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HE NEEDS TO BE OBSERVED, probed, tested for his response to stimuli--not for his own good, but for the greater amusement of mankind. Because I'll tell you something about Max that he'll never let on to knowing: He is subversive, in the most glorious, unassuming, fun-loving sense of the word. He's a man poised on the edge of greatness, head ducked and ass backwards with his pants down around his ankles. A visionary defying anyone to take him seriously. And his (publicly) unexamined life is right here in our midst, cruising along at Schwinn-speed and drinking impossible amounts of coffee and tea. Some may think this article a shameless attempt by The Weekly to promote Cannon's debut trade comic book, Red Meat (just like the strip), a collection of more than 100 of his personal favorite Red Meat cartoons rendered in glorious hand-drawn black-and-white computer graphics, encased in a slick red cover emblazoned with a frighteningly life-like portrait of bug-eyed Earl. I shudder involuntarily every time I look at it--whether in horror or titillation, I can't be sure. But for better or worse, what you're about to read is really just an exercise in self-indulgence. I've always wondered what it would be like to spend a day inside someone else's addled mind. Someone like Frank Zappa, Gary Larson or Woody Allen. But seeing as they're all either too dead, too famous or just too damn weird, respectively, I settled on the next best thing. I talked my friend Max into spending an entire day under my scrutiny. It's like the award-winning science project I never had; and I honestly don't give a rat's ass that his book was published by Black Spring Books, which is owned by Douglas Biggers, The Weekly's editor and publisher. But I suppose that's the kind of thing readers think they have a right to know. So there. Now go out and buy it, like the helpless, consumer-driven deviants that you are, and let me get on with my humble contribution to future historians and would-be worshippers of graven images.
"The realization that got me was that for (some) other people to be at peace it's really necessary for everything to happen according to a particular schedule," he says. "That's not so important to me, that time thing. But if I'm going to cause somebody else discomfort by my actions, then I should probably modify my actions toward them to make them as comfortable as possible. You know, within reason." To put it mildly, it's a transformation that's far from complete...and a driving force behind the mystery. Nine out of 10 associates surveyed had the same thing to say about Max: "Where is he?" It's a question I was determined to get to the bottom of, once and for all. What does the elusive Max Cannon do all day? Visions of finger painting and martini bowling danced in my head. But actually, it all started with a fairly routine ride to the Cup Café for a late morning repast. We slip out the back door of The Weekly offices, as Cannon always does, and cross the parking lot to a plain white pick-up truck, unremarkable except for a dried-up frog and a lizard with a red dot stuck to its forehead staring back at me from the dash mat. TW: What the hell is that? MC: (With affection) Those are my desiccated pets, Doug and Toadie. Toadie was found by a swimming pool, and Doug was found in the desert. TW: Wow, those are amazingly well preserved. Can I touch one? Or will they turn to dust or something? MC: (Excitedly) No! They've been there for two years. You'd think that they're completely dry, but they're not. They continue to desiccate. Until they're powder. There's still moisture locked into...you know what (changing subject suddenly from the morbid inevitability of flesh), they're really well behaved. TW: How could they not be? MC: (He continues, undaunted.) I've never ever had to discipline either one of them...Although they play with the buttons sometimes...turn on the wipers and stuff like that. But they're really low maintenance. I believe in low-maintenance pets. TW: Do you have any other pets? MC: I have a cat. TW: A real one? MC: Yeah, but it's wild. You can't pet it. It doesn't let people touch it. And I have a gorilla, but it's a hand puppet. YOU CAN RELAX now. That's about as weird as it gets. Unless you consider the fact that this "guy next door," an eggs-and-toast, English-born military brat with three brothers ("If we were the four stooges, I'd be Larry") and a "pretty normal upbringing," draws cartoons about a sadistic milkman and a bug-eyed freak in a bolo tie who eats baby hamsters for breakfast. His normalcy is part of his subversive charm: He's a living reminder that there's the potential for Red Meat in all of us. "People are essentially red meat. They are," Cannon affirms, which may account for the comic strip's soaring popularity in 20 independent weeklies and 40 college papers nationwide. TW: How do you know we're not essentially white meat? MC: Because weasel is the other white meat. And so the idle chatter continues, until our plates are clean and it's time to get to the really good stuff.
MC: Laundry. (Pause) TW: Really? MC: Yeah. It's 50-cent wash day. TW: Can we stop by my house, then? MC: Absolutely. BACK OUT TO Doug and Toadie the Roadie we return, for an amusement park-like ride through the West University neighborhood, throughout which Max slows to point out the objects that delight him: a sunflowered moped seat cover, various gardens, and a peck of other everyday sights I am distracted from remembering because of the very large, real car that suddenly appears in front of us. "Don't worry," he says reassuringly. "If you don't see it, it isn't there." We've retrieved my laundry at this point, and pull up in front of Cannon's humble domicile, a duplex he's inhabited for the past decade. He's quick to point out the lush foliage he's planted in the front yard. A passle of Easter cacti are in full bloom, the most impressive number of flowers I've ever seen. "I'm into succulents now," he says suggestively. To outward appearances it's a peaceful setting, with birds chirping, a couple of modest shade trees, some flowering shrubs and cacti. Until Max unveils his secret plan. "I like to pit plants against plants. Right now the aloe are winning. It's a war out there!" We dash for cover inside, and I scrutinize his impeccably clean pad while Max collects his dirty laundry. In his studio there's a snapshot pinned to the wall from a female fan from Albuquerque. She's dressed as Milkman Dan, and she's showing off the Milkman Dan tattoo she's had permanently etched on her lower back. TW: Aren't you afraid of this woman? MC: No, not at all. I've written her a couple of times. Anyone that dedicated deserves that much. No, I think she's perfectly fine. (In character voice) She's perfectly charming. TW: Does it shock you that somebody would have your cartoon injected under her skin? MC: Oh, completely! I never envisioned that. In fact, I wouldn't have even started the strip when I did it if it hadn't been for Joe Forkan, who just wouldn't quit bugging me. I wanted to be a painter. I hope to actually get back to painting someday...soon. I sort of transitioned into cartooning from painting. I was doing illustration work, and the cartooning slowly took over. As soon as I can afford a studio space, I'll paint again. Because I really loved it. BUT FOR THE near future, he's counting on Red Meat for his bread and butter. After three labor-intensive years without financial reward, things are finally looking up. In fact, they're nearing the flashpoint as Cannon transitions from relative unknown to hot commodity. He checks his messages--one from a new Flagstaff paper that wants to pick up the strip as well as schedule an interview for a feature, one from his agent informing him the mail-order T-shirts are ready to go, and various and sundry personal messages--all echoing the aforementioned theme: "Max, where are you?" At the moment, he's expounding on the system of alternating washing the sheets and towels. "The sheets are crispier this week, so I guess I'll do towels." It's settled. I could go into great detail about the metaphorical significance of two quasi-friends conducting an interview while airing their dirty laundry, but some things are best left to the imagination. In fact, the whole day possessed the same quirky, static quality of a Red Meat cartoon: a certain set of recurring, basically nameless characters cropping up, with assorted freak occurrences here and there. Somewhere in between wash-spin-rinse-dry, we walked aimlessly down the street, up some stairs and down the other side through a video store and ended up in front of a (presumably) life-size replica of local superhero Cap'n Spiffy, who on this day was wearing a hand-printed cardboard sign around his neck that said, "I will fight evil for food." After purchasing the latest in independent comic art innovations, we rejoined the wash-'n'-fold, where fellow cartoonist Joe Forkan appeared, oddly carrying the same movies Max just returned to the video store the night before. The next thing I remember, we were leaving Max's house when a sandwich delivery guy stopped his car in the middle of the street to tell us a story. And finally, Max, two female friends and I are sitting outside Epic Café on Fourth Avenue when a guy wearing a beanie rides by on a unicycle. "Boy, there's something you don't see everyday," one of the females says. And I think she's probably right, but at this point in the day I'm thinking it seems absolutely normal. WHEN WE DRIVE down through the barrio and ascend a winding metal staircase to a studio loft wired into the next millennium with cybergadgetry, Max shifts into overdrive discussing dats, gifs, zips and other unintelligible technospeak which I gather has something to do with future animation web projects. In one form or another, animation is definitely the next stab at Red Meat. In fact, Cannon and longtime pal Forkan have assembled a top-secret computer animated demo reel that's sure to be coming to a television screen near you. "It's going to happen," says Cannon, who's meeting with heavy-hitters in L.A. as we go to press. You'll just have to trust us on this one: It'll take you to heights of television viewing pleasure previously unknown. If you don't laugh out loud at least once, you may have an obstructed airway. IT'S LATE AFTERNOON, and we're winding down after an exhausting day of doing nothing in particular. At this point, even the unflappable Max Cannon looks nearly as tired as I feel. We retreat from the brink to the familiar surroundings of his kitchen. Max is making smoothies, haphazardly emptying cartons of organic apple juice, soy milk and various frozen fruits into the blender. From a cupboard paradoxically lined with rows of beefy Hormel Chili, he extracts vitamins and protein powder. "I'm not a hypochondriac about things," he explains. "That ruins the enjoyment of life." So saying, we drink frosty pink beverages through straws, split the best peanut-butter cookie in the world, and Max lights up one of his Natural American Spirits, the "100-percent additive-free cigarettes" packaged in cartons of robin's-egg blue. TW: Why bother? MC: Have you ever read those reports of the toxic garbage they put in tobacco, because there are no federal regulations that say otherwise? TW: What difference does it make? MC: I just don't want anyone messing around with my pure smoking pleasure. TW: That's the closest thing to a political statement I've ever heard you make. MC: Yeah, I don't deal with current events or pop culture, and I avoid politics like the plague. Now interpersonal politics...that's what it's all about. I'm trying to (create something) that will be funny 20 years from now. As funny as it is today. TW: Do you feel pressure to lead a cartoonish life? MC: Definitely. And I also feel like I lead a dramatic life, and I also feel like I lead a really dull, Chekhovian sort of life...one that's meaningful but slow and relentless.... TW: What's the essence of Red Meat for the uninitiated? MC: To make people laugh without whacking them over the head with a big stick, or having to address a political message. There's plenty of people out there that do that way better than I could. It's just something that's sort of funny, sort of not. It deals with the things people really do but they don't want to admit that they do or say. Harshness, sadism, freakiness, cruelty, you know, the essence of humor. ...I'm just trying to portray what I find ironic or humorous. And I do think a lot of that has to do with achieving inner peace, and seeing the irony of what goes on around you without judgment. TW: So you're saying you're just observing life as it unfolds? MC: I'm trying to, but it's hard. You ever try to go a day without judgment? TW: Hell, no. What would I do that for?
TW: Are you surprised at what people read into your strips that you maybe didn't intend? MC: It doesn't surprise me. People get really caught up in their own trips. That goes back to that judgment thing. We all have our pet things that we like to get religious about. Things we think other people should be doing because we do them, or because we want to do them. And then you start to see the whole world through that one tiny little periscope. For example, somebody wrote me a letter suggesting I should be jailed because I was suggesting that grown men go out and kill people. (Laughs) These censorship people think something is going to promote behavior in people. People are going to behave however the social norms permit, and beyond that. Bugs Bunny cartoons don't teach adults to go hit each other in the head with big mallets, or jump off cliffs like Wile E. Coyote does. It just doesn't happen. If you do that, you are insane...and no amount of influence one way or the other is really going to make a difference. At some point you're going to go off. TW: What about kids? MC: With kids, I can kind of see a point. But we're talking about basic values, here. Basic rules, like "fire hot, fire burn." If kids are learning that from somewhere else--like television--you have to ask why they're not learning that from their parents. Whose fault is that? We live in a society that blames everybody else for what's wrong. If everybody took responsibility for everything, asked themselves, "What can I do to contribute, to make sure that something bad doesn't happen; or that something good does?"...We'd live in a different world. But is that day going to come? I don't know. Who knows. It's probably the same as it's always been. Some people think that way, most people don't. We're going to have the same demographic spread of nutcases and the same spread of everybody in between. TW: ...But more will have Red Meat tattoos. MC: I hope so. I'm banking on it. And I'm banking on the fact that they'll all be wearing Red Meat T-shirts. BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Max Cannon would appear to be your average, mild-mannered creative genius. But I don't buy his claim that he's an innocent observer. Even without the aid of an electric needle, Red Meat gets under your skin, in a pleasurably itchy sort of way. And no matter how normal he may seem on the bald-headed surface of things, he remains shrouded in a blue martini mystique.
Max Cannon will sign copies of the newly released Red Meat:
A Collection of RED MEAT Cartoons from the Secret Files of Max
Cannon ($9.95) from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, May 25, in the lobby
of Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. The book is available
at Zia Records and all finer bookstores in town, or by mail order
from Black Spring Books, P.O. Box 708, Tucson, AZ 85702 ($9.95
+ $2 shipping and handling).
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IT ALL STARTED at the crack of noon on the appointed Wednesday
morning, a morning that had been scheduled and re-scheduled a
great many times. It's also the morning The Weekly
goes to press, and at 10:30 a.m. Cannon had yet to arrive
with that week's strip. It's a particular talent of his, that
in the seven years since the genesis of 
TW: So, what next?
MC: It's super hard. But the more you practice that, the better
you get at it. Recently I've become aware of how much that controls
us all. The second we see somebody on the street or meet someone,
we make snap judgments about them, about who they are and why
we wouldn't necessarily sit with them or why we would or what's
cool or not cool. But if you ignore all that shit, everybody's
cool. And that's really important. You waste no time.
