First, you could of made us 'feel' a lot better, by making it look decent. All the things you wanted to get out of this sig, well wasn't really shown. If you wanted Max in the 'shadows' so to speak, you could of done it many ways, to make it get your point threw, and visually nice. Secondly, I feel the mood of your sig is Chaotic/Confused, maybe even a depressing feeling? And the boxes I were seeing.... well that was me ^_^.
*Edit* At first I didn't read your post all the way. You say that the quality of the images, background, heck even the blending doesn't play a major role. It does, what is art if you can't see it? What is art, if it isn't appealing? The only art that I know of, that doesn't require any drawing, or visuals is music. Others and I simply crit your work, but you come up with some big excuse on why you did what you did. Obviously what you are wanting to 'show us, make us feel, hear' isn't getting threw, and that means you did your signature in a bad way.