Dark Horse collected the first two Sock Monkey miniseries into a trade paperback in July, and readers can expect to see the first issue of a new Sock Monkey miniseries on sale November 8. If you're in need of a Millionaire fix to hold you over in the mean time, you'll enjoy the following strange journey through the hilariously maudlin mind of the man Peter Bagge calls "a madman who tells poetic stories and draws, rich beautiful pictures." Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tony Millionaire:
Ivana Fanboy: We've talked before about your childhood inspirations for Sock Monkey -- how your grandma got you a toy sock monkey when you were a little kid, and that inspired you to create these stories, but what sorts of things inspire you now?
Tony Millionaire: I like hanging around with my siblings' kids. I don't see them that often, but when I do, something good always happens. The newest comic book is about hunting for salamanders in the forest. Last year my brother Todd and I took his kids and another nephew out into the woods to hunt for salamanders. They wanted to put them in jars and let them go in a few days. I kept telling them that if we would go just a little bit further we would find the salamander city, and they believed me. They thought I really knew about some magical town filled with salamanders. They started to get tired but I told them it was just around the next bend. Well, after a while I saw a mossy, wet sort-of dell in the woods, and I said, "There it is! It's Salamander City!" We went down there and started turning over rotten logs and sure enough, there were the salamanders. We pulled about forty salamanders out of there. Man, was I a hero.
I remember being a teenage hippie and walking around in the woods, high, trying to find some kind of mossy hillock covered with fairies or elves. Once I found a small statue of some kind of nymph, but it wasn't alive. It was made of granite and it was on somebody's estate which I had come up on from behind on a dirt road. So I stole it.
IF: Do you consider yourself to be nostalgic? Are you more sentimental about actual things that have happened in your life or are you more sentimental about things you wish or imagined happened when you were a kid?
TM: Once, when I was about 12, I was at my mother's cabin on a lake in Maine. I was fishing, and I caught a turtle. The fish hook had gone right through the roof of its mouth and was sticking out its eye. I tried to pull it out, but it just kept pulling the eye back into its head. It was quite gruesome, and I didn't know what to do, so I got a hatchet and I chopped the turtle's head off. It took a couple of hacks to get it off; I was very upset and didn't do the job right. I threw the turtle's head and its headless body into the lake and went up to the cabin, and I told my mom what had happened. My little brother Todd, who was about 8 years old, overheard me telling the story and he started crying. My mother scolded me for scaring my brother, so I sat down with him and told him that it was all a lie -- that there was no turtle and that I had just made the whole thing up. He stopped crying and went swimming. Of course, the headless turtle floated up and bumped him, he turned and stared into its hideous neck, screamed and ran up to the cabin, where I was pronounced demon of the world by all present.
Twenty years later, I was telling this story to Todd, who had almost forgotten it, in my sister's kitchen. We all laughed at the end of the horrible story and then we heard the crying of a small child, like Todd's ghost, but it was Todd's 8 year old son, Brendan, who cried, "It's not funny for the turtle!" Once again, twenty years after the deed, I had terrorized a little kid with my grim turtle story. Two years later I was talking to my sister and my nephew Curt who was about 8 and I told them about how I had scared two generations with the story of cutting off a turtle's head. My sister looked up at the word "turtle" and gave me the "shut up" look. Curtis tensed up and gritted his teeth. Then he started to cry. It turns out he was in his turtle phase. He had some turtles in an aquarium, he loved turtles more than any other animal. I had done it again. I had to sit him down and explain to him about the concept of putting an animal out of its misery etc. He finally got over it and now his favorite punch line to any joke is, "It's not funny for the turtle!"
IF: You've obviously spent some time thinking about -- or dealing with stuff that happened when you were a kid. Have your childhood memories changed over the years -- are they fonder, or maybe a little darker?
TM: I learned to never go back and try to find out what the stuff I remember actually looked like. I recently got a photo of that glorious Victorian house that my grandmother lived in from Ann-Louise (my real cousin -- she lived there too) and it was just some house. It wasn't nearly as spectacular as I remembered it. I guess everybody has experienced that.
IF: You live in LA now ... has that changed how you see the world in regard to inspiration? It would seem that living in NY, like you used to, or anywhere on the East coast might be more conducive to those Victorian/sea-faring tales of fancy you've mentioned being inspired by.
TM: Yeah, before I moved out here I thought I would hate it. I came here to be with my girlfriend (now my fiancée) Becky Thyre, who is an actress, and I had the impression that everything in LA would be fake and plastic. Well, it's not all plastic, but it certainly is all fake, all the way down to the trees. Nothing is here that wasn't made by some human or planted here and irrigated. On the east coast you can see a three hundred year old tree in every town square, but the only thing out here -- the ONLY thing that is more than a hundred years old -- is the San Andreas fault line. That bothered me for a while, `til I realized that the whole city is based on the idea of fantasy. It's all fake, but everybody has their idea of what they want and they build it. The whole town is like the Land of Oz. Then I realized that my lifestyle in Brooklyn was more fake than this place. I'm not some ship's captain living in the 1800's waiting for my orders to sail to China, but I sure thought I was! The irony! TINSELTOWN HAS SHATTERED MY FANTASY!
IF: You seem to have gained a lot of media attention for your work in the last year. Does that affect how you see your work? Do you mind people paying attention to you like that, or would you rather remain more anonymous?
TM: I had to present a slide show with Kaz and Carol Lay one time at the Brooklyn Museum. They showed slides of their comics and read them out loud. My stage fright was so intense that I resorted to playing music and sound effects during my presentation. The only thing I am good at when standing in front of a group of people sober is stammering, turning red, and peeing in my pants. However, one of the advantages of cartooning is that no matter how much media attention you get, you hardly ever have to stand up and give a speech. So the more media attention I get, the more people see my work, and that's really the only reason I do it. So, yeah, give me the limelight!
IF: Now that I've asked all the pseudo-analytical questions, what are the new Sock Monkey adventures about? You mentioned salamander hunting earlier. What happens? Who dies?
TM: I can't reveal that information except to say that Salamander City will indeed be found, and that it will NOT be funny for the turtle!
IF: Let's talk about the creative process for Sock Monkey a little. Do you have visions of a Sock Monkey life story that is all worked out in your head, and you're telling each chapter as it comes, or is it more random than that?
TM: Yes, the Sock Monkey story is definitely plotted out. He will get into more and more entertaining and heartwarming adventures until such a time as someone makes a movie out of him at which point I will buy a mansion on the Hudson River. With a three hundred year-old tree in the front yard.
IF: Of course. Any Sock Monkey adventures you're dying to tell that we should know about?
TM: I had an idea where he puts on a bat costume and fights crime, but I got sued immediately by some comics bigshots.
IF: If there were a Tony Millionaire museum, what would be in it?
TM: My own alcohol-soaked brain, withered and blotchy under a glass dome, with a couple of forks stuck in it. And the severed head of a turtle.
Join Uncle Gabby and Mr. Crow as they search for Salamander City in Sock Monkey, Volume 3. The first 24-page issue of this black-and-white treat will be available November 8.