For more information about each book (or to order them individually), click the titles below.

Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird

Billy Hazelnuts is back for the first time since his acclaimed 2006 Eisner Award-winning debut. Life has settled back to normal in the old house. Becky and her mom are getting used to having Billy around, as he performs various household chores, utilizing his amazing strength. Nothing could be better, aside from a jumpy relationship with the cat. Until one day Billy hears screeching in the back yard and runs out to find a very large owl attacking his housemate. “I hate that cat, but it’s OUR CAT!” yells Billy, and chases the owl off.

Billy soon discovers that the owl he has just scared off has left an egg in his nest. When the egg hatches, it’s up to Billy to reunite the baby owl with his mother, and the two head off into the deep, deep woods in search of her. The resulting adventure is a crazy potion of all-ages fun, humor, thrills and chills like only Tony Millionaire is capable of.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 11-page PDF excerpt (1.1 MB).

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Billy Hazelnuts

Tony Millionaire, creator of Sock Monkey and one of America's most popular weekly comic strips, Maakies, delivers his first original graphic novel for Fantagraphics, Billy Hazelnuts. Billy Hazelnuts transmutes nursery rhymes and the golem myth into a storybook about Becky, girl scientist, her friend Billy Hazelnuts (who was created from cooking ingredients by tailless mice), and their journey to find the missing moon while battling an evil steam-driven alligator with a seeing-eye skunk. Millionaire fuses the darker spirit of older fairy tales with an absurdist adventure story, throws gender politics into the mix, and brings it to life with his dementedly charming and meticulous drawing style that is utterly transporting. Billy Hazelnuts features all-new characters, a first for Millionaire after building a tremendous following for his Sock Monkey and Maakies characters, which is sure to delight existing fans as well as introduce an entirely new audience to his breathtaking line and imagination.

Download and read a 10-page PDF excerpt (2.3 MB).

2007 Eisner Award WINNER: Best Writer/Artist — Humor

2007 Eisner Award Nominee: Best Graphic Album — New

2007 Harvey Award Nominee: Best Graphic Album — Original

Winner, Outstanding Artist, 2006 Ignatz Awards

Praise for Billy Hazelnuts Vol. 1 and Tony Millionaire:

"...evokes the anything-goes child-logic found in darker fairy tales and the Oz stories with a pinch of Lewis Carroll thrown in for the sheer bizarreness of it all. Millionaire sweeps the reader along with the protagonists through encounters with a seeing-eye skunk, a search for where the moon disappeared to and a blistering sea battle between a matter-expanded toy replica of Noah’s Ark — complete with two-by-two animals at the helm — and a flying pirate ship crewed by robotic buccaneer alligators." – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Drawing in his established manner, with blocky, medieval-woodcut-like figures in action against intricate, frequently gorgeous land-, sea-, and cloudscapes, Millionaire fashions a tale as disquieting-comforting and psychologically ambiguous as anything the Grimms ever recorded." – Booklist

"Like Joe Strummer, like Prince Buster and more grandly, John Wayne, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll, some aliases simply announce the true personality and imaginative potential of the bearer. Tony Millionaire is no exception..." – Elvis Costello

"Tony Millionaire is making misanthropy feel good again. Take this book for instance. He put the word 'hazelnuts' in the title, knowing that my son is deathly allergic to them, and I still think it's funny." – Andy Richter

"Tony Millionaire is worth a thousand Tony Thousandaires. He's concocted a crazy potion with this mixture of Maakies and Sock Monkey." – Conan O'Brien

"I think Tony Millionaire can only do important things." – Dave Eggers

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