Billy Hazelnuts

Plenty of graphic novelists have attempted to capture the freewheeling spirit of the old adventure strips. Most sabotage themselves in their determination to demonstrate their cleverness and assure the audience that it's all a joke; they're too self-conscious to abandon themselves fully to the whimsy of the genre. In BILLY HAZELNUTS, Tony Millionaire not only abandons such self-consciousness but abandons sanity itself in pursuit of the weird and woolly. The totality of his devotion adds the strength of sincerity to the book. His few winks from beyond the Fourth Wall are subtle and impish and are integrated naturally into the plot. Indeed, natural plotting is one of the book's distinguishing qualities: Millionaire has a delicate grasp of visual pacing; he always seems to know exactly how many panels should cover a page and how much action and dialogue each panel should contain. Although these layouts are not ostentatiously experimental in format, their unfussy precision is compelling. The story, too, has an air of quiet, folkloric melancholy, with the titular gnome chasing the moon over the hills in fear that it has fallen from the sky. But the book does a good deal more than just capitalizing on the resonances of its genre tropes. BILLY HAZELNUTS is not a slavish imitation of the old comics, but the scale and strangeness of its innovation capture their atmosphere with unusual acuity. The frequent plot twists are unpredictable, constantly confronting the reader with escalating absurdity, yet each feels wholly organic. Its wonders have an amorphous, dreamlike continuity. Whether mice are constructing a golem out of suet or a girl genius is riding her rocking-horse across a celestial junkyard full of broken planets, there's never a whiff of contrivance about the proceedings. Even the deliberately stilted dialogue rolls nicely off the tongue. This easy and complete suspension of disbelief results from Millionaire's emphasis on the macabre over the cute. After all, our most enduring fairy tales are often the darkest in their underpinnings. The Brothers Grimm never pulled any punches, and nor does Tony Millionaire. BILLY HAZELNUTS contains all manner of death and destruction. The fact that most of the violence is comical - as when Billy chases a cat with a meat grinder or holds a cannon in each hand like a pistol - does not lesson its impact. But the book is tastefully illustrated with a minimum of visible gore. Millionaire's fine-lined, somewhat frenzied style perfectly fleshes out the warped atmosphere of the book -- its hulking Southern estates and teetering steampunk machinery. (I'm restraining myself from calling it "Burtonesque", because the analogy is too obvious but only superficially accurate. Tony Millionaire is Tony Millionaire-esque, and that's the end of the matter.) Despite the plastic appearance of his shapes, careful consideration is obvious in every composition. The designs for a crew of robot pirates are

Odd, creative and challenging this book challenges convention. It is an enjoyable read even if it is not quit up to the standard of Sock Monkey.

Wow, I'd heard of Tony Millionaire, but never seen any of his stuff until I picked this up the other day. All I can say is don't be put off by his reputation for comic book ribaldry. This is a great weird story that I'm definitely going to be reading to my as-yet-unborn child when she turns around seven or eight. Which also happens to be roughly the age of Becky, a pigtailed little girl who lives in a ramshackle mansion where she's built a strange contraption to view distant planets. Downstairs, her mother's campaign against the kitchen mice leads the little creatures to construct a kind of garbage-based golem to be their champion. When the mother counters this construct with a housecat, it is Becky who tracks the creature down, heals his wounds with honey and gives him hazelnuts for eyes and a proper name. The ornery little creature and Becky are soon enmeshed in a series of surreal adventures, sparked by a tedious little boy named Eugene. One hesitates to reveal too much of what follows, but just to give a taste: clockwork alligator pirates, seeing-eye skunk, mad scientist, matter enlarger, Noah's Ark, a whale, a rousing sea battle, and a planetary junkyard all come into play. It's a wonderfully inventive weird story, filled with great lines. For example, Billy stands on the back of a motorized rocking horse, yelling defiance at pursuers: "I'm a barrelful of hate! Come open me up!" Or a villain coolly considers the wreckage wrought by Billy: "Hmmm... The little fellow is tougher than he looks... a regular brass cupcake!" Or my favorite line of all: "The guy we have to worry about is that skeleton-robot I made from the meat grinder when I was insane..." This strays into some pretty dark stuff, and as one reviewer very correctly points out, follows the "marchen" (German folktale) template in many ways (marchen are typically characterized by elements of magic or the supernatural, such as the endowment of a mortal character with special powers or knowledge), and the artwork definitely fits the tone. One of the reasons I'd never checked out any of Millionaire's work before is because I just wasn't into his rather crude style of drawing. I tend to like clean, crisp work, and his stuff made me think of the Katzenjammer Kids or something like that. However, it totally works in this story. One kind of strange thing is that none of the characters have pupils, Becky has solid black eyes, and everyone else has solid white eyes, or else glasses that cover their eyes. Not sure if this is a tribute to Harold Gray (of Little Orphan Annie fame), or what, but it definitely adds to the overall mood. Some may find this is too dark or weird for their taste (although it pales in both respects next to the original Grimm stories and Dr. Suess), but don't be fooled -- it's a modern classic.

I read Maakies every week. I don't love it every week, but I read it every week. Sometimes it is brillant, other times the humor is weak but the art normally makes it worth checking out. Billy Hazelnuts, however, is pure gung-ho awesomeness. The story is fast paced, bizzare, beautifully drawn and highly entertaining. If I have a complaint, it is only that it is too short (I mean that in both senses). The story begins in the cramped mose holes of an old house but quickly balloons into an expansive world of alligator machines, crashing planets and smelling-eye skunks. Great for children or adults. Give it a whirl.

"Billy Hazelnuts" is the sort of book one can recommend to anyone without hesitation. That is all I really need to say. But I will go further: While Millionaire's notorious (and acclaimed!) ornate-yet-vulgar weekly strip "Maakies" may not be everyone's cup of tea for the sake of matters of propriety, I have yet to meet anyone who can encounter his wholly accessible yet equally whimsical "Sock Monkey" and not recognize genius, heart, and innovation. Likewise, I cannot imagine "Billy Hazelnuts" will do anything less than expand Millionaire's acclaim into far wider circles, finding itself nestled on children's shelves between A. A. Milne and Peggy Parish as well as on the bedside tables of readers marked by more advanced years. Milne's influence is clear, as is the light-hearted cheer of Mark Twain (who, along with Shakespeare, Herman Melville, and Julia Ward Howe, is thanked before the story begins). In regards to the influence of the Hundred Acre Wood and "children's literature," Millionaire has openly sung the praises of Ernest Shepard, as well as the beloved Beatrix Potter. It is therefore no surprise to feel their spirits hovering around each page. "Billy Hazelnuts" is a story in the spirit of revered children's books that never talks down to its audience or loses the interest of older readers. One would imagine this to be a difficult tightrope to walk, but Millionaire does it effortlessly again and again. Millionaire's art and roaming story also call to mind the so-called "glory days" of comics, when the full-color escapades of Little Nemo, etc. actually drove the sales of the papers that contained them. Millionaire's work manages to feel modern while still reaching to that era, to feel self-aware yet comfortable with itself instead of ironic. It is almost as if Al Capp had decided to cut out the politics and just write about Shmoos - "Billy Hazelnuts" is engrossing and honest. The story depicts a child scientist named Becky whose love of the starry sky leads her to build fantastic inventions in order to better view her beloved stretch of space. She resides with her mother on a farm populated by mischievous mice, and finds herself the object of a young poet's affection. But after attempting to tolerate his courting presence for the sake of her mother, she spurns the affections of said wordsmith Eugene while dealing with the mounting crisis of a maddened and misguided garbage golem named Billy who was assembled and enchanted (with little fanfare) by the mice of Becky's house. Billy's head filled with houseflies is emptied by the girl, and his new eyes become a pair of hazelnuts. Then, it's off to a rollicking and captivating adventure involving a hunt for the moon and a battle with a ship of automatons whose existence traces its roots to the spurning of Eugene. The dialogue is classic Millionaire, as the thieving mice declare "Have you tried this 'Swiss' cheese?" & "Why, the holes are as good as the cheese." It is nigh-impossible to