Tony Millionaire is a large and imposing figure, and that's when he's sober. This bacchanalian figure draws a weekly comic strip called Maakies (www.maakies.com) that appears in numerous alternative weeklies around the country. It follows the trails and tribulations of a simian beast named Uncle Gabby and a suicidal, alcoholic crow named, appropriately enough, Drinky Crow (Picture: ) .
Maakies has been animated on Saturday Night Live and decorated shot glasses for the college-radio crooners They Might Be Giants. There are three volumes of the collected works released by Fantagraphic Books (www.fantagraphics.com), the latest, When We Were Very Maakies, is out now (Picture: ) .
Tony Millionaire is a very intimidating and loud character, and he's bringing his larger-than-life personality to the Windy City where he'll be signing copies of his books at Chicago Comics, 3224 N. Clark St., on Saturday, June 5, from 8 to 10 p.m.
Don't be frightened by the man and his mystique. Underneath that gruff fa?e is a pussycat who also pens a few children books a year for Dark Horse Comics (www.darkhorse.com). Maybe his Sock Monkey (Picture: ) series of kid-lit entertainment will be the next big thing to storm the Hollywood box office.
The great artist put his quill in the inkbottle for a momentary respite from work to sit and spin a yarn with Mr. Skin. He discusses his obsession with the sepia-toned bombshells of yesteryear, his sexually explicit drawings from early in his career and, naturally, his love of the word "boner."
Does a famous scribbler like yourself have time for that lovely distraction called Mr. Skin?
They show a lot of boobs? What is it celebrity tits, basically? That's good!
I like to look at pictures of a real girl, who lives next door and got caught in the shower and somebody took a snapshot of her. Or somebody takes a picture of his girlfriend.
But when it comes to general skin magazines I don't like them because it's all like, "Hey, look, I got my makeup on and I'm going, 'Oh, sexy!'" I don't find that sexy at all. They got their high heels on and they're opening their cunts - I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here!" They're showing it to everybody. I want it to be my own little secret. You get a girl in a room and get her to take her clothes off - especially if it's someone else's girlfriend - that's great.
Do you remember the first time you saw a naked lady on film?
My dad had some Super-8 movies and we found them, the neighborhood kids and I, and we hooked up the Super-8 projector, we put them on the wall. It was the sexiest fucking thing I'd ever seen - then or now. It was just five or six chicks naked and they were running around in a field in a circle, playing Ring Around the Rosy.
Do you still have it?
No, it was my father's. We had to hope that my dad and mom wouldn't come home after school. We'd set up his Super-8 projector. He didn't even know I knew how to use it. What I liked about it was it was just these chicks in a field dancing around. I'd seen Playboy magazine, which is okay, but most of that stuff is too posed. It was in a studio, you could tell, and it was a bunch of guys with lights, makeup and cameras. But this movie was the greatest because it was just naked hippie chicks dancing around in a circle, like they were wild. That was the only place they existed, there.
What about a regular movie as opposed to a loop?
Yeah, it was called King Kong. When the monkey Kong pulls off Fay Wray's (Picture: - ) clothes. You see one of the boobs come out. And I thought that was great because it looked like it happened by accident. It wasn't all set up. It drove me ape.
Any modern movies, like something in color or a talkie, old man?
I wouldn't mind flipping Gwyneth Paltrow (Picture: - ) over, but I like her mostly because I've never seen her tits in person. Once you see the tits you don't really care. Then the whole concept of trying to get to the boobs is kind of gone, because there they are. You already got 'em.
Once you see them you're no longer interested.
I wrote a comic strip about that concept one time. Uncle Gabby pulled Drinky Crow away from a whorehouse. He said, "What are you going into those seedy places for, come on, this place is classy." And they went in and it was a strip joint, a burlesque house. A stripper got up and she was dancing around and at the end of the dance she pulls off her top. She says, "Here are the boobs, boys!" Drinky Crow goes, "Great, can I fuck 'em?" Everybody stops silent and goes, "No. Behave yourself. What's wrong with you?" Drinky Crow says, "Well, what good is that?" He pulls a gun out and just starts shooting everybody.
This is why I've always hated strip joints. There's this woman and she's showing you her cunt and their tits, but you're not allowed to fuck them. What good is that? It's no good at all. I don't like people showing me stuff I can't get. It's like going to a candy store and having a candy guy go, "Look at all this candy. You can't eat any!" It's no good. So, I've never been crazy about going around looking at some chick's tits, unless it's secret.
What about other actresses?
My favorite movie sexpot of all time: Maureen O'Sullivan (Picture: ), baby. She played Jane in Tarzan and His Mate with Johnny Weismuller. I always thought that she was the sexiest thing. Because of my dislike for stages and makeup and studio photographs of naked woman, this was perfect.
She was out in the middle of the woods with Tarzan, who was me, of course, and nobody knows what you're going to do with her. It's secret, and I'd imagine pulling out my boner and saying, "This is a boner," and she'd go, "Oh my God, a boner. What's that?" See, that's what's sexy about Maureen O'Sullivan. She's kind of innocent because you feel that she's never seen a boner before. You could show her the first one [laughs]. Now that's sexy! You can put that in capital letters.
Oh, yeahMyrna Loy (Picture: ). She's classy and likes it when William Powell drinks. She tries to keep up with him. She thinks it's cool that he drinks. She's got a lot of money. The Thin Man married her money, brother. And they have separate beds, too, so once you - you know - do your deed, even Myrna Loy you don't want to hang around in the same bed, you want to get out of there and go to your own bed. William Powell apparently goes back to his bed and goes to sleep. The good thing is that if you got Myrna Loy knocked up you know that she's going to be treating those kids right, teaching them to play the piano and stuff. You'll feel like you're at home.
The problem about running around and screwing crazy broads in the gutters of New York City is that you all the time you're doing it you feel like you want to go home. When you get a broad like Myrna Loy, you're like, okay: she's beautiful, she's rich, she let's me drink and I'm home.
Speaking of the gutters of New York, you did a lot of work for Al Goldstein's infamous sex weekly, Screw magazine.
Yeah, I did. I did some great stuff for Screw magazine. I did a comic strip called Fucky.
She was a woman who had wacky sexual escapades with a monkey and Kevin Hein, the art director, was a little nervous for a while.
And he said, "Okay, well then that's just an anthropomorphized monkey, so that's okay." It's basically a human being that's cartoonized into a monkey. They didn't like was the Michael Jackson one I did.
What was that?
That was when Michael Jackson coaxes a baby up his ass by putting a nipple from a baby bottle on his ass. When the baby gets close enough Michael Jackson grabs him and shoves him up his ass. The baby starts screaming when he's inside the anus because he's scared. Then he sees some shit, and he goes, "Hey, some shit." And he starts eating it, and he's happy, see?
Screw magazine and Hustler magazine both said that you can't show penetration and nothing with kids.
I couldn't sell that comic anywhere, but it did run in the greatest 'zine of all time, Happyland, published by the greatest 'zine publisher of all time, Dr. Selwyn Harris.
Where's that classic residing today?
One day I was really late for one of my weekly Maakies deadlines, so I just took that one and cut it up in some pieces and glued it on a piece of paper and wrote "Maakies Puzzle" on it and sent that in. I did get some crazy emails about that. Anybody who actually put it together sure wished they hadn't.
Before you made your fortune with the comics you supported yourself by doing beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of people's homes. Did any of your house subjects turn into a Penthouse Letters-type of affair?
At one point, yes, something like that happened. It wasn't like Penthouse Letters, but when I first started doing that I would knock on doors and ask people if they'd like a drawing of their house. After a while I just started putting cards in mailboxes, but back in the days when I was knocking on doors this guy answered opened the door.
He had one of those big McMansions - big, ugly, brand-new mansion with balconies all around the inside of it and a fountain right in the middle. In the fountain was a large, real, stuffed leopard, taxidermy. It was reaching into pond looking like it was trying to get some of the Koi fish that were down there. Up on the balconies he had some stuffed lion heads, buffalo heads and a couple of bearskin rugs, polar bear rugs. He asked me if I would do a portrait of his wife naked in the fountain while the leopard was sort of pawing at her. But I got a little bit nervous about it.
It's very difficult to draw a beautiful woman, to get a portrait of her, to do a likeness. An ugly guy is easy to draw because you draw his big, stupid nose and it looks just like him. But a beautiful woman you almost always get the portrait of the face wrong, and I knew that was going to happen. I told him I didn't want to do it. I didn't even get to see the woman! I should have done it anyway, but I knew I was going to get into a weird situation. I knew I would get her tits all cockeyed, so I just didn't do it. I should have just done it for the story.
Maakies has been animated on Saturday Night Live and decorated shot glasses for the college-radio crooners They Might Be Giants. There are three volumes of the collected works released by Fantagraphic Books (www.fantagraphics.com), the latest, When We Were Very Maakies, is out now (Picture: ) .
Tony Millionaire is a very intimidating and loud character, and he's bringing his larger-than-life personality to the Windy City where he'll be signing copies of his books at Chicago Comics, 3224 N. Clark St., on Saturday, June 5, from 8 to 10 p.m.
Don't be frightened by the man and his mystique. Underneath that gruff fa?e is a pussycat who also pens a few children books a year for Dark Horse Comics (www.darkhorse.com). Maybe his Sock Monkey (Picture: ) series of kid-lit entertainment will be the next big thing to storm the Hollywood box office.
The great artist put his quill in the inkbottle for a momentary respite from work to sit and spin a yarn with Mr. Skin. He discusses his obsession with the sepia-toned bombshells of yesteryear, his sexually explicit drawings from early in his career and, naturally, his love of the word "boner."
Does a famous scribbler like yourself have time for that lovely distraction called Mr. Skin?
They show a lot of boobs? What is it celebrity tits, basically? That's good!
I like to look at pictures of a real girl, who lives next door and got caught in the shower and somebody took a snapshot of her. Or somebody takes a picture of his girlfriend.
But when it comes to general skin magazines I don't like them because it's all like, "Hey, look, I got my makeup on and I'm going, 'Oh, sexy!'" I don't find that sexy at all. They got their high heels on and they're opening their cunts - I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here!" They're showing it to everybody. I want it to be my own little secret. You get a girl in a room and get her to take her clothes off - especially if it's someone else's girlfriend - that's great.
Do you remember the first time you saw a naked lady on film?
My dad had some Super-8 movies and we found them, the neighborhood kids and I, and we hooked up the Super-8 projector, we put them on the wall. It was the sexiest fucking thing I'd ever seen - then or now. It was just five or six chicks naked and they were running around in a field in a circle, playing Ring Around the Rosy.
Do you still have it?
No, it was my father's. We had to hope that my dad and mom wouldn't come home after school. We'd set up his Super-8 projector. He didn't even know I knew how to use it. What I liked about it was it was just these chicks in a field dancing around. I'd seen Playboy magazine, which is okay, but most of that stuff is too posed. It was in a studio, you could tell, and it was a bunch of guys with lights, makeup and cameras. But this movie was the greatest because it was just naked hippie chicks dancing around in a circle, like they were wild. That was the only place they existed, there.
What about a regular movie as opposed to a loop?
Yeah, it was called King Kong. When the monkey Kong pulls off Fay Wray's (Picture: - ) clothes. You see one of the boobs come out. And I thought that was great because it looked like it happened by accident. It wasn't all set up. It drove me ape.
Any modern movies, like something in color or a talkie, old man?
I wouldn't mind flipping Gwyneth Paltrow (Picture: - ) over, but I like her mostly because I've never seen her tits in person. Once you see the tits you don't really care. Then the whole concept of trying to get to the boobs is kind of gone, because there they are. You already got 'em.
Once you see them you're no longer interested.
I wrote a comic strip about that concept one time. Uncle Gabby pulled Drinky Crow away from a whorehouse. He said, "What are you going into those seedy places for, come on, this place is classy." And they went in and it was a strip joint, a burlesque house. A stripper got up and she was dancing around and at the end of the dance she pulls off her top. She says, "Here are the boobs, boys!" Drinky Crow goes, "Great, can I fuck 'em?" Everybody stops silent and goes, "No. Behave yourself. What's wrong with you?" Drinky Crow says, "Well, what good is that?" He pulls a gun out and just starts shooting everybody.
This is why I've always hated strip joints. There's this woman and she's showing you her cunt and their tits, but you're not allowed to fuck them. What good is that? It's no good at all. I don't like people showing me stuff I can't get. It's like going to a candy store and having a candy guy go, "Look at all this candy. You can't eat any!" It's no good. So, I've never been crazy about going around looking at some chick's tits, unless it's secret.
What about other actresses?
My favorite movie sexpot of all time: Maureen O'Sullivan (Picture: ), baby. She played Jane in Tarzan and His Mate with Johnny Weismuller. I always thought that she was the sexiest thing. Because of my dislike for stages and makeup and studio photographs of naked woman, this was perfect.
She was out in the middle of the woods with Tarzan, who was me, of course, and nobody knows what you're going to do with her. It's secret, and I'd imagine pulling out my boner and saying, "This is a boner," and she'd go, "Oh my God, a boner. What's that?" See, that's what's sexy about Maureen O'Sullivan. She's kind of innocent because you feel that she's never seen a boner before. You could show her the first one [laughs]. Now that's sexy! You can put that in capital letters.
Oh, yeahMyrna Loy (Picture: ). She's classy and likes it when William Powell drinks. She tries to keep up with him. She thinks it's cool that he drinks. She's got a lot of money. The Thin Man married her money, brother. And they have separate beds, too, so once you - you know - do your deed, even Myrna Loy you don't want to hang around in the same bed, you want to get out of there and go to your own bed. William Powell apparently goes back to his bed and goes to sleep. The good thing is that if you got Myrna Loy knocked up you know that she's going to be treating those kids right, teaching them to play the piano and stuff. You'll feel like you're at home.
The problem about running around and screwing crazy broads in the gutters of New York City is that you all the time you're doing it you feel like you want to go home. When you get a broad like Myrna Loy, you're like, okay: she's beautiful, she's rich, she let's me drink and I'm home.
Speaking of the gutters of New York, you did a lot of work for Al Goldstein's infamous sex weekly, Screw magazine.
Yeah, I did. I did some great stuff for Screw magazine. I did a comic strip called Fucky.
She was a woman who had wacky sexual escapades with a monkey and Kevin Hein, the art director, was a little nervous for a while.
And he said, "Okay, well then that's just an anthropomorphized monkey, so that's okay." It's basically a human being that's cartoonized into a monkey. They didn't like was the Michael Jackson one I did.
What was that?
That was when Michael Jackson coaxes a baby up his ass by putting a nipple from a baby bottle on his ass. When the baby gets close enough Michael Jackson grabs him and shoves him up his ass. The baby starts screaming when he's inside the anus because he's scared. Then he sees some shit, and he goes, "Hey, some shit." And he starts eating it, and he's happy, see?
Screw magazine and Hustler magazine both said that you can't show penetration and nothing with kids.
I couldn't sell that comic anywhere, but it did run in the greatest 'zine of all time, Happyland, published by the greatest 'zine publisher of all time, Dr. Selwyn Harris.
Where's that classic residing today?
One day I was really late for one of my weekly Maakies deadlines, so I just took that one and cut it up in some pieces and glued it on a piece of paper and wrote "Maakies Puzzle" on it and sent that in. I did get some crazy emails about that. Anybody who actually put it together sure wished they hadn't.
Before you made your fortune with the comics you supported yourself by doing beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of people's homes. Did any of your house subjects turn into a Penthouse Letters-type of affair?
At one point, yes, something like that happened. It wasn't like Penthouse Letters, but when I first started doing that I would knock on doors and ask people if they'd like a drawing of their house. After a while I just started putting cards in mailboxes, but back in the days when I was knocking on doors this guy answered opened the door.
He had one of those big McMansions - big, ugly, brand-new mansion with balconies all around the inside of it and a fountain right in the middle. In the fountain was a large, real, stuffed leopard, taxidermy. It was reaching into pond looking like it was trying to get some of the Koi fish that were down there. Up on the balconies he had some stuffed lion heads, buffalo heads and a couple of bearskin rugs, polar bear rugs. He asked me if I would do a portrait of his wife naked in the fountain while the leopard was sort of pawing at her. But I got a little bit nervous about it.
It's very difficult to draw a beautiful woman, to get a portrait of her, to do a likeness. An ugly guy is easy to draw because you draw his big, stupid nose and it looks just like him. But a beautiful woman you almost always get the portrait of the face wrong, and I knew that was going to happen. I told him I didn't want to do it. I didn't even get to see the woman! I should have done it anyway, but I knew I was going to get into a weird situation. I knew I would get her tits all cockeyed, so I just didn't do it. I should have just done it for the story.
