500 Portraits

Tony Millionaire's gorgeous fountain pen illustrations, which mingle naturalistic detail with strong doses of the fanciful and grotesque, include the famous (Bob Dylan), the infamous (Abu Ghraib soldier/model Lynndie England), the fictional (Yoda), the animal kingdom (a cockroach), and everything in between. Literary figures (Hemingway), literary characters (Don Quixote & Sancho Panza), Hollywood legends (Steven Spielberg), comics icons (Hergé) and historical figures (Hitler) also figure prominently. Millionaire's impeccable line-work resembles that of Johnny Gruelle (creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy; a collection of his work is forthcoming from Fantagraphics), whom he cites as one of his main sources of inspiration, along with Ernest Shepard and "all those freaks from the '20s and '30s who did the newspaper strips."… (more)