhood, Awndisk, explained that their intent was to abuse Jenny's powers to fold all parallel universes into one, thereby merging with all their parallel selves; they thought this would be the path to enlightenment.

Max's litany of contingency measures proved essential to foiling Awndisk. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Awndisk, however, had underestimated the crazy-preparedness of Red Max, who had a C4 detonator concealed under one of his fingernails and a tranquiliser dart in his shirt collar, among other things. With Awndisk having stated that he needed Jenny conscious and rational for his plan to unfold, the Man retrieved the tranquiliser dart and managed to shoot it at Jenny, knocking her out, while Max activates the explosives on the beach thanks to his detonator, creating a distraction. Jenny's consciousness found herself in a “place between one world and the next” where she was greeted by her long-dead Grandfather in full Native regalia, who gave her words of wisdom on her significance in the balance of reality, claiming that she was “chosen” by the Great Spirit to preserve the balance of existence. She returned to the real world supernaturally empowered with a bow made of energy, with which she shot all the members of the Brotherhood one by one with the effect of making them “one with the Multiverse”.

After she was done, the extra powers faded, and she decided to go for a beer with the Man and Max. They did so at a pub in Edinburgh back in Dimension 331, relaxing and trading stories. Max was the first to leave, intent on giving over some of the Brotherhood's tech to his superiors in substitute to Jenny's secrets. After a little more banter, it was Jenny and the Man who parted ways, promising they'd meet again one of these days. (COMIC: The Legend of Jenny Everywhere)

Further adventures with Jenny

Red Max and the Man With No Name were later among the many guests at an interdimensional Christmas party organised by “their” Jenny Everywhere and attended by many of her counterparts from across the Multiverse and their companions. Max ended up seated between the Man With No Name and the Greek god Pan as all three had a drink. (COMIC: Merry Christmas Everywhere)

Retcon

At some point, Jenny underwent an incomplete retcon alongside Jenny and the Man With No Name, altering their appearances. The “new” Max had brown hair with a different haircut, including side-burns, and his glasses' lenses were coloured yellow instead of red. He now wore a brown leather jacket over a floral-patterned teal shirt. The retcon did not automatically transform the trio's passport photos, however, which once caused them some trouble. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere's Rules of the Multiverse #3)