Jonathan Lemon

Jonathan Dee Lemon is an English-born American cartoonist and former musician. He is best known for drawing the Alley Oop comic strip.

Lemon speaking at the Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018[1]

Lemon was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England in 1965, and earned an art degree at the University of Brighton.[2]

In 1984 he formed the pop band Jesus Couldn't Drum with guitarist Peter Pengwyn, and occasionally featuring Lester Square from The Monochrome Set.[3] The band went on to record three albums and had modest indie chart success with their third single "I'm a Train".[4] In 2018, the band's back catalog was acquired by Cherry Red Records.[5]

Two years later, Lemon joined The Chrysanthemums along with Alan Jenkins, leader of The Deep Freeze Mice, and Terry Burrows. A psychedelic art pop band with a large cult following almost entirely outside of the UK, they released four albums and four EPs.[6] In 2010, German music magazine MusikExpress placed them at number 23 in their list of the most under-rated bands of all time.[7]

Lemon began working as a cartoonist, first for Poot! Comic, and later relocated to California in 1992 where, as a political cartoonist, his work appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury and the Boston Globe amongst others. He is a member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists[8] and the National Cartoonist Society.[9]

Between 2003-2005 he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras.[10]

His long running comic strip Rabbits Against Magic was nominated for a Silver Reuben Award by the National Cartoonists Society in 2012, 2014, and 2021.[11][12]

In 2019, along with writer Joey Alison Sayers, he took over the drawing duties on the classic comic strip Alley Oop.[13]

His work has been exhibited at the Cartoon Art Museum[14] and the Huntington Beach Arts Center.[15] He has done album artwork for numerous musicians, including Flipper's Guitar, Yukio Yung,[16] and the Thurston Lava Tube. His comic strips are also featured in the 2022 award winning[17] documentary feature film "Jack Has a Plan."[18][19][20]