THE LIFE OF A MILLIONAIRE: TONY MILLIONAIRE TALKS SOCK MONKEY AND MORE

[MattBrady]

by Zack Smith

Whether it’s the bleak comedy of Maakies or the whimsical tales of Sock Monkey, Tony Millionaire’s lushly illustrated cartoons are some of the most acclaimed comics of the past decade, winning numerous accolades from both comic and mainstream press. With the recent release of Sock Monkey: The Inches Incident and the upcoming Drinky Crow Show on Adult Swim (11:15 p.m. on January 1st), Millionaire is poised to reach a bigger audience than ever. He sat down with Newsarama to discuss his creations, and just how he gets all those stories out of creepy toys.

Newsarama: So, Tony, you’ve been doing Sock Monkey books for about a decade now –

Tony Millionaire: Has it really been that long? I’ll have to celebrate.

NRAMA: Any plans?

TM: Not right now – we’re working on a movie pitch, but it’s on hold until the writers’ strike is over, because we’ve got real writers working on it.

NRAMA: What about the Drinky Crow animated project?

TM: Yeah, animated projects are outside of the Writers Guild, so we’re still doing that for Adult Swim. We’ve got three approved scripts that we can work on now, and we’ve got more down the line that we’ll be writing once the strike is over. But we’re on full production for the three episodes right now.

NRAMA: When will these premiere?

TM: Probably sometime next spring, or around early summer.

NRAMA: You started off drawing the crow in exchange for beers. How’s it feel to have it expand into this whole series?

TM: (laughs) Now I can get paid to have someone else draw drunken animals for a while.

NRAMA: When you’re doing your strips and comics, what’s the challenge of finding new ways for these characters to die horribly?

TM: (laughs) Yeah, they don’t just die horribly – they die horribly in accordance with the story. So if the story leads them along a certain path, and I think, “Well, it certainly makes sense for them to die horribly at this point,” that’s what I’ll do.

I remember on the first issue of the first Sock Monkey book, the editor called me up and said, “What did you do?! You killed off the main characters in the first book! Now what are you going to do?!” I said, “It’s comics, man! I can do whatever I want!” And sure enough, they were back in the next issue with no explanation at all.

NRAMA: I remember picking up that first book when it came out, and being really impressed with how much it looked like an old children’s book, but not really knowing what to make of it by the end. It takes a couple of issues before you really understand the formula and get into the joke.

TM: Yeah, the thing with the Sock Monkey books is that they look like they look like children’s books from another era, but the thing of them is that they’re not really children’s books – they’re books written for people who remember old children’s books. So they’re done in the style of 1920s children’s books….but I put my own stories into them.

NRAMA: What were some specific books that influenced Sock Monkey?

TM: I just read a lot of Raggedy Ann and Andy. The writing itself in those books wasn’t very good, but the drawings were amazing. The way Johnny Gruelle could draw shoes on a fairy was just incredible – there were buckles and everything on the shoes.

And I also used to read Winnie-the-Pooh, and some of the old German stories – Heinrich Hoffman’s stuff, Der Struwwelpeter – ooh, those were disturbing!

NRAMA: You ever read Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol? The villains in the first story are the Scissormen, based on that book.

TM: No! I’ll have to look at that.

NRAMA: Now, The Inches Incident is a longer story – what’s different about working on that type of story, as opposed to a shorter piece like the single issues or the Makkies strips?

TM: It really is a different process. I mean, with the Makkies strips or Drinky Crow, we’ve got to tell a story in four to six panels. And from the beginning, when I was figuring out what kind of strip I was going to draw, I decided to keep it to two main characters and several peripheral characters around them.

That way, there wouldn’t be a continuing story, but there would be some sort of continuum around them, so that like all good comics, it could be this place that you go to that you’re familiar with, where you know where you are and what rules apply.

Obviously, there’s a lot of shifting rules in the Makkies strip, but there are certain rules, and they apply. So when Fantagraphics asked me to do a graphic novel with Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby, I said, “No! It just wouldn’t work! It’s not the way these things are written!” So I did Billy Hazelnuts instead, a new character. That’s because Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby, in the Makkies realm, just wouldn’t support a longer story. I just couldn’t get my head around it.

Then, with the Sock Monkey stories – those are things that can support a longer story, or a story arc. It’s something where I don’t want to have a joke every 10 seconds, like you need with Drinky Crow. Now you come to a TV show, where you’ve got 10-15-minute-long stories. That’s where it’s really, really vital to have a writer doing it. I’ve got a writer, Eric Kaplan, who’s really, really good at doing longer stories. Writing my own stories for TV, scripts that actors have to speak – it’s a totally different process from writing comics.

NRAMA: But you have done some short animations in the past…

TM: Yeah, but they were very short – they were only one minute long. Basically with those, the pieces I did for Saturday Night Live, those were like 10 years ago. We pretty much took two or three Makkies strips and strung them together to make one joke. They worked pretty well, but the new show works so much better. It’s got some real character development, not to mention some actual pathos and drama and building up to a climax. It’s a much, much different process than even writing a graphic novel.

When Eric writes down some line, I’ll be reading it in the script and thinking, “I guess this is funny…” And then I’ll hear the actor reading it out loud and playing with it a little bit, and…that’s when you really understand the talent of a TV writer.

NRAMA: What’s been your involvement in putting the show together?

TM: For me, I’m doing art direction, which means not only making sure everything looks the way it should look and the characters move the way they should move, but that Drinky Crow doesn’t start jumping around and acting like Donald Duck or something, or that the monkey doesn’t start spouting Shakespearean prose….although he is known to do that in Sock Monkey.

The thing is to keep the characters and the show as true to the charactes as possible. This is one of the great things about Adult Swim -- I had a couple of times where I’d tried to explain to people where the show was going, and the animators said, “No, this is the way it should be, otherwise it’s not close enough to the strip.” That’s the one thing you never hear from a TV producer! I was overjoyed to hear that. (laughs)

NRAMA: Have you had other offers for animated deals in the past? I can just imagine someone wanting to do a sweet, clean version of Sock Monkey…

TM: Yeah, we’re working on Sock Monkey right now, because with Sock Monkey, you have much more of a structure to work from. We’re not going to make it sqeaky-clean, but we are working on a movie right now that will be for kids. But it’ll be for kids who like scary stories, kind of like The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Sock Monkey stories always start out kind of sweet, but…there’s something kind of frightening about a sock monkey. So I like to play it down, until the story evolves into something more sinister. Like in the latest one The Inches Incident…when that little doll starts getting to Uncle Gabby, you realize she’s quite evil and there’s something realllly going on with her. And then you find out why.

NRAMA: That is something you play with often in the series, the inherent...I guess the right word is “soullessness” of inanimate toys coming to life. That’s conveyed very well with Inches.

TM: Yeah, I found the doll that’s based on way out in the desert in a junk store. I think it was in a pile of 50-year-old dolls. I pulled that thing out and…it was missing half its clothes, and had eyes like someone had just invented toy eyes…they didn’t quite fit into the head, so there were these black shadows around the eyeballs. It looked so creepy that I said, “I’ve got to do a story about this!”

NRAMA: Oh man, I know what you’re talking about with those eyes…they use to have those cymbal-clapping monkeys, Stephen King did a story about one.

TM: Yeah. Yeah. I have one of those monkeys, actually! Someone sent one to me. It’s really rusty, but it still works pretty well. It’s great.

NRAMA: Maybe there’s just something creepy about monkeys in general.

TM: Yeah, exactly! I think it’s because monkeys are so close to humans. They look like distorted humans, so there’s just something scary about that.

NRAMA: But getting back to the book – your work ranges from very mature with Makkies and Billy Hazelnuts to…not always kid-oriented, but a little more youth-oriented with Sock Monkey. On a mental level, what’s it like balancing the darker and lighter material?

TM: You know, the thing with a Drinky Crow story is that it’s just not for kids. I wouldn’t show it to my own kids, or to my nieces and nephews. With the Sock Monkey stories, even if it does get a little creepy and scary, there’s nothing in there you can’t show to kids. They’re just toys – you can get as creepy and scary as you want!

For me, a really stressful book is one where you have to make it work on about four different levels at the same time. You’re writing a deep, complex story that an adult can get into, but that a kid can appreciate on the surface level. Also, some of the Sock Monkey books are just straight, pure children’s stories…I did a couple of those hardcover books to try to break into the children’s market, but it didn’t really work that well. Something scary just kept coming out. (laughs)

NRAMA: Would you try to do of those books in the future?

TM: Nah, I think I’ll keep Sock Monkey to the comics. Too much trouble to get it past librarians. (laughs) They guard the space in the children’s section very tightly.

NRAMA: But you have had a pretty unique success with Uncle Gabby and the Crow, in that you’ve been able to translate them into both different mediums – comic strips, comic short stories, graphic novels, prose, animation – and different versions as well.

TM: Yeah, it’s great! It’s like getting to do something experimental. One of my biggest fears, one of the reasons that I do comics for a living, is that I have a big fear of getting locked into something, of having to do the same thing all the time, to the point where I’m just desperate to chuck it all and do something different. I’ve been really lucky that both Dark Horse and Fantagraphics have been completely open to any ideas I have about doing something new. They really do allow me a lot of freedom with my work.

NRAMA: But does it ever get to where you’re working on so many things at once that it’s hard to keep it all straight?

TM: Oh, definitely! I’ll be drawing something and have an editor yelling at me on the phone over something else. (laughs) The thing is that with a Sock Monkey story, it usually takes about a page a day, and with Drinky Crow and Makkies, they both take about four to six hours. I like to put a lot of ink work into those four panels.

So I can only do about one Sock Monkey page a day, and that’s why I can’t do 12 issues a year, because I’ve got a million things going on. I think The Inches Incident is a bit of groundbreaker, because it went for 80 pages.

NRAMA: Are there any other mediums you’d like to work in down the road?

TM: I don’t know! I’ll have to think about it. It would depend on if I had a good idea.

NRAMA: What’s coming up for you?

TM: Drawing the Makkies strip and working on The Drinky Crow Show – I’ll be drawing that monkey and that crow forever, until the day I die. And there’ll be more Sock Monkey books, and another Billy Hazelnuts – I’m drawing that one right now. And I’m working on a children’s book that I started two years ago – I’ve got a contract for it, and the people at Hyperion Books are tapping their fingers waiting for it. That’ll be in comic book form.

The thing is, writing a TV show is going to take up a lot of time, and if we get a movie going, that’s going to take up a lot of time. When you’re a cartoonist, you just have to sit down with a pen and paper, and it going. That’s the best you can do.

[whoisparker]

I love Tony Millionaire's work. I've only been exposed to a little, but everything I've seen is so detailed and funny. Can anyone recommend some good trades of his work? Preferably not the children's books, I'm looking for collections of his comics. Thanks!

[AbacusComics]

I'm familiar with it, but never picked it up. Interesting work to be sure.

[Gordon McAlpin]

You guys might want to fix a couple of those instances where it's spelled "Makkies" in the interview...

[Reagunn]

Abacus,

Thanks for the Wowio link.
I've never seen that site before, looks promising.

[Generic Eric]

I love Tony Millionaire's work. I've only been exposed to a little, but everything I've seen is so detailed and funny. Can anyone recommend some good trades of his work? Preferably not the children's books, I'm looking for collections of his comics. Thanks!

Premellineal Makkies hardcover is a great place to start.

[upstart]

Originally Posted by Generic Eric

Premellineal Makkies hardcover is a great place to start.

It's definitely the best value among the Maakies strip collections. 5 bucks more than the others but twice the size!

I would recommend Billy Hazelnuts and the 3 Sock Monkey graphic novel collections from Dark Horse: The Inches Incident mentioned above, and the first two, somewhat generically-named volumes:

http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=49-507
http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=12-739

[CodeGuy]

The pilot episode of The Drinky Crow Show had some issues, but also some real potential. I've seen several shows get massive improvements from pilot to actual series, so I'm really glad to hear that Adult Swim went ahead with the show. I think it's gonna be really good.

[AbacusComics]

Originally Posted by Reagunn

Abacus,

Thanks for the Wowio link.
I've never seen that site before, looks promising.

You're very welcome.

[sfritz]

All I know is I'm holding on to my screeners of Drinky Crow and Crooked 'Sip for however long it takes for me to do more articles on them.

Also, Tony, if I ever see you, let's find the nearest bar and the first drink is on me. -s

[Millionaire]

Originally Posted by sfritz

Also, Tony, if I ever see you, let's find the nearest bar and the first drink is on me. -s

I like drinks!