Tony Millionaire
Encyclopedia
Tony Millionaire is an American
cartoonist
, illustrator
and author
known for his syndicated
comic strip
Maakies
and the Sock Monkey
series of comics
and picture book
s.
and grew up in and around the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts
. He came from a family of artists - his father was a commercial illustrator, his mother and grandparents were painters - and was encouraged to draw from an early age. His grandfather, who was a friend of the cartoonist Roy Crane
, had a large collection of old Sunday comics
which were an early source of inspiration to Millionaire. He drew his first comic strip, "about an egg-shaped superhero who flew around talking about how great he was and then crashing into a cliff," when he was nine years old. At age 13 he lost his natural front teeth in a car accident; since then he has worn false teeth. During high school Millionaire continued to draw comic strips for his own amusement.
, where he majored in painting
, but left without graduating after getting three quarters through his fourth year. While in college he began drawing houses in wealthy neighborhoods for money; this, along with occasional illustration jobs, would be his primary source of income for the next 20 years. After college he moved from place to place, living in Boston
, Florida
, California
, and Italy
before settling in Berlin
for five years during the 1980s. Returning to the U.S. in the early '90s, he moved to Brooklyn
, where he began drawing a regular comic strip, Medea's Weekend, for the Williamsburg
newsweekly Waterfront Week.
One night at a local bar, the Six Twelve, Millionaire drew "a cartoon about a little bird who drank booze and blew his brains out" on a napkin
- the origin of his best-known character, Drinky Crow. The bartender encouraged him to draw more cartoons, offering him a free beer for each one he completed. After doing many of these cocktail napkin drawings, Millionaire began drawing more polished versions of his cartoons for publication in various zines, including Ninny, Spike Vrusho's Murtaugh and Selwyn Harris's HappyLand. He also did drawings for several trade journal
s and Al Goldstein
's notorious tabloid Screw
. Eventually the alternative newsweekly
New York Press
asked him to draw a weekly strip, and in 1994 Maakies debuted in its pages. It soon spread to other papers across the country. (In 1999 or 2000 changes in editorial management led Millionaire to leave New York Press and transfer Maakies to The Village Voice
as its NYC venue. Maakies returned to the Press in February 2007.)
Besides Maakies, Millionaire has produced a series of comics and picture books collectively titled Sock Monkey
. He has also occasionally contributed to comics anthologies
including Legal Action Comics
, Star Wars Tales
, Dirty Stories, and Bizarro Comics. His illustrations are published in many leading venues including The New York Times
, The New Yorker
and The Wall Street Journal
. Currently he does much of the artwork, along with Charles Burns
, for Dave Eggers
' magazine The Believer
. Animated
versions of his work have been featured on Saturday Night Live
, in the They Might Be Giants
documentary
Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
, and on Adult Swim
. In 2006 Fantagraphics Books
published his graphic novel
Billy Hazelnuts. He is working on a children's book
to be published by Hyperion
. Since February 10, 2010, Millionaire's comic Maakies, has been published weekly in Nib-Lit
Comics journal.
Millionaire moved to Los Angeles
in 1998. He currently lives in Pasadena
with his wife Becky Thyre and two daughters Phoebe and Pearl.
He is the brother-in-law of the artist and poet Jon Sarkin
.
. His linework resembles that of Johnny Gruelle
, whom he cites as one of his main sources of inspiration along with Ernest Shepard
and "all those freaks from the twenties and thirties who did the newspaper strips"; many of Millionaire's admirers adduce a similarity to the work of E. C. Segar
in particular. He draws with a fountain pen
.
The nautical settings of much of Millionaire's work draw inspiration from his childhood memories of his grandparents' artwork and seaside home as well as the novels of Patrick O'Brian
, of which he is an avid reader.
, Millionaire maintains that he does not, and that "Tony Millionaire" is his real name: "It is my legal name, and it's been around a lot longer than I've been a cartoonist." He has claimed that his unusual surname
is an Old French
word meaning "a person who owns a thousand serfs
." Skeptics trace the origin of the name "Tony Millionaire" to a character in an episode of the '60s
TV series
I Dream of Jeannie
.
Millionaire has speculated that in the future he may publish some family-friendly works of his under a different moniker in order to dissociate them from his other, more ribald output.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
known for his syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Maakies
Maakies
Maakies is a syndicated weekly comic strip by Tony Millionaire. It began publication in February 1994 in the New York Press. It currently runs in many American alternative newsweeklies including The Stranger, LA Weekly and Only...
and the Sock Monkey
Sock Monkey
Sock Monkey is a series of comics and illustrated books written and drawn by the American cartoonist Tony Millionaire.-Description:Sock Monkey relates the adventures of the titular sock monkey, named Uncle Gabby, and a plush crow named Mr. Crow. Despite being toys, they are able to move, think,...
series of comics
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
and picture book
Picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...
s.
Early life
Millionaire was born in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and grew up in and around the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts
Gloucester, Massachusetts
Gloucester is a city on Cape Ann in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is part of Massachusetts' North Shore. The population was 28,789 at the 2010 U.S. Census...
. He came from a family of artists - his father was a commercial illustrator, his mother and grandparents were painters - and was encouraged to draw from an early age. His grandfather, who was a friend of the cartoonist Roy Crane
Roy Crane
Royston Campbell Crane , who signed his work Roy Crane, was an influential American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establishing the conventions and artistic approach of that genre. Comics historian...
, had a large collection of old Sunday comics
Sunday comics
Sunday comics is the commonly accepted term for the full-color comic strip section carried in most American newspapers. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies....
which were an early source of inspiration to Millionaire. He drew his first comic strip, "about an egg-shaped superhero who flew around talking about how great he was and then crashing into a cliff," when he was nine years old. At age 13 he lost his natural front teeth in a car accident; since then he has worn false teeth. During high school Millionaire continued to draw comic strips for his own amusement.
Career
After high school Millionaire attended the Massachusetts College of ArtMassachusetts College of Art
Massachusetts College of Art and Design is a publicly-funded college of visual and applied art, founded in 1873. It is one of the oldest art schools, the only publicly-funded free-standing art school in the United States, and was the first art college in the United States to grant an artistic degree...
, where he majored in painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, but left without graduating after getting three quarters through his fourth year. While in college he began drawing houses in wealthy neighborhoods for money; this, along with occasional illustration jobs, would be his primary source of income for the next 20 years. After college he moved from place to place, living in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
before settling in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
for five years during the 1980s. Returning to the U.S. in the early '90s, he moved to Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, where he began drawing a regular comic strip, Medea's Weekend, for the Williamsburg
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
newsweekly Waterfront Week.
One night at a local bar, the Six Twelve, Millionaire drew "a cartoon about a little bird who drank booze and blew his brains out" on a napkin
Napkin
A napkin, or face towel is a rectangle of cloth used at the table for wiping the mouth while eating. It is usually small and folded...
- the origin of his best-known character, Drinky Crow. The bartender encouraged him to draw more cartoons, offering him a free beer for each one he completed. After doing many of these cocktail napkin drawings, Millionaire began drawing more polished versions of his cartoons for publication in various zines, including Ninny, Spike Vrusho's Murtaugh and Selwyn Harris's HappyLand. He also did drawings for several trade journal
Trade journal
A trade magazine, also called a professional magazine, is a magazine published with the intention of target marketing to a specific industry or type of trade. The collective term for this area of publishing is the trade press....
s and Al Goldstein
Al Goldstein
Alvin "Al" Goldstein is a former American publisher and pornographer. His company Milky Way Productions, home of Screw, and his long-running cable TV show, Midnight Blue was started in 1968 and went into bankruptcy in 2004...
's notorious tabloid Screw
Screw magazine
Screw is a weekly pornographic magazine published in the United States aimed at heterosexual men. It was first published in 1968 by Al Goldstein and was printed weekly in tabloid form...
. Eventually the alternative newsweekly
Alternative weekly
An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper, that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture. Their news coverage is more...
New York Press
New York Press
New York Press was a free alternative weekly in New York City, that was published from 1988 to 2011. During its lifetime, it was the main competitor to the Village Voice...
asked him to draw a weekly strip, and in 1994 Maakies debuted in its pages. It soon spread to other papers across the country. (In 1999 or 2000 changes in editorial management led Millionaire to leave New York Press and transfer Maakies to The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
as its NYC venue. Maakies returned to the Press in February 2007.)
Besides Maakies, Millionaire has produced a series of comics and picture books collectively titled Sock Monkey
Sock Monkey
Sock Monkey is a series of comics and illustrated books written and drawn by the American cartoonist Tony Millionaire.-Description:Sock Monkey relates the adventures of the titular sock monkey, named Uncle Gabby, and a plush crow named Mr. Crow. Despite being toys, they are able to move, think,...
. He has also occasionally contributed to comics anthologies
Comics anthology
Comics anthologies collect works in the medium of comics that are too short for standalone publication.- U.S. :- UK :British comics have a long tradition publishing comics anthologies, often weekly...
including Legal Action Comics
Legal Action Comics
Legal Action Comics is a series of comics anthologies edited by illustrator Danny Hellman which features work from many alternative comics artists.The first volume in the series was published in 2001, and the second followed in 2003...
, Star Wars Tales
Star Wars Tales
Star Wars Tales was a comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics, beginning on September 29, 1999 and completing its run on July 13, 2005. Each issue featured several unrelated stories from various eras of the Star Wars timeline. All stories from Issue #20 and before have been retroactively...
, Dirty Stories, and Bizarro Comics. His illustrations are published in many leading venues including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
. Currently he does much of the artwork, along with Charles Burns
Charles Burns (cartoonist)
Charles Burns is an American cartoonist, illustrator and film director.-Life:Burns is renowned for his meticulous, high-contrast and creepy artwork and stories. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, painter Susan Moore, and their two daughters Ava and Rae-Rae.His father was an oceanographer for...
, for Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
' magazine The Believer
The Believer (magazine)
The Believer is a United States literary magazine that also covers other arts and general culture. Founded and designed in 2003 by the writer and publisher Dave Eggers, it is edited by Vendela Vida, Heidi Julavits and Ed Park...
. Animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
versions of his work have been featured on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
, in the They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...
documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
Gigantic is a documentary profiling the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants, featuring interviews with Frank Black, Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, Jon Stewart, and others. It was directed by AJ Schnack and premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2002. It was released in theaters...
, and on Adult Swim
Adult Swim
Adult Swim is an adult-oriented Cable network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States, and broadcasts in countries such as Australia and New Zealand...
. In 2006 Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
published his graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
Billy Hazelnuts. He is working on a children's book
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
to be published by Hyperion
Hyperion (publisher)
Hyperion Books is a general-interest book publishing part of the Disney-ABC Television Group, a division of The Walt Disney Company, established in 1991. Hyperion publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults under the following imprints: ABC Daytime Press, ESPN Books,...
. Since February 10, 2010, Millionaire's comic Maakies, has been published weekly in Nib-Lit
Nib-Lit
Nib-Lit is a weekly comics journal edited by Mykl Sivak and published both independently in an electronic format as well as running as a two-page section in Southern News, the student newspaper of Southern Connecticut State University. The journal features original and syndicated strips by a wide...
Comics journal.
Millionaire moved to Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
in 1998. He currently lives in Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
with his wife Becky Thyre and two daughters Phoebe and Pearl.
He is the brother-in-law of the artist and poet Jon Sarkin
Jon Sarkin
' Jon Sarkin is a self-taught contemporary American artist.Jon Sarkin is a prolific artist who creates elaborate drawings and paintings filled with words and images, among other artistic endeavors. Sarkin has been painting for over 20 years...
.
Style and influences
Millionaire draws in a lush style that mingles naturalistic detail with strong doses of the fanciful and grotesqueGrotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
. His linework resembles that of Johnny Gruelle
Johnny Gruelle
Johnny Gruelle was an American artist, political cartoonist, children's book author and illustrator . He is known as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy...
, whom he cites as one of his main sources of inspiration along with Ernest Shepard
E. H. Shepard
Ernest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator. He was known especially for his human-like animals in illustrations for The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne....
and "all those freaks from the twenties and thirties who did the newspaper strips"; many of Millionaire's admirers adduce a similarity to the work of E. C. Segar
E. C. Segar
Elzie Crisler Segar was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of Popeye, a character who first appeared in 1929 in his comic strip Thimble Theatre. Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was "SEE-gar". He commonly signed his work simply Segar or E...
in particular. He draws with a fountain pen
Fountain pen
A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action...
.
The nautical settings of much of Millionaire's work draw inspiration from his childhood memories of his grandparents' artwork and seaside home as well as the novels of Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...
, of which he is an avid reader.
Pseudonym
When asked in interviews why he uses a pen namePen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
, Millionaire maintains that he does not, and that "Tony Millionaire" is his real name: "It is my legal name, and it's been around a lot longer than I've been a cartoonist." He has claimed that his unusual surname
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
is an Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
word meaning "a person who owns a thousand serfs
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
." Skeptics trace the origin of the name "Tony Millionaire" to a character in an episode of the '60s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
TV series
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...
.
Millionaire has speculated that in the future he may publish some family-friendly works of his under a different moniker in order to dissociate them from his other, more ribald output.
Filmography
- Adult Swim Presents The Drinky Crow ShowThe Drinky Crow ShowThe Drinky Crow Show is an American animated television series created by Eric Kaplan and Tony Millionaire, based on the latter's comic strip Maakies. The pilot episode aired on Cartoon Network's late night programing block, Adult Swim on May 13, 2007. The series premiered on November 23, 2008 and...
(2007–2009) (Creator, Actor, Executive Producer) - Fun With God (2009) (Actor {Titular role})
- Baby Johnson (2009) (Actor {Titular role})
- Goil Trouble (2010) (Actor)
External links
- Maakies.com
- Maakies official T-shirt shop
- Audio interview with Millionaire on public radio program The Sound of Young AmericaThe Sound of Young AmericaThe Sound of Young America is a public radio program and podcast based in Los Angeles, California and distributed by Public Radio International...
- February 2005 Interview by Coury Turczyn from g4TV.com
- April 2002 Interview from freewilliamsburg.com
- Interview by Logan Kaufman from Adventures Underground
- Interview from darkhorse.com
- "Who wants to be Tony Millionaire?" by Mike Miliard, The Boston Phoenix, April 12, 2006
- Interview with Chief Magazine