Millionaire, Tony 1956- (Scott Richardson)

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Millionaire, Tony 1956- (Scott Richardson)

PERSONAL:

Born Scott Richardson, 1956, in Gloucester, MA; married Becky Thyre (an actress); children: Phoebe, Pearl. Education: Attended Massachusetts College of Art.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Pasadena, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Cartoonist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Winner of multiple Harvey and Eisner awards.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Queens Jazz Trail: Homes of Jazz Legends Past and Present, Places of Interest for Jazz Fans, Flushing Town Hall (Flushing, NY), 1998, 2nd edition published as The Queens Jazz Trail, a Full-color Illustrated Map: Homes of Jazz Legends Past and Present, Places of Interest for Jazz Fans, 2003.

Lower Manhattan, a History Map, Ephemera Press (Brooklyn, NY), 2003.

Harlem Renaissance, One Hundred Years of History, Art, and Culture, Ephemera Press (Brooklyn, NY), 2003.

WRITER AND ILLUSTRATOR

The Adventures of Sock Monkey, Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR), 2000.

Maakies, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2001.

Sock Monkey: A Children's Book, Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR), 2001.

(With Chip Kidd) The House at Maakies Corner, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2002.

(With J. Otto Seibold) Sock Monkey: The Glass Doorknob, Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR), 2002.

Mighty Mite: The Earmite, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2003.

When We Were Very Maakies, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2004.

Little and Large, Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR), 2005.

Der Struwwelmaakies, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2005.

Billy Hazelnuts, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 2006.

Also author of Premillennial Maakies: The First Five Years. Work appears in numerous newspapers and periodicals, including the New York Press and Village Voice.

ADAPTATIONS:

Maakies has been adapted for television as The Drinky Crow Show, produced by Cartoon Network.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tony Millionaire is the creator of "Maakies," a popular weekly comic strip featured in the Village Voice and other periodicals. "Maakies" is very dark in tone, not intended for children. Set at sea and revolving around a hard-drinking, suicidal crow, the strip is frequently violent and crude. Millionaire also produces a gentler version of "Maakies" called "Sock Monkey." Drawn in a completely different style, but with similar characters, "Sock Monkey" shows the adventures of Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby, who exist "in a sort of alternate universe to Maakies," according to a writer for the Adventures Underground Web site.

Millionaire grew up in an artistic family and studied fine art in college. His Drinky Crow character got his start as a doodle on a bar napkin. The bartender liked it enough to offer Millionaire free beer for more drawings. Eventually, the collection led to a chance to do a comic strip for the weekly New York Press.

"Maakies" "often speaks in poetic visions, rendered with subtlety and imagination," according to James Norton on the flakmagazine Web site. "Millionaire's nautical illustrations are varied, dynamic and hypnotically detailed. The strip is soaked with ruminations on alcohol, the occasionally crushing emptiness of life and the hilarious pain of romantic relationships." Norton quoted Millionaire as saying that "Maakies" reflects his "writing and drawing about all the things that make me want to jump in the river, laughing at the horror of being alive. People send me letters saying that Maakies helps them cope with the embarrassment and the disgust of everything. It's depressing being a living human, and laughing about it is the only thing you can do after awhile."

Millionaire offers a fable-like tale for children in Billy Hazelnuts. It is the story of a band of mice who create a little man out of lard and garbage, hoping he will protect them from the woman who is trying to eradicate them from her kitchen. The lard creature is found by Becky, a young girl who embarks on a series of adventures with him. The story "evokes the anything-goes child-logic found in darker fairy tales and the Oz stories with a pinch of Lewis Carroll thrown in for the sheer bizarreness of it all," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.

Millionaire's style is highly detailed and has both natural and exaggerated components. He cites the newspaper comics of the 1920s and 1930s as a strong influence, as well as the work of Johnny Gruelle, who illustrated the original "Raggedy Ann and Andy" books, and Ernest Shepard, who illustrated A.A. Milne's stories of Winnie the Pooh. In an interview with Bill Smith for LA Weekly, Millionaire discussed his desire to make books for children, and stated: "Some philosopher—I don't remember who—his theory was: You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up, they'll see the real world and say, ‘Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.’ And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's-book illustrator."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 1, 2002, Ray Olson, review of The House at Maakies Corner, pp. 641-642; August 1, 2004, Ray Olson, review of When We Were Very Maakies, p. 1916; August 1, 2005, review of Der Struwwelmaakies, p. 2001; February 1, 2006, review of Billy Hazelnuts, p. 39.

LA Weekly, November 17, 2005, Bill Smith, interview with Tony Millionaire.

Los Angeles Magazine, May, 2000, Robert Ito, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," p. 32.

Matrix, fall, 2004, reviews of The House at Maakies Corner and When We Were Very Maakies, p. 59.

New York Press, Volume 15, number 45, John Strausbaugh, "Comics."

Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2001, review of Maakies, p. 48; February 10, 2003, review of The House at Maakies Corner, p. 165; August 22, 2005, review of Little and Large, p. 43; February 20, 2006, review of Billy Hazelnuts, p. 142; November 13, 2006, review of Premillennial Maakies: The First Five Years, p. 40.

Time, February 16, 2001, Andrew D. Arnold, "A Millionaire's Sock Monkey Offers Strange Comfort."

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2001, Kat Kan, review of The Adventures of Sock Monkey, pp. 116-117.