(Tony Millionaire reads at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery tomorrow night at 6 pm. The reading is free.)

You probably know Tony Millionaire from his comic strip Maakies. And while Millionaire does brilliant work within the constraints of a canvas that could be covered up entirely by an adult's hand—I've vivisected Maakies strips in the past to figure out how they work—you can't help but be drawn to Millionaire's work when it appears in a larger scale. Fantagraphics is publishing a new Tony Millionaire volume called Sock Monkey Treasury, and it collects work that was originally intended for (and published in) comic book-sized publications.

With a little room to breathe, Millionaire's artwork becomes more generous, more breathtaking. Without being crammed into a tiny box, Millionaire allows the lines to open up and breathe, to accept white space as a partner to the scratchy ink. It's a little like walking out of a cramped coat room and into the beautiful grandness of a well-maintained train station. This is how the stories in the Treasury strike you. The first panel of each of the stories depicts a beautiful large Victorian house, which we approach in the next few panels. In the first story in the book, the protagonist, a realistically drawn sock monkey, is walking through the interior of the stately house, and he runs into a detailed model ship, knocking it over. The tiny sailors on the ship are understandably agitated by this, and so they fire a tiny cannon at the sock monkey, who exclaims "GADZOOKS!" and runs upstairs to visit his friend, a stuffed crow.

It's all so timeless and beautiful that you're swept back to books with this kind of meticulous craftsmanship and stilted dialogue—the sorts of storybooks that feel as aimed toward adults as they do children, like Raggedy Ann and Andy. And you probably start to think you could buy the book as a gift for a child in your life, to give them something that they'll always remember.

And then the sock monkey becomes overcome with guilt and cuts its own face open to ease the pain. Or a robin eats a tiny insect that's pleading for its life all the way down its gullet. Or a blue jay gets hit in the back of the head, breaking its neck. These stories all take turns down painfully dark (but impeccably illustrated) paths, with booze and murder and vanity striking characters down right and left. Then, at the beginning of the next episode, all the pieces are set right again, brought back to life and cleaned up, and we see an establishing shot of a beautiful Victorian mansion, and we hope that maybe everything will somehow be different this time. These stories are not for children, but they're stories about childhood, and about how we lose our innocence again and again and again, a thousand times over, before we lose our innocence again for the final time. To hell with the kids; I'm keeping this picture book for myself.