Tony Millionaire

Tony Millionaire (born Scott Richardson, 1956) is an American cartoonist, illustrator and author known for his syndicated comic strip "Maakies" and the "Sock Monkey" series of comics and picture books.

Early life

Millionaire was born in Boston 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," [ [http://www.darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=685 News > Interviews > Tony Millionaire ] ] 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 Art, where he majored in painting, but left without graduating after 3 and 3 quarters years. 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" [ [http://www.maakies.com/reviews/one.html The Comic's Journal Interview ] ] 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 journals 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 it its pages. It soon spread to other papers across the country. (In 1999 or 2000Fact|date=February 2007 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. [ [http://www.nypress.com/issue.cfm?ivol=20&ino=7 New York's Premier Alternative Newspaper. Arts, Music, Food, Movies and Opinion ] ] )

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.

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.

tyle and influences

Millionaire draws in a lush style that mingles naturalistic detail with strong doses of the fanciful and grotesque. 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" [ [http://www.maakies.com/reviews/three.html Flak Magazine Interview ] ] ; 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.

Pseudonym

When asked in interviews why he uses a pen name, 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." [ [http://www.advunderground.com/interviews/millionaire0406.php Adventures Underground: Interview with Tony Millionaire on Billy Hazelnuts and The Drinky Crow on Adult Swim ] ] He has claimed that his unusual surname is an Old French word meaning "a person who owns a thousand serfs." [ [http://www.maakies.com/reviews/one.html The Comic's Journal Interview ] ] Skeptics trace the origin of the name "Tony Millionaire" to a character in an episode of the '60s TV series "I Dream of Jeannie". Musician Fred Giannelli, later of Psychic TV can confirm the skeptical origin of the name "Tony Millionaire".

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. [ [http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/give-me-a-tall-ship-and-a-monkey-to-steer-her-by/130/ LA Weekly - News - Give Me a Tall Ship and a Monkey to Steer Her By - Bill Smith - The Essential Online Resource for Los Angeles ] ] [ [http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/51073/Ten_Minutes_with_Tony_Millionaire_pg3.html G4 - Feature - Ten Minutes with Tony Millionaire ] ]

References

ee also

* Maakies
* Sock Monkey

External links

* [http://www.tonymillionaire.com Homepage]
* [http://www.maakies.com/ Maakies.com]
* [http://www.myspace.com/tonymillionaire Tony Millionaire's MySpace page]
* [http://www.maximumfun.org/blog/2008/03/podcast-tony-millionaire-creator-of.html Audio interview with Millionaire] on public radio program The Sound of Young America
* [http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/51073/Ten_Minutes_with_Tony_Millionaire.html February 2005 Interview by Coury Turczyn from g4TV.com]
* [http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/april_2002/millionaire.html April 2002 Interview from freewilliamsburg.com]
* [http://www.advunderground.com/interviews/millionaire0406.php Interview by Logan Kaufman from Adventures Underground]
* [http://www.darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=685 Interview from darkhorse.com]
* [http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid8861.aspx "Who wants to be Tony Millionaire?"] by Mike Miliard, "The Boston Phoenix", April 12, 2006