After a bout of heckling a trio of pigs who had inexplicably scraped together the down-payment for a house, and engaging in frankly ridiculous hijinks with tatterdemalion tearaways such as a certain lupicidal little Red-Hooded Ragamuffin, Maxwell hit upon the realization that his somewhat “unorthodox” upbringing had perfectly prepared him for a career in politics. Though he soon decided that pursuing such a career path was more trouble than it was worth, as his adoptive parents’ electioneering methodology involved attacking one’s opponent teeth-first in a lightning-fast flurry of ice-cold malice, and although such an approach is indeed a very effective way of decisively winning political debates, it turns out you’re only allowed to carry on like that in so-called “civilised society” if you’re in a position to own a suit that costs more than the gross annual income of the suit’s tailor.
Plus, politicians are meant to kiss babies, not eat them.

So, politics were out. Though the taste of people’s throats in his mouth would quickly spring back to his mind whenever idiots would propagate the sort of anencephalus cretinism that we as a species are just so very adept at indulging in. Methuselah himself wouldn’t have had time to collate a comprehensive list of humanity’s mind-bogglingly voluminous follies here.
Like for instance, the Pacific trash vortex.
Or this magnificent example of abject ludicrousness.
And Hootie and the Blowfish — how the Hell was that awful aural pandemic of musical mediocrity ever allowed to get loose and inflict its lamely-framed brain-maiming stain upon the world? I mean, I can understand things like Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus creepily sneaking around the periphery of our species with murderous intent (we all make mistakes now and then), but come on guys, seriously, WTF? W T F-ing F??

Sometimes I think we’d all be better off as table scraps strewn across the plain of Magh Slécht as the end result of being sacrificed en masse in propitiation to the insatiable maw of the mind-breakingly ancient and unfathomably evil entity and adversary of humanity known (among other names) as Crom Cruach ríg-íodal h-Eireann, I really do.

But I digress. What were we talking about again?
Oh, yeah, Maxwell Vex. Seems like he’d be a pretty cool dude to party with. I hear he once ate an entire walrus carcass on a dare. Or was it a dormant aardvark? A tortured artist? A walnut off the carpet?? Dammit I left my aripiprazole in the back of a taxicab and I knew I needed to get more before attempting to write this bio.

Anyway, comics. Yeeeaaahhh… comics.
Vex’s vocation of comics-creation is probably why you’re reading this, yeah? I guess we ought to touch on that then.

Maxwell Vex started on the path to devoting vast chunks of his life to writing and drawing comics waaayyy back down through the murky mists of time in the year 2001, when he wrote and drew a vicious and bitter ball of seething disdain named Vitriolia. It was about aeons-old malignant shape-shifting demigods from beyond the stars, who dwelt on Earth disguised in anthropomorphic form in order to anchor themselves to this “reality” and to prey upon the blood of our kind without arousing bothersome instances of human suspicion.
The central character was a little vampire girl named Ophelia (true name Saräk) who had been hidden away in Anakanavanawan (the realm of humanity’s collective dream-state) since birth with her memory-impaired and somewhat addled companion/guardian, the fairy Min, until she hit puberty at age eleven and was sought out by a particularly vicious-hearted member of her species named Amael, who brought her back into our realm to use her as the pinion point in a certain nefarious disasterplan.
And thus all sorts of nasty things transpired, which Maxwell took great delight in writing and drawing in a shoebox-sized room in a house that was by then showing the first visual signs of its intransigent plan to ultimately end up falling face-first into the street, taking out a small band of passing Girl Scouts while it was at it.
I… I can still hear their tortured screams sometimes, during the wee hours when the darkness is deepest and spirits are most inclined to whisper and sigh around the edges of my poor, poor mind.

Nowadays Maxwell is the artist, letterer and co-writer of The Sequential Adventures of Chelsea and Millie, and he is having a whale of a time working on it. It has become his current life-passion. And let’s face it, the World at Large probably ought to be thankful for just how much this comic is contributing towards keeping him off the streets and out of the clock towers.

In addition to busily engaging himself with his primary functions of being a Comic Slave and somehow managing to run a successful wee career as a freelance illustrator, Maxwell’s multifarious and nefarious avocations include harboring a voraciously insatiable fascination-based and cogitation-laced appreciation of film, music, the visual arts, and literature; lurking in a maleficent manner deep within the shadows cast by atoms; fabricating a gynoid confidante in his basement; raising a mogwai; designing (with an eye towards ultimately supervising the construction of) a Matrioshka brain; doing Hine-nui-te-pō‘s dirty work by harvesting the souls of the Lost and the Damned on an independent-contractor basis; tinkering with electronic and mechanical components (reprogramming Furbies® via interpolating them with a demon seed, appearing high up in the troposphere during electrical storms in order to sabotage airplane engines and to send John Lithgow into paranoid panic-fuelled paroxysms for the sheer shiggles of it, that sort of thing); having his frail corporeal form turned inside-out and blown down the street in strong gusts of wind (like an umbrella but way, way more gross and eww-inducing); surreptitiously replacing the keys of affectedly-aloof hipster chicks’ Casiotones with a selection of deli meats right before their bands take the stage; engaging in occasional stratagemical dealings with the Wunch; wondering where the “well” mysteriously disappears to when people say his name out loud (the same situation which gave rise to the condition known as the “Topher Grace Effect” I believe); and being mistaken for an Australian.

Plus, of course, indulging in the sort of casually circumlocutious language-mangling and jacked-up semantics-wrangling that can be found within the alliteration-riddled and passionately-assonance-savvy freewheeling flights-of-fancy which are occasionally made manifest within Chelsea and Clover’s dialog and its use of quirky-wordiness as anti-apothegm weaponry in a word-nerd war against comicdom’s commandment that “thou shalt devise dialog as clear and concise content compactly-wrapped in word-balloon-form” — i.e. the sort of overblown and incommodious pleonasm which is also plainly evident in this bloated broken-backed and buggered-up Brobdingnagian beast of a bio.
Mercifully, the things Maxwell writes for comics aren’t anywhere close to this level of using language as an instrument of obdurate obfuscation as opposed to its primary function — that of a tool for conveyance and communication.
Because that would just be downright silly, now wouldn’t it?

Oh dear Lord this bio is pretentious and long-winded, and it just won’t shut up, will it? It’s just going on and on and on with no real clear direction or particular end-purpose in mind. It’s like… the ineluctable outcome of the TexMex Hobbit and Beanpole the ‘Fro embarking upon a forty-four-day Benzedrine™ bender. Like the end result of a logophilia-driven anti-Panglossian tweenage hyperchild having been recently bestowed with their first thesaurus and then set loose upon the written word.

I can feel it all beginning to break down and collapse in upon itself under the sheer weight of all this horribly irresponsible nonsensemongery: the whole thing is hopelessly infested with the sort of unelucidative abstrusion that would give even those dealers in discombobulation fluent in legalese an aneurysm. This thing has long gone beyond being a functional bio — this is a shambling and rambling brain-breaking aberration; a pompous, noxious and monstrously wafflesome equivocation-Chimaera. It’s the written equivalent of the sound of my inner homunculus dropping its popcorn while my Cartesian theater burns down around it.
Or something.

Arrgh! Now I can’t stop writing like this. What started off with the intention of being a simple and succinct bio* has turned into a calamitous cavalcade of circumlocution — my train of thought has long since derailed itself and is now lying on its side in a daisy-laced field somewhere, surrounded by the flitterings of wickedly-whispering and sinisterly-chittering carrion faeries satiating their rapacious blood-cravings via feasting upon the corporeal remains of the pertinent points which were my thought-train’s passengers. Far, far away my focus has flown. In its place is little more than a slapped-together cack-handed collection of scattershot brain-rot.
And I’m going to have to go and have a stern talk to the narrative regarding its lackadaisical attitude and blatant lack of commitment in regards to sticking to the third-person.

*Ha! Yeah right — that’s probably the most ludicrously farfetched claim I’ve made in this whole damn thing.

So, why are we here? That’s a big question isn’t it? Philosophers have been rolling THAT around in their heads since the dawn of time. We can’t answer that, but we CAN add a small piece to the puzzle, because we are here to record the history of Tom so that his legend shall not be lost to the annals of time. Pull up a seat, have a rest, take a bracing shot of brandy, make yourself a sandwich, and let’s do this thing.

Your hero and mine was born in a small New England town. Some say he fell from the heavens, some say he was constructed from Legos and spare VCR parts, and even some say he’s comprised entirely of life fibers. While the later is still under investigation, no, Thomas was indeed born. His spent his youth enthralled with the typical hobbies of playing outside, watching cartoons, immersing himself in video games, and touring as the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (he played backstage. The dude on stage was just drum-synching). Then came the day young Tom discovered he found enjoyment putting a pencil to paper and forming images. Eventually, he discovered the sequential works of Gary Larson, Jim Davis, and (of course) Bill Watterson, and absolutely fell in love with the art form. It was then that his calling in life become clear. Tom was destined to become… a world championship wrestler!

Tom trained hard for many years under the tutelage of wrestling legend Bastion Booger, and eventually honed his skills to a level strong enough to win him many championships along the indy wrestling circuit. Talent like that simply couldn’t be ignored by the big leagues, and eventually Tom was set to make his WWE debut at Wrestlemania 18 in a Triple Threat Match against both The Rock and Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately, due to some poorly made crab cakes from craft services backstage, Tom was forced to drop out of the match. Hogan and The Rock went on to have a pretty memorable match, sure, but who can say how much more legendary it would have been if Tom hadn’t been wrestling with his own digestive system. It was shortly after this that Tom decided he accomplished all he needed to in his wrestling career after getting that high-five from Stone Cold Steve Austin, so he moved on.

In his travels to find himself, Thomas stumbled across a yet undiscovered village of real live catgirls. Most people assumed these only existed in Japanese Animation, but Tom is credited with their discovery in our world. For a time, he lived amongst them, studied their ways, and published his research in a book titled “Cat Scratch Fever: My Time With The Cat Ladies” (now out of print). Sadly, Tom was excommunicated from their civilization after getting a little TOO close with their Queen’s daughter. Upon writing the closing chapter of the book, Tom described this instance as “TOTALLY WORTH IT!” To this day, the catgirl village has never been found again.

Somewhere along the way Thomas found himself craving a new round of academia, so he enrolled himself into college and worked his way towards a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, which to this day he still does nothing with.

After college, Tom experimented with a vast range of new career choices, among which included bag boy, deli clerk, leading man, newspaper circulation administrator, alligator wrangler, accountant to the stars (where he nearly lost all of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s fortune), rickshaw driver, rickshaw racer, rickshaw mechanic, professional bra fitter, and flower salesman. While much was learned from each position, none quite felt like Tom’s one true calling in life. Then came the day Tom remembered his former passion for comics.

From the years of 2007 to 2013, a large portion of Tom’s life was spent as the sole creator of the online comic series Alone in a Crowd, a slice of life story following two orphaned sisters, and the young girl who changed their life for good! Boy, with a description like that, it sound like a Lifetime original movie, doesn’t it? Anyone who’s had the pleasure of reading it would tell you that’s simply not the case. However, it was a fun little tale that cemented Tom’s place in the world of webcomic obscurity.

Many people have speculated where the inspiration for Alone in a Crowd came from. Was it loosely based on events from Tom’s own life? Was it the artistic embodiment of what he felt deep down inside? Were all the ideas simply implanted in his head by a level 40 wizard? Or was a Goddess from Heaven whispering in his ear as a muse? Well, the only one who truly knows the answer to that is Thomas himself. When we asked him, his reply was “what in the devil are you doing in my breakfast nook?”.

The world may never know. You can venture a guess for yourself by reading the Alone in a Crowd archives over at aiacrowd.com. Where else can you read a comic about family, friends, heart, and an adult film star? Granted, this is the Internet, so I suppose a great deal of places.

You know I can’t help but wonder if the average person makes it this far in an author’s bio before checking out. Perhaps know one’s really paying attention anymore. Why… I could say anything I want! I could even start singing Young MC’s classic hit “Bust A Move” …when am I ever going to get a chance like that again? “This here’s a jam for all the fellas, try to do what those ladies tell us, get shot down cause you’re over-zealous, play hard to get females get jealous. Okay smarty go to a party, girls are scantily clad and shown body”.

Word.

Anyway, it was during this illustrious time of doodling characters talking to each other that Tom met the man who would change his life. A man by the name of Maxwell Vex. Their first meeting went as to be expected of two titans of industry such as they. There was a lot of energy blasts and powered fists flung at one another, collateral damage all around, days of powering up, taunting, and screaming of each-other’s names back and forth at the top of their lungs à la the movie Akira. After the dust and lawsuits had settled, Thomas and Maxwell realized they were more than just rivals… they were brothers.

…not by blood, mind you. Just… like… buddies. Soul buddies!

It was thanks to this connection that Max decided he and Tom should no longer be strangers in the night exchanging glances. It was time they teamed up on a project together. That project… was Forrest Gump 2.

Of course, there was the Tom Hanks spitting incident that left this avenue unavailable, so Maxwell and Thomas decided to work on The Sequential Adventures of Chelsea and Millie instead. Tom totally loves doing Chelsea and Millie. Where else can he write with reckless abandon and not have to worry about how in the world he is going to draw it? Certainly it’s much more fun to challenge Maxwell’s artistic limits (has Max melted into a pool of mush yet? No? TRY HARDER TOM!)

When Thomas isn’t writing the words your eyes devour on Chelsea and Millie, or whipping Maxwell with an old leather strap (it’s what he calls “bringing out the inspiration”), he enjoys walking the dogs, watching anime, and building mashed-potato sculptures of Keanu Reeves.