Photo by Amani Sodiq.
If you told 18-year-old Travis Hill that he’d become a professional basketball player, he definitely would’ve believed you. The 6-foot guard played four years of college hoops at Centenary College of Louisiana and received offers to continue his career overseas and for the NBA’s D-League, now called the G-League.
If you told him he’d wind up teaching theology at the seminary, he wouldn’t have been surprised either. In fact, Hill is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas for theological studies.
But that’s not what pays the bills.
If you told 18-year-old Travis Hill that he’d be writing comic books for a living, he would’ve said that’s crazy.
Well, things got crazy.
In Hill’s post-college years, he was living in Shreveport, Louisiana with a close friend. The two devoted time to hosting students from their church as part of a mentorship program.
“One of the kids showed up one night and said, ‘Hey, my dad kicked me out. I can’t come back. Can I live with you?’”
The student was a 16-year-old junior in high school.
“Initially, we tried to figure out ways to get him back into his house,” Hill says. “But after enough conversations, it was very clear that he’s not coming back.”
Hill took in the student, who ended up staying through his high school term.
“We spent this two-year time period living together,” he says. “We found family, fun, but also sometimes awkward learning experiences, being more honest about where I lived and how things operated. He’s in the Navy now, he’s doing really well for himself and I consider him a friend.”
Hill’s time with the student ended about as well as it could’ve, but the situation remained on his conscience.
“I was reflecting on this two-year period of my life that was super meaningful and I think has something to say to the world,” he says. “It’s not something you write down in a theology paper or wax eloquent about. It’s something that you offer as a story that people can engage with, get lost in and join the characters on a journey.”
The seed was firmly planted in Hill’s mind, but he was still unsure how to cultivate it.
“I’m a lifelong comic book reader,” he says. “Since my grandmother put my first Batman comic in my hands when I was six. It was just an inkling of an idea. What if I wrote a comic?”
The idea first began to take shape in 2016.
“I wanted to take a shot at it, but I also didn’t know the first thing about writing a comic,” he says. “So I just looked up ‘comic writing courses.’ There’s gotta be some sort of basic intro writing course in Dallas. There wasn’t.”
It was a setback, but Hill continued to search.
“New York has a million every weekend,” he discovered. “I saw one where the person teaching the course was Tom Brennan, who was the assistant editor of The Amazing Spider-Man at the time.”
It felt right to Hill, so he took his then-girlfriend, now-wife, on a weekend trip to New York City. Hill attributes most of his basic understanding of the creative medium to this initial class.
“I love the comic book medium, I want to explore it and this idea is coming to me at the same time,” Hill explains. “All these things are just converging.”
Eager to dive in, he took his concept to his film and theology professor, who connected him with Mark Pate, a comic artist who studied in the same masters program as Hill.
Hill and Pate met for coffee and learned that they lived directly across the street from each other, and began meeting weekly to work on the project.
Soon, the two outlined the full plot and structured it through twelve chapters/issues. Titled Mustard Seed, Hill released the first issue of the passion project digitally while the rest remains in production.
In the midst of the Mustard Seed development, Hill built his portfolio by writing small indie comics for whoever would take them. He continued his collaboration with Pate through a series called Thorn for Advent Comics. Today, he works full-time at Sequential Potential Comics, a publishing company that specializes in explaining scientific research through the comic medium.
If you told present-day Travis Hill that he makes a living as a comic book writer, he’d still think it’s crazy. It was crazy when he took in the student at his home, it was crazy when he flew to New York City to spontaneously learn the medium.
Throughout all the craziness, Hill remained steadfast in his ambition. Just like the old parable, you could say he had the faith of a mustard seed.
