Tomer Hanuka

Tomer Hanuka (Hebrew: תומר חנוכה‎‎; born 1974) is an award-winning, New York Times best selling illustrator and cartoonist.
At age twenty-two, Hanuka moved to New York City. Following his graduation from the School of Visual Arts, he quickly became a regular contributor to many national magazines. His clients include Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Spin, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, MTV, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He is the winner of multiple medals from the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Publication Designers as well as American Illustration and Print magazine.
Tomer co-creates Bipolar with his identical twin brother Asaf for Alternative Comics. Bipolar is an experimental comic book series for which Tomer was nominated for the Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards. In 2006, Tomer published The Placebo Man (Alternative Comics), which compiles much of his work from Bipolar. He currently lives in New York City.
A print interview with Tomer Hanuka and his twin brother Asaf appeared in The Comics Interpreter #5 with a cover by Tomer.

Published books

The Divine, 2015

Published in 2015, The Divine is a graphic novel written by Lavie and illustrated by the celebrated twin illustrators Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka. It's the story of Mark, an explosives expert who, despite his better judgment, signs onto a freelance job with his old army friend, Jason. In Quanlom, a fictional Southeast Asian country, the pair are assisting the military when Mark is lured in by a group of child-soldiers, led by 9-year-old twins nicknamed "The Divine", who intent on forcing a showdown between ancient magic and modern technology. The Divine is very loosely inspired by the real story of twins Johnny and Luther Htoo, who jointly led the God's Army guerrilla group – a splinter group of Karen National Union – in Myanmar (Burma) during the late 1990s, and according to legends had magical powers.

The Divine was released in French by Dargaud in January 2015 under the title Le Divin, and received critical praise. Frédéric Potet from Le Monde had labeled it "A combination of Bob Morane [a popular French adventure hero], David Lynch, and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira)". Eric Libiot from L'express compared the coloring in the book (By Tomer Hanuka) to that of Hergé, creator of Tintin. Lysiane Ganousse from L'Est Républicain wrote: "The authors have turned a chilling true story into a stunning tale", and the popular comics critique website, 9emeArt, had given it a rating of 10 out 10, declaring that "Even though it's only January, we can already say it's going to be one of the best releases of the year".

The Divine was published in the U.S. by First Second Books, featuring a blurb by author Yann Martel, best known for the international bestseller Life of Pi. It was released in July 2015 and has hit the New York Times Best Sellers list. It has since received highly positive reviews. Publishers Weekly had chosen The Divine for "top ten graphic novel for spring 2015", describing it later on as: "Heady, hellacious, and phantasmagoric". Jesse Karp on his Booklist review wrote: "Stunning artwork and creeping dread weave together in this satisfying and moving page-turner". Michael Mechanic from Mother Jones called it "beautifully rendered", while io9 defined it as "Your next comics obsession". Rich Barrett from Mental Floss chose it for "The most interesting comics of the week" and praised it for being "stunning, cohesive combination [of elements]". Terry Hong, from The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center blog, wrote: "can’t-turn-away riveting [...] Unrelenting and uninterruptible",and the Eisner nominated comics blog Comics & Cola dubbed it "superb" and chose it for its pick of the month.

The creators were featured in interviews on Entertainment Weekly, Juxtapoz, Paste, The A.V. Club and elsewhere.

Coinciding with the book's release, the gallery exhibit The Art of The Divine opened at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco showcasing original sketches, rough page layouts, script pages, and a series of limited edition prints of art from the book by Tomer Hanuka and Asaf Hanuka. The exhibit was curated by Chris Jalufka of the art focused website Evil Tender.

The Divine is to be published also in Italian, Spanish and German.

OVERKILL, 2011

Publisher: Gingko Press
Overkill is a monograph showcasing Mr. Hanuka's works from the first decade of the 21st century. 130 pages, full color, hard covers. Designed and edited by Anton Ioukhnovets. Overkill was sold out within a few months after its publication and a 2nd edition was published in May 2012

Meathaus S.O.S, 2008

Publisher: Nerdcore
A comics anthology including James Jean, Farel Dalrymple, Brandon Graham, Tomer and Asaf Hanuka, Thomas Herpich, Jim Rugg and Corey Lewis. Editors Brandon Graham, Chris McD and Matt Gagnon. "one of the best comics of the year" - New York Magazine.

Placebo Man (French edition), 2006

Publisher: Actes Sud BD
The Placebo Man collects comics created from 2000-2005 including stories previously published in Bipolar and New Thing. 130 pages, black and white with color covers. "Placebo Man est composé de courts récits au goût étrange, parfois eux-mêmes constitués d’anecdotes gigognes acidulées et poétiques. Des expérimentations narratives publiées dans Bipolar, (...) En héritier d’Alan Moore, Tomer déconstruit les arcanes du rêve américain. " -Mundo BD

The Placebo Man, 2005

Publisher: Alternative Comics
The Placebo Man collects comics created from 2000-2005 including stories previously published in Bipolar and New Thing. 130 pages, black and white with color covers. ‘"Hanuka's raw, illustrative style underscores the tension and awkward fumblings toward meaning and connection that lie seething beneath the stories' surfaces." -The Washington Post.

Bipolar 1–5, 2000–2004

Publisher: Alternative Comics
Co-created by twin artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka. It's a graphic novel which has two parts. Asaf's side features the serializes the story "Pizzeria Kamikaze" (now collected), adapted from a book by Etgar Keret. Tomer's side is short fiction. "Each edition has conducted readers on an excursion through curious environments, full of sights that conjoin the common and the disorienting and of situations that are at once ordinary and unaccountable."

-The Comics Journal.

Cover work

The following is a list of projects Hanuka has created covers for.

BOOKS: The Gigolo Murder (Penguin) The Kiss Murder (Penguin) Hammer (W.W Norton) Marquis De Sade (Penguin) Alive in Necropolis (Riverhead Books) Butterfield 8 (Random House) Appointment is Samara (Random House). The Diving Pool (Random House) Darker Mask (Tor Books) The Possession of Mr Cave (Random House) Fat White Vampire Blues (Ballantine Books) Work Book (2007), Everyone's Burning (Villard ) Shadow Of Doubt,Crime Files. (Scholastic) Body of Evidence, Crime Files. (Scholastic) Fallen Angels (Scholastic) Glory Field (Scholastic) The Beast (Scholastic) Somewhere in the Darkness (Scholastic) The Cubicle Survival Guide (Villard) Kiss Kiss Switch Bitch My Uncle Oswald (Quality Paperback Book Club)

MAGAZINES: BusinessWeek, Wage Wars. The Progressive, recruiting on spring break. The Progressive, the man behind the curtain. Stanford Medical, planet earth is dying. New York Times, summer movies. Mother Jones, nuclear Iraq. New York Times Sunday Magazine, terrorist? New York Times Sunday Magazine, escaping north Korea. New York Times, transportation. New York Times, technology. Kulture Spiegel (Germany), George Clooney is super humane. Deliver, future eagle. Deliver, direct mail. URB, Wu Tang Clan. Promo, everything is going green.

MUSIC: Aesop Rock, Jack White (alternative cover art for Blunderbuss tour singles), Bazooka tooth album cover (music).

COMICS: Wolverine Chop Shop (Marvel Comics); Un-Men, 13 covers for the series (D.C Comics); Midnight Mass Vol I, 12 covers for the series; Midnight Mass vol. 2, 8 covers for the series; Meathaus #3 (Meathaus press); Bipolar #1,2,4 (Alternative Comics); The Big Question (Top Shelf Comics); New Thing: Identity; New Suit Focus, 16 cover for the series (D.C. Comics); The Placebo Man (Alternative Comics).