We all learned soon enough, however, that two issues of Sock Monkey was not nearly enough. Soon, Amara flew down to Millionaire's bachelor beach bungalow in Los Angeles and got the easily-inebriated cartoonist lubed up with a lot of gin. Then Amara pulled out a big, gold pen and wrote Millionaire a cashier's check for $957,000--his advance for another two-issue Sock Monkey series, and the first royalty check Millionaire was to receive for his patented line of Sock Monkey Tastee Peach Fritters ®TM. The two kissed goodbye like trembling, young adolescent youths and patted each other primly on the bottom. By the time Amara kayaked back to Oregon, Millionaire had already sobered up, gotten drunk again, and sent in the first few pages of Sock Monkey Volume 2. None, part, or all of this may be true, but we'll let you try and decide. But Sock Monkey really is coming back in July. Yay!
SE: Where did your inspiration for using sock monkeys in comics come from?
TM: I started using my own sock monkey and stuffed crow as models for comics many years ago. He's not a real stuffed crow, you know--he's cloth. My grandmother gave me that sock monkey when I was two years old. That was along time ago, and when she gave it to me she said, "His name is Monkey! "Being very young at the time, I was unable to pronounce the name properly, so I said, "MUMMY!" My mother heard this, and she didn't get along too well with Gramma. It was her mother-in-law, the one who said, "You don't want to name him 'Tony' that's a ginny-wop name." In those days I used to call my mother "Mummy" so my mother didn't want me to use that name for the monkey. She said "His name is Joe."
SE: When did you first start cartooning, and what were your earlier subjects?
TM: My first strip, I did when I was nine years old. It was called Zeroman, and it was about an egg-shaped superhero who flew around talking about how great he was and then crashing into a cliff. Sort of an Underdog who always arrived too late to save Polly Purebred from the oncoming train. One day my parents sent me to a psychiatrist because I took a crate of glass milk bottles down the driveway and smashed them one by one in the street. The psychiatrist asked me what did I like to do, so I drew him some Zeroman comics. That old bastard had me in there three times a week after that.
SE: Was that a learning experience for you?
TM: Yes, I learned never to let the man know what you're up to, especially if he's wearing a white suit and carrying a net.
SE: I've seen your weekly Maakies strips and the stuff you did for Screw magazine
TM: All that stuff I did for Screw I did only for the cash. I was a common whore and I wanted Al Goldstien to be my pimp. I also thought that I would be able to get famous in those days by working for the same magazine as such luminaries as Spain, Crumb, Kaz, Hellman and that genius Henderson.
SE: It seems like quite a dichotomy to be working on a comic book like Sock Monkey that's generally perceived as being very innocent while you've also got this sort of notorious Maakies background. is it reaching too far to try to make this a reflection of the inner Tony? What do you think this says about you?
TM: For many years I tried to point out to the world how useless it was to attempt to continue living in anything but the most inebriated state--that wasting time sober was a bad idea. But the fools wouldn't listen to me! So I closed my head and thought about it all for a while and realized that it was ME who was full of shit, not them, and I hunted through my cobweb-filled memories for the good things in there. I tried to remember my grandmother's house--Winnie the Pooh, Reddy Fox, Peter Rabbit, those ships that used to sail past Good Harbor beach in Gloucester, and I started to write comics about that. Unfortunately all the naughty stuff ended up coming through after I got bored a couple of pages later, and that's why I'll never be able to make any of that fine Disney cash, GODDAMMIT!
SE:Sock Monkey's gotten some fantastic feedback from retailers and even Wizard magazine loves it . . . what do you make of the relative success of the title? What do you think people like about it?
TM: I guess it's just that people love all that nostalgia and then they get disgusted by their own pleasant feelings, so they like to see the characters get burned up. Is that juvenile?
SE: Maybe. What do you like about it?
TM: The juvenility.
SE: Did you initially envision the Sock Monkey project as a comic book? had you worked in the comic book field before Sock Monkey?
TM: No, I never wanted to put so much work into something like a comic book, but after a while you just get wrapped up in it. It takes over your life. I see everything through a sock monkey's eyes now.
SE: Let's talk about the characters a little. How did Uncle Gabby's personality develop, and where did Drinky Crow come from?
TM: These two characters are from a second dimension of my weekly strip Maakies (appearing in weeklies across the country, online at www.word.com, and animated on Saturday Night Live). One day I decided to introduce the actual physical toys which I used as inspiration for the strip, and I drew them from life. They are softer, nicer, more innocent and childlike than the drunken sailors of the strip.
SE: What do you see in the future of Sock Monkey? And what's in the future for Tony Millionaire?
TM: I see a major motion picture or weekly television show. I see a giant plastic cutout of the Sock Monkey sitting on the Empire State building in New York. I see me and Walt Disney's ghost shaking hands and signing a contract in a limousine driven by a guy in a Winnie the Pooh costume, symbolizing everything that is horrible and profane in this dream-crushing world.