Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #620068 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Synopsis
Follows the adventures and mischief of Uncle Gabby the sock monkey and his often inebriated fowl friend Drinky Crow.

Customer Reviews

Gadzooks! Stories for grown-up children!
A sock monkey called Uncle Gabby and a stuffed crow named Mr. Crow are the unlikely heroes of these four stories, as they encounter talking ants, shrunken heads, a bat, and toy sailors in model ships. It sounds like the perfect comic for children, but it's not. Apart from the fact that everyone seems to speak as though they were in Victorian England (Uncle Gabby's favourite exclamation seems to be "Gadzooks!"), there is a dark vein running through Millionaire's stories.

Sometimes it is dark humour, but other times it is a bit more sinister, if not disturbing. These two toys share a child's sense of innocence and adventure, but the world in which our heroes live is darker than they realise. They do not understand death or danger. In one story they happily set sail for Borneo, and when the sailors abandon them, Gabby thinks himself capable of steering the ship and so they end up shipwrecked. They are oblivious to this danger, even as they abandon ship and swim to shore, so that it is only the reader who feels concern or shock.

And, amazingly, you do actually care about these stuffed toys. Reading their stories is fun, but tinged with the horror of some of the Grimm fairy tales- the ones that always seem to be missing from, or cleaned up for, children's books. Also like the Brothers Grimm, it would be very wrong to dismiss Millionaire's work as simply for children just because he uses toys and the like as characters. For example, there is a gnome-like creature in the last story- a "trumbernick"- but it forces a naughty blue jay to undergo treatment similar to that of Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" in order to rehabilitate it!

This adult tone is part of the appeal, since it provides the reader with a mixture of naiveté and maturity, and lets the story work on different levels. As an anecdote on the back cover recounts, it can be fun reading the adventures of Sock Monkey to children, but they may interpret it differently: "My youngest daughter asked if the blue jay was happy again, I said that he was. My oldest daughter looked at the panel again and asked, 'Daddy, is the blue jay insane now?' I said that he was."

Dark or innocent? It's up to you. But either way, Millionaire's stories and artwork are striking in their simplicity and in their rich, poetic style, often at the same time. His work should stay with you, somewhere at the back of your mind for a long time, as a testament to the power of his imagination, and the alluring innocence of Uncle Gabby and Mr. Crow.

Marry Tony Millionaire
This is probably one of the best comics ever written. Not only does it contain some of the best art i have ever seen in a comic book, but it also contains some of the most interesting charactors and storys. Allthough I would recomend buying the other sock monkey comics first i would also say that this is a neccesity for any collection. The tales of life, death, love and philosophy told through the medium of 1900's cuddley toy chimps and crows are hilarous and profound. Its not unfair to say that these comics changed my life, and i recomend that you let them change yours.