SATA

PERSONAL

Born 1981; married.

EDUCATION:

Savannah College of Art & Design, graduate, 2003.

ADDRESS

• Home - Portland, OR.
• Agent - Alex Slater, Trident Media Group, LLC, 355 Lexington Ave., Floor 12, New York, NY 10017.

CAREER

Cartoonist, illustrator, and educator. Asian Reporter, staff illustrator, 2007—; has done graphics and illustration work for the Portland Trailblazers, the Viet Nam Literature Project, the Inlander, Fantagraphics Books, Dark Horse Comics, Tor.com, Believer, Literary Arts, and Powell’s City of Books. Taught comics and illustration classes for youth programs, Oregon College of Art and Craft, 2010-18; Writer in Residence, Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program, 2012-16; associate professor, Illustration Department, Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2014-21. Serves on the Board of Directors of Literary Arts; chairs the Youth Programs Advisory Council.

AWARDS:

NAIBA’s Carla Cohen Free Speech award, 2012, for Americus.

WRITINGS

• ILLUSTRATOR
• Odessa (graphic novel), Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group, LLC (Portland, OR), 2020
• MK Reed, Americus (graphic novel), First Second Publishers, (New York, NY), 2011
• MK Reed, Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology, and Climate (graphic nonfiction), First Second Publishers, (New York, NY), 2019
• ,

SIDELIGHTS

Jonathan Hill is a cartoonist, illustrator, and educator living in Portland, Oregon. A 2003 graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design, Hill has worked in graphics and illustration for a number of clients, including publishing houses, public institutions, and the Portland Trailblazers. He has also taught comics and visual narrative at the Oregon College of Art and Craft and other venues. Hill is the writer and author of the 2020 graphic novel Odessa, which deals with life after a fictional earthquake along the Cascadia fault line. Prior to that, he worked with writer MK Reed as the illustrator on the 2011 graphic novel Americus dealing with the banning of a fantasy book series in small town. That work won the 2012 NAIBA Carla Cohen Free Speech award. Again working with Reed, Hill served as illustrator on the science graphic book Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology, and Climate.

 

Americus is, as Hill explained to a contributor in the online Geek Dad, “a coming-of-age story about this boy in a small imaginary town in Oklahoma.” Hill further noted: “His best friend has to move away, and his favorite book series is being challenged in the library. The events were meant to parallel some of the book challenges that were happening at the time, specifically against the Harry Potter series. The character comes into his own defending this thing that he loves.” Writing on the School Library Journal blog, Snow Wildsmith praised Hill’s artwork for this title, commenting: “This may be Hill’s first graphic novel, but he’s a strong artist right out of the gate. He uses simple black lines to build a world which is cartoonish enough to be friendly and appealing, but detailed enough to be believable. Even though there isn’t much shading, the scene elements are nicely layered so that they do not get lost within each other. And his characters’ faces, though basic (eyes are just dots or circles), show a wide range of emotions.” Wildsmith added: “Reed and Hill aren’t likely to change any minds, but they’ve crafted an enjoyable enough look at one side of a decisive issue.” Similarly, an online Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “In this charming tale, Reed and Hill offer a lovely valentine to readers and, especially, to librarians.” The reviewer added: “Hill’s black and white illustrations, full of clean, bold lines, fill the tale with a sense of drama and action, even when the characters are reading silently.”

In Odessa, Hill deals with a topic much on the mind of those who live along the Pacific Northwest Coast: the Big One; the massive earthquake that scientists say will ultimately hit the Cascadia fault line. This graphic novel, featuring the Vietnamese American teen Virginia “Ginny” Crane, takes place eight years after that earthquake struck, tumbling cities up and down the West Coast and altering the landscape. An even more significant change came for Ginny: her mother left the family never to return. Ginny is now turning eighteen and she has gotten used to her new life without a mother. She aids her father, Gregory, in taking care of her younger brothers, Wes and Harry. This post-earthquake world is a strange jumble of things: cell phones no longer work, but scanners are used by the mail delivery people to check the DNA of the recipient. There is no longer a divide between the North and the South in the country, but instead there is now a division between East and West. Gangs roam the devastated landscape and a new plant has created cannibals. Then comes Ginny’s eighteenth birthday and the arrival of a birthday package from her estranged mother. It is the first contact Ginny has had with her in eight years. Suddenly she is struck with the desire to find her mother and to discover what happened to her. Ginny sets out for San Francisco, accompanied by her two brothers who manage to tag along, hoping to find Odessa, her mother. In San Francisco, they manage to find their maternal uncle, but her journey is complicated with sibling rivalry battles as well as real ones with competing gangs. Ginny is aided in this search by reconnecting with old friends along the way, one of them a girl who still has a crush on Ginny. Still, San Francisco is a corrupt and dangerous city, rife with gang warfare. As she continues her search, Ginny is ultimately caught up in betrayal and murder and must find new levels of resilience in herself to continue the search.

A Kirkus Reviews critic termed Odessa a “gritty, raw page-turner.” The critic added: “Rendered in a deceptively innocent combination of black and bubble-gum pink, panels are expertly placed to use linework and sequencing to strengthen the emotion and humor of the story. … Snarky humor, mostly from the more cartoonishly rendered younger brothers, provides a counterpoint to the action-packed graphic violence and gore.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer also had praise for the graphic novel, commenting: “Hill fully realizes the destroyed world in two-toned art, and packed layouts deliver consistently strong, emotive reactions from the cast.” The reviewer went on to conclude: “Ginny’s skillfully laid transformation as she bonds with her brothers is an impactful contrast to the harsh, sometimes unforgiving world in this powerful graphic novel.”

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2020, review of Odessa.

• Publishers Weekly, October 19, 2020, review of Odessa, p. 71.

ONLINE

• Geek Dad, https://geekdad.com/ (March 12, 2020), “Ignatz-Nominated Cartoonist Jonathan Hill Discusses Newest Work: ‘Odessa’.”

• Jonathan Hill website, https://www.oneofthejohns.com (February 3, 2021).

• Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (August 1, 2011), review of Americus.

• School Library Journal blog, https://blogs.slj.com/ (September 21, 2011), Snow Wildsmith, review of Americus.*