The following is an interview with MK Reed and Jonathan Hill regarding the recent release of the horticultural fantasy series, Budding Crisis, through ComiXology Originals. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Reed and Hill about their shared creative process in bringing the story to life on the page, how this particular story changed their approach to the developmental process, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on the recent launch of Budding Crisis! For those who may be unfamiliar, what can you share with us about horticultural fantasy series?
MK Reed: It’s about a world where magic seeds have granted wishes for hundreds of years, but the seeds are going extinct. The issues are each self-contained stories looking at that world and how people respond to the news that they’re going to run out of magic.
BD: As longtime collaborators, your work on graphic novels like Americus and Science Comics: Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology, and Climate has infused educational themes and content for middle grade and young adult readers. How would you describe your shared creative process in weaving similar themes into this story and bringing it to life on the page?
Jonathan Hill: Well, this is a very different kind of story than the previous published books we’ve made together, but those other projects and our years of knowing each other have built this wonderful relationship built on trust – trust that we both have the best interest of the story in mind. We riff and build off each other, and we know that when we hand something off or someone adds to what we have, it’s going to make the story better.
The thing I love most about working with MK is that the final product isn’t whatever I had in mind when I was going into it – it’s better. We make it better together.
MKR: Yeah, I think early on in our first book I started trying to do as much as I could for Jonathan, so I’d do thumbnails of what I thought layouts should be. I think by the point we got to the third chapter I stopped, because I’d figure something out and he’d do something better every time. I usually have a rule to keep it to 6 panels max per page for the artist, and Jonathan will chop that up into 8 or 9 panels pretty regularly. And it’s always better for it!
BD: Jonathan, as both an artist and educator, you are consistently demonstrating to readers and students alike the narrative potential of comics. When tackling a project like Budding Crisis, was there anything that guided or propelled your approach to the style and tone of the artwork?
JH: When you’re learning how to do something, everything is new. Everything is an opportunity to learn and to experiment and to try something out and see what works. It’s such a beautiful process and I don’t think we appreciate it when we’re going through it. We all just immediately want to be good at the thing we’re learning. The flip side of that is when you’ve mastered the thing, it’s harder to find time to experiment and to play like you used to.
I absolutely love my job and the books I’ve made, especially the ones I’ve written and drawn myself, but I definitely have fallen into that latter category. Something that people don’t talk about is that when something like this becomes your job, it’s just like any job – a lot of the time you just roll your sleeves up and do it. I’m okay with that, but I don’t draw for fun any more. I don’t experiment. It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to do this work, but I won’t lie and say it hasn’t changed my relationship with making comics.
Budding Crisis provided an opportunity in the drawing to do something different from what I normally do and let me play an experiment again. I’ve approached it much differently. I wanted it to be looser and more organic. I don’t use any rulers, I’m not fussing about things being perfect. You won’t find a straight line in the whole series. But the storytelling is still there. The expressions in the characters, the details in the backgrounds. It’s also been so wonderful to get to work with my dear friends and bring this story to life, but also be able to take all those years of experience of making comics and get to play with the work again.
I also want to make sure I give a huge shout-out to our colorist, Allie Drake. She’s a former student of mine, and the two of us just finished up my upcoming middle grade book before we started Budding Crisis. With a different type of story and art style, the approach to the coloring has had to be completely different, but she’s really done an amazing job and created a look that makes my linework sing while also serving the themes of the story. It’s perfect.
BD: What makes ComiXology Originals the perfect home for this series?
MKR: Once we got greenlit, it’s been complete creative control on our end. I still have an editor, but they’re not trying to fit the book into a line or make it more marketable, they’re working to make the story as strong as it can be. There’s also something really cool about the accessibility of the book online. I love bookstores and comic shops and will support them forever, but if I meet someone who’s not a big reader, I can share the link, they can see what I’m talking about in 3 seconds.
JH: Like MK mentioned, the creative control and accessibility of the platform. Mainstream publishing where I normally work can have so much red tape and if something doesn’t fit into what a marketing team sees as the trends, it can be hard to get a project picked up by acquisitions. I love that we have free reign to make the book we want to make, from the story to the pages to the design. It’s all in our hands! I love it.
BD: Are there any additional projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
JH: Yes! It’s a busy year for me! I have an upcoming middle reader graphic novel coming out in April – Lizard Boy 2 – which is a sequel to my last book, Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy (Walker Books US). The first book was my weirdest book, but also my most personal, and I’m excited to get to expand on that world and those themes in the sequel.
MKR: None I can talk about yet!
BD: Lastly, what is the best way for our readers to find more information about Budding Crisis and your other work?
MKR: I’m on Bluesky at mkreed.bsky.social, and my personal website is mkreed.com.
JH: For now, I’m on Instagram and Bluesky (@oneofthejohns), and you can always see news and updates about my projects on my website: http://www.oneofthejohns.com.
