Joamette Gil (born January 26, 1989, in Miami, FL) is a Cuban-American cartoonist and freelancer living in Olympia, WA, best known for her on-going urban fantasy webcomic Blackbirds. Social inequality and self-empowerment are the major themes throughout her body of work.
Life and Early Career
Gil was born on January 26, 1989, to a family of Cuban exiles in Miami, FL, the heart of the Cuban diaspora. She grew up speaking English and Spanish, and comes from a mixed-race family. Her awareness of the social tensions between ethnic groups in South Florida coupled with her love for animation and fantasy galvanized her interest in cartooning and storytelling by the age of 12.
After graduating from the School for Advanced Studies (North Campus) in 2007, she briefly attended the Savannah College of Art and Design (GA) before transfering to the Evergreen State College (WA) and attaining a Bachelor of Arts in Multicultural Psychology in 2010. She is a primarily self-taught cartoonist honing her craft through (as of yet) unpublished mini-comics.
She became involved in the comics industry soon afterward, working as a freelance artist, letterer, and eventually editor for DUSK Comics, an independent publisher based in Texas. To date, her artwork can be found in the flagship title DUSK Volume 3; her lettering can be seen in DUSK Volumes 2 and 3 as well as the forthcoming The Trials and Tribulations of Miss Tilney.
She launched her urban science fantasy webcomic Blackbirds (on-going) in November of 2010. In the months to come, she would also found the Olympia Comics Collective, a group for cartoonists, artists, and comics writers local to Olympia, WA, to network, collaborate, and promote the comics medium. Since its inception, the collective has published two anthologies with a third on the way. The layout and editing for both was done by Gil.
Her first work with a major publisher was the anthology piece "Margarite and Leopold" in Womanthology: Heroic (IDW), which debuted in March 2012. The six-page story was scripted by Gil and illustrated by Katie Shanahan.