I seem to be drunk! And also vomiting in your bonnet!

August 5, 2006 8:29 AM

Make mine MaakiesTony Millionaire (who also does related comic Sock Monkey) has all of his sea-faring katzenjammers online. No direct links (curse you, frames!) but you can browse from here. The later ones are better (especially in the 540 range), but all are fun.
posted by klangklangston (20 comments total)

You should still be able to directly link to any individual frame/page/cartoon.
posted by davidmsc at 9:20 AM on August 5, 2006

God, I love Maakies. But I'll bet he doesn't have the one where he shows Michael Jackson luring a small child into his anus.
posted by languagehat at 9:45 AM on August 5, 2006

Would this be the right time to ask how to get enjoyment out of this comic?
posted by Mikey-San at 10:41 AM on August 5, 2006

Well, this one for example? That's Drinky Crow, see, and then he and the Arabs get drunk, and the punchline contains the phrase "a barrel full of one dead intoxicated monkey," and . . . well, if it didn't have you at "Drinky Crow," maybe it's not your kinda thing.

This one's some funny shit too . . . and here's the denouement of a series built around the inherently hilarious phrase "spackled ass crack" . . . Thanks, klang - love them Maakies!
posted by gompa at 11:56 AM on August 5, 2006

Genius
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:06 PM on August 5, 2006

Lovely stuff.

Drinky Crow is ace. And also the best action figure ever.
posted by Artw at 12:29 PM on August 5, 2006

Been reading Maakies for a few years now - all great stuff. Sock Monkey is good too - very surreal in a morbid, Through the Looking Glass kind of way. I like the way he incorporates cartoony images with these insanely detailed still-life sketches.
posted by elendil71 at 12:55 PM on August 5, 2006

I'm surprised Maakies has never been linked here before. It can be a bit of an acquired taste, a weird combination of rough and polish. One strip they're talking about poetry, the next, reverse chocolate vomit milkshakes.

The sorta-spinoff Sock Monkey books (who sometimes appear in the strip) are more consistently awesome.

Here's a flash Sock Monkey cartoon. Hoppla!
posted by JHarris at 1:10 PM on August 5, 2006

I'm torn.

The creativity of style, art, and drawing are quite brilliant. I love the inside nods to Patrick O'Brien.

But. Big Butt. The actual content and humor is boring childish idiotic crap. It makes me groan. Out loud.

I always read it. I always walk away disappointed. I suppose that says more about me than the artist.
posted by tkchrist at 1:31 PM on August 5, 2006

Then you want to seek out the Sock Monkey books tkchrist, although most of 'em he does these days seem to be for kids. They're still nice, though.
posted by JHarris at 1:51 PM on August 5, 2006

My favorite Tony Millionaire story is about his walking by the site of the Berlin disco bombing:

Kelly: Someone told me you almost started a major war once. True?

Millionaire: Oh, the LaBelle Discotheque--it was a discotheque in Berlin a long time ago. You remember when Reagan bombed Libya?

Kelly: Yeah.

Millionaire: Well, that was stirred by a photograph of me. Okay. You laugh, but it's true. Okay, this is what happened. I was in Berlin, and I had just come from a party, and I was wearing a tuxedo, so it was maybe three o'clock in the morning, and I was in a car with a bunch of friends. And we went past this bombed-out building, and all the firetrucks were around it, and American soldiers, and I said--and my friend said, "Oh, my god, look! A bombed-out warehouse or something, I wish I could get some photographs of that." She had her camera with her, see? I said, "You want photographs, baby? Follow me.". So I ran in there, ran past the cops, and I ran past the police, and she was right behind me and she started snapping pictures. So I started screaming, "Oh, my god, my wife! My wife is in there!" and I started picking up a big boulder, trying to move it. And some American soldiers came over, and they said, "What's the matter, buddy?" "My wife is in here!" And they said, "All right, all right, come on over here, what's your wife's name?" They brought me over to a jeep, and I sat there and I said, "Sally," and then I noticed there was a reporter right next to me, a German reporter. "Sally," and then they got my name and--

Kelly: Sally Millionaire?

Millionaire: --checked my ID--yeah, Sally

Millionaire, well, Richardson. They checked my name and my address, the name on my ID and all that stuff, and then they--after a while, they realized that I was full of shit, so I wanted to get out of there. So I started letting the story kind of fall, and then they realized that I was like--that I was just a goofball, see? Yeah, your wife Sally wasn't here, you don't even have a wife, do you? What do you mean, wife? I don't have a wife. They said, oh, a wise guy. So they brought me over to the cops--the German cops, and they stood me next to the cops and they said to the cops, I want you men to hold this man. We're going to come back and question him later. So they went back into the bombed-out building. And the cops didn't understand English, but I understood German. So the cops said to each other, what did he say? And then I said to the cops, I don't know what he's talking about. Crazy Americans. And then I just walked away. The cops didn't do anything. So I just walked away. So the next day, I was living in a squat, see? I come downstairs, and there's a--friends of mine are sitting in the living room with the newspaper. I'm on the front page of the Berliner Morgenpost, it's like The New York Times in Berlin. On the front page there's a picture of me holding onto a rock screaming, oh my god! It said underneath it, his wife Sally danced as the bomb detonated. So I was like--yeah, cool! I mean, I'm on the front page of the newspaper. Yeah, I'm famous! But then they were like--that's not funny, man. People died in that. I said what? I didn't realize that two people died in the explosion. I thought it was like a warehouse or something. So then my father called up from America. He said, so we saw you on the front page of the Boston Herald. What! And then it turned out I was on the front page of all these American newspapers, because that was the only photograph they had, because the ambulance had cleared everybody out so quickly that by the time the photographers arrived, there was nobody to photograph except me. Desperately drunk, pulling up a rock, wearing a tuxedo. So they photographed me. So here's the aftermath: Ronald Reagan picks up a paper, the Washington Post, and there on the front page is me going ahh! His wife Sally dances, the bomb detonated. Those fucking Libyans. And then we launch an attack on Libya, we killed Quadaffi's daughter-in-law or something.

Kelly: Now do you feel guilty about this at all?

Millionaire: No, what? Guilt--what's there to be guilty for?

Kelly: Well, you caused the death of somebody's kid.

Millionaire: No! Well, yes, I do. Yes, I feel very guilty. I feel guilty to be a part of the news.
posted by eegphalanges at 1:51 PM on August 5, 2006 [2 favorites]

Kinda meh on Tony, though I will always remember the comic that featured the POV of a piece of feces.

I really do dig his 404 page though!
posted by emjaybee at 3:27 PM on August 5, 2006

Dammit it didn't work. Sorry. Try this.
posted by emjaybee at 3:28 PM on August 5, 2006

Maakies!!!

As Matt Groening said, "Tony Millionaire's comics are so good he should be called Tony Billionaire."

gompa did a good job with Mikey-San's question. Mikey, here's a little more info for you:

From Publisher's Weekly
Millionaire is a great master of the old-time freewheeling comic strip, and this work takes full advantage of every last bit of the medium. It combines the comical seafaring tales of Drinky Crow (yes, a drunk crow) and Uncle Gabby (a monkey of questionable morals) with nonsense strips and the occasional foray into something utterly unconnected. In these strips, Gabby goes to the art museum with predictably disastrous results; Drinky plays with guns; and there's a tremendous amount of drinking and violence, not to mention suicide gags, all with little visible effect on these "heroes." Each of the strips has a smaller, secondary strip running below it, and both are drawn in an excruciatingly detailed pen and ink style reminiscent of late-19th-century illustration and E.C. Segar's classic Popeye comic strip of the 1930s. Millionaire's carefully rendered art never interferes with his loony punch lines. His work also benefits from a rare occurrence in comics publishing: the right package, in this case a book produced by the acclaimed graphic designer Chip Kidd, who chose an elongated format (12" 4") based on 1910 Mutt & Jeff collections. Millionaire offers transporting, irreverent and unique comics, all beautifully drawn.

From Booklist
The alternative comic strip "Maakies" stars Drinky, an alcoholic crow drawn as a constructivist concatenation of geometric shapes, and Uncle Gabby, a monkey sometimes rendered as a sock puppet. They are two jolly tars on a ship captained by an Ahab knock-off and often beset by another ship full of French-accented crocodiles in Napoleonic uniforms. Ashore, they try to make time with women, puritanical Phoebe Bird for Drinky and a brunette for Gabby. Their patter is a stream of puns; ethnic stereotyping; and barf, scat, and sex jokes. Drunk most of the time (Drinky only f---s up when sober, he says), they frequently blow their brains out in despair. Their crude antics occur, however, in a context of virtuosic draftsmanship. The sea scenes look real enough to illustrate Horatio Hornblower. Millionaire effortlessly adopts the styles and manners of classic strips, including a ministrip run under the main strip. "Krazy Kat" began as a ministrip, and "Maakies" sometimes seems to be "Krazy Kat" reinvented by a slacker Bill ("Calvin and Hobbes") Watterson.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 3:45 PM on August 5, 2006

I almost never laugh at the content of Maakies, but I enjoy reading it anyway. It's weird like that.
posted by beerbajay at 6:35 PM on August 5, 2006

Though this one is both funny and attractive while not being repulsive.
posted by beerbajay at 6:42 PM on August 5, 2006

Some how the lowbrow humour (which is harder to do than you think) makes me appreciate the art more. Check out his new book "Billy Hazlenuts". It is beautiful and funny and not dirty...
just kind of weird.
posted by archaic at 7:20 PM on August 5, 2006

I heart Maakies. My toddler loves the Drinky Crow figure who lives on my desk and the Sock Monkey books for bedtime reading -- they are beautiful, beautiful books that are both charming and (for the adult) kind of heartbreaking.

The comic strip is amazing. It's a strange kind of comedy. And while dark comedy isn't rare in the comix, the wonderfully detailed Victorian line drawings make Maakies completely unique.

Speaking of, has anyone examined the incredible Stanley Donwood art for the new record by Radiohead's Thom Yorke? It was carved into linoleum tiles, and shows this fantastic medieval apocalyptic view of the Thames river rebelling against London landmarks like the NatWest tower and Big Ben. Haunting and lovely stuff.
posted by kenlayne at 10:38 PM on August 5, 2006

The plan cannot fail!
posted by kahboom at 12:00 AM on August 6, 2006

So sad, I scrolled down the entire index and couldn't find my favorite strip about the doomed love affair of a seahorse.
posted by of strange foe at 8:54 PM on August 9, 2006