Maakies

Characteristics

Maakies focuses on the darkly comic misadventures of Uncle Gabby (a "drunken Irish monkey") and Drinky Crow (a crow), two antiheroes with a propensity for drunkenness, violence, suicide, and venereal disease. According to Millionaire, "Maakies is me spilling my guts... Writing and drawing about all the things that make me want to jump in the river, laughing at the horror of being alive."

Maakies strips typically take place in an early 19th-century nautical setting. There is rarely any continuity between strips. The comic often includes visual references to historic works of art, especially to the popular graphic arts such as Japanese ukiyo-e, European engravings, and early American newspaper comics.

Like many early 20th century Sunday strips, each Maakies comic usually includes a second, smaller strip (known as a "topper") that runs along the bottom of the main strip. Tiny landscape drawings are interspersed between the panels of these strips. Also, a tugboat (referred to once as "the enigmatic Maakies tug") appears somewhere in the background of virtually every strip.

Meaning of the title

Millionaire has given differing accounts of the origin and meaning of the word "maakies." "Maak" is the name of a character in the strip, a ship's captain who apparently is Uncle Gabby's employer, and in one sense the strip seems to be named after him. Discussing the strip's development, Millionaire said "I fleshed them [the characters] out as best I could at the time, knowing that they'd grow over time. That's why I didn't call the strip Drinky Crow. I called it Maakies because I didn't know who would become the most important character as I went along."

However, on more than one occasion he has claimed that the true significance of the strip's name is a strict secret: "I can't release that information until a certain person dies... Because he or she would be extremely pissed off to even know that that name was being used."

Elsewhere he has attributed the origin of the word to his friend Spike Vrusho: "Some of the tugboats in New York harbor have a big M painted on the side of them and my friend Spike Vrusho used to say "MAAKIES!" in a high pitched screech every time he saw one."

Dr. Terrence Ross

Terrence Ross is a real-life friend of Tony Millionaire from Fort Greene who frequently appears as a character in Maakies. In the strip he is drawn as a mechanical lizard who wears a black cloak and hat and has the number '147' imprinted on his forehead; he claims this is his IQ. Sometimes he delivers a monologue or reads a poem of his own composition. Other times he introduces one of his sinister or bizarre trademarked inventions, such as a "safety harness" that ejects the wearer's spinal column from their body using a cherry bomb and M-80s. The book collection Premillennial Maakies is dedicated to "Terry Ross".

Terrence Ross also operates a blog called "Woe of Cartoons" www.bombzbomb.com which is connected to a link on the www.maakies.com home page.

Guest cartoonists

Numerous episodes of Maakies have been drawn (and possibly written) by cartoonists other than Millionaire. The most frequent "guest cartoonist" is Millionaire's nephew Curtis Sarkin, who drew the strip in a child's unsteady scrawl; his daughter and nieces have also made occasional contributions. One Maakies strip reprinted, in the original German, four panels of an illustrated poem by Wilhelm Busch dated 1867 and featuring the accidental demise of Hans Huckebein, an inebriated, Drinky Crow-like bird; in another, Millionaire illustrated a poem about the sea written by M Otis Beard, and dated it a century prior to the actual date on which the poem was penned. On another occasion, after Millionaire had drawn a comic featuring a stereotypical Native American character, Maakies ran a "rebuttal" strip by Tania Willard of the Secwepemc Nation lambasting Millionaire, his characters, and his editor.

A pair of Maakies strips are purportedly drawn by Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby (who passed out in the middle of drawing his).

Other cartoonists who have drawn Maakies:

Book collections

All the Maakies collections are published by Fantagraphics Books and designed by Chip Kidd. All but the first of the books are hardcover, printed in an unusual 12" x 5" format that preserves the dimensions of Millionaire's original drawings.

With the exception of the first collection and its hardcover reprint, the title of each of the Maakies books refers to a classic children's book – A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner and When We Were Very Young, Heinrich Hoffman's Der Struwwelpeter, Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann and Andy and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House On The Prairie.

Related works

The characters of Uncle Gabby and Mr. Crow in Millionaire's Sock Monkey comics and books are loosely connected to their Maakies counterparts. They make occasional appearances in the weekly strip.

A horsefly named Billy Hazelnuts appeared in an early Maakies strip. However, this character is unrelated to the titular character in Millionaire's 2006 graphic novel Billy Hazelnuts.

The tiny 4" x 4" hardcover book Mighty Mite The Ear Mite (2003, Fantagraphics Books) is based on recurring characters in Maakies.

Millionaire has occasionally drawn X-rated adaptations of his familiar Maakies characters (e.g. "Shtuppi Eisberg, the Libidinous Penguin" instead of Drinky Crow) for Screw, Legal Action Comics and other explicit venues.

Animation

Several short Maakies Flash animations were shown on Saturday Night Live in the late 1990s. Several more animations were produced but never broadcast. All of the Maakies Flash animations are included on the DVD collection God Hates Cartoons, published by Bright Red Rocket.

A Maakies short bridges the two-halves of the 2002 They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic.

An animated Television pilot for The Drinky Crow Show, based on the Maakies characters, premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on May 13, 2007. Dino Stamatopoulos provided the voice of the titular character, and They Might Be Giants performed the show's theme song. The show premiered on Adult Swim on November 23, 2008 and it ended on January 25, 2009. The cancellation of the show was confirmed by a Maakies comic.