20 People to Watch - Maximus Thor and Benny Wonka

Taking full advantage of a weeklong break from school in November, Maximus Thor, 10, is sprawled out on a red couch in his Decatur home catching up on some Grand Theft Auto. Despite his age, the kid speaks like a principled young man: “Don’t judge people by their differences or what race they are,” he says, “and never give up. Also, I’m very, very, very against racism and — what’s it called, sexism? — being sexist. laughs It’s funny, I say all this while I’m robbing a bank ... .”

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Eyes glued to the screen, he pushes a section of his shoulder-length, surfer-blonde hair behind his ear, smashes a few more buttons, and describes how the offbeat YouTube comedy series in which he stars came to be.

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“When I was 6 years old my dad wanted to make a YouTube channel, and I wanted to make a YouTube channel,” Max says. “So the two ideas came together and we made a YouTube channel.”

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The dad in this scenario is Ben Morgan, 43, aka Benny Wonka. A television producer and camera operator by trade, Wonka launched the Maximus Thor channel in August 2012 with the help of friend and colleague James Few. Three months later, LeeAnne Long, the daughter of a family friend who plays the blonde zombie Grits in the videos, posted an episode on Reddit. The next day, the channel had 10,000 fans. Since then, Maximus Thor’s capricious antics have attracted more than 50,000 YouTube subscribers.

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The videos — irreverent vignettes delivered with witty, ratchet banter — follow Maximus Thor (voiced by Few) and his oddball clique hanging out and living life. With recognizable Atlanta locales as the backdrop, the crew is pictured test-driving a new whip or attending an important business meeting or casually discussing kung fu’s complex philosophical underpinnings. Most of the characters — Thor’s pals, minions, an occasional zombie — are played by the offspring of family friends and voiced by Wonka and Few’s entertainment industry colleagues willing to donate their spare time. The name that appears at the end of each video like one catchall film credit, First Family of the Internet, refers collectively to this motley group of collaborators.

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“I’ve created and thought of somewhere around 10 videos,” Max says. “But I really just like to film and make people laugh. My favorite videos are when I get to do some really fun stuff, and also, like, the suicide prevention type of stuff.”

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Stunned by Robin Williams’ August 2014 suicide, and disturbed by the public speculation on Williams’ internal motivations that followed, Wonka was moved to action.

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“At that point I’d already had close friends and wrestled with it myself, years of depression and emptiness and the things that everyone feels when things seem to go wrong for a long period of time. When Robin Williams took his own life, it was kind of the period on the end of a really long sentence for me.”

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In October 2014, the team released a video unlike anything they’d done before: a PSA-style monologue aimed at suicide prevention.

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“Man, I was fucking terrified,” Wonka says. “I didn’t want to drop the video. Who on Earth wants to be scrutinized on that topic? I’m not a mental health professional. In fact, you could make a really good case that I personally don’t have a good wrap on my own sanity.”

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Cue the fearlessness of a 10-year-old.

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“It was only because Max was like, ‘You know, there are so many people out there struggling, why would we wait to drop the video?’ And so we deferred to his thinking and dropped it,” Wonka says.

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The video was well-received. The positive feedback gave Team First Family motive to expand their repertoire and find innovative ways to start conversations and connect with their audience on a deeper level.

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“Getting the public in line with what’s really happening in mental health, that’s a serious challenge,” Wonka says. “And we would hope that occasionally we could do something to bridge that gap for someone, but who knows. From the feedback we got, I think the people who struggle with it felt heard or voiced. And that is a currency that is just not available in a lot of places. Because you feel crazy. You feel nuts. And when someone says exactly what you’re thinking, you don’t feel as nuts anymore.”

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In April 2015, they dropped a video championing creativity and encouraging artists of all kinds to pursue their art. Now the First Family outfit finds itself at a fork in the road, unsure of what comes next. Wonka wants to continue making comedy videos, and some new mental health videos, as well. TV would seem a natural evolution, and Wonka says some networks have expressed interest. But for Wonka, the network television route would mean having to make sacrifices beyond merely relinquishing creative control.

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“I’m not going to sign any kind of piece of paper where my son and I can’t keep making videos together,” he says. “And no one’s trying to — obviously no one wants to shut us down. But when you enter into something like that, the network is going to own it all. I don’t want them to own it. So I would have to have a lot of power to pull that off. I’m just trying to figure out how to get that power, and I think it comes with a very large fanbase. Easily 10 times what we have now. If I can grow it at about 10 times what it is now, those are the numbers where people start to get taken seriously.”