Where Are They Now? The CSImadmax Cold Case

One of CSImadmax's earliest pieces.

CSImadmax was a cornerstone of the early fandom. Her artwork dates back to 2010 and are some of the most memorable and recognizable pieces of fanart in the community. She was frequently featured on EQD and was beloved by many. And one day in August 2014...she vanished from the Internet...or so it seems.

For 4 years, fans have held out hope that she would return, and some have even launched investigations in hopes of getting some closure, to no avail. Rumors and speculation swirl.

Horse News has followed the trails as far as they could go, and will provide what information we have, on this Cold Case.



To tell this tale, we will start at the end.

On August 19th, 2014, at 7:38:42 AM, CSImadmax made her last known public communication on her DeviantArt account. It read as follows:

"absolutely saddening'"
"so I've been away from the comic making and cool stuff due to no longer havin' access to a computer to draw stuff and my involuntary newly found nomad-like style of life. things are going certainly bad and I dunno if I could be able to draw for some time. so yeah, Im really sorry for the people asking me for commission things but I'm certainly out of the game from now on, sorry!.
I'll make another journal if I find a way to...well you know, to do stuff."

And that was it.
The cryptic detail of "involuntary...nomad-like style of life" has many to conclude that she had become homeless.
Her previous journal post was nearly a year prior, though her last piece of posted art was just 1 month before.

The other entries hold few clues, just general comings and goings, and openings of commissions. From them we learn her last known email address which was used for paypal; and her location. We also know she has a brother who apparently also designs ponies sometimes.

On September 6th, 2012 she said her apartment was damaged by an Earthquake on Wednesday.
A quick search of the list of Earthquakes strong enough to damage an apartment building, coupled with the fact she was known to live in a Spanish speaking country, yields this:

So the conclusion is that she lived in Costa Rica as of 2012 and was affected by the 7.6 Magnitude Earthquake that struck on September 5th.

The other part of this post is her email address, which uses a very distinctive handle, one that matches a STEAM account that has since become inactive and is set to private. None of the usernames that were attributed to the account gave us any leads. The email address is not associated with any other known accounts, and has not returned any messages we've sent.

All other known social media accounts have been dormant or deleted, including her livestreaming channels, and tumblr account.

Though, this is where things get somewhat hopeful. According to the Internet Archive, her Tumblr Account was still available until at least September 2015.

In November 2015, it was suddenly scrubbed, bearing an "Untitled" screen.

By 2016, it was actually deleted.

The same is true for her other known tumblr account. 

Available in September 2015...

Scrubbed in November 2015, left with only the initials for MadMaxComics.
Stranger still, is that at this point, the archive shows that the tumblrs changed their URL names to "http://madmaxcomics-blog.tumblr.com/", and "http://madmaxdoodles-blog.tumblr.com/" respectively, where they still exist to this day.

This is important, as it implies that they were scrubbed by the owner (CSImadmax herself?) - more than a year after her last post on DeviantArt. 

Does this mean that she doesn't want to come back? Is she running from something? Someone? Was she hacked? Did someone else have control of the tumblr account? Why scrub the tumblrs but not the DeviantArt? All of the questions are unfortunately unanswerable by us, so we tried to track down someone who may know - a friend she trusted to handle her money and art at conventions for years.

If anyone would know what happened to her, it would be this friend.

Unfortunately, this is where the trail ends, because according to that friend (who is very much still active online and in the community), CSImadmax "vanished from the Internet".

So "Where are they now?"
If her friends know, they're not telling. And maybe there are good personal reasons for that, which we can respect. Unfortunately, this entry will remain a cold case. As her friend said we hope she's safe and happy somewhere.

CSImadmax, if you're reading this; thanks for all the art. You will be missed. We hope you can come back to us someday.