Sequential State – the comics criticism archive of Alex Hoffman

Month: June 2016

  • Thoughts on Josh Cotter’s Skyscrapers of the Midwest Cotter’s most recent project is Nod Away, the first of what is expected to be a many-volume series. I picked up Skyscrapers of the Midwest and Driven by Lemons as an introduction to his work, prior to reading Nod Away. The collection is a dense hardcover with…

  • Review: Leaf by Daishu Ma Sentence transitions and paragraph structure are feeling extremely difficult right now. I’ve been kicking around some thoughts about the Fantagraphics book Leaf, which was published last year at the tail end of the publishing season.  So, I guess, a review in bullets: There’s something to be said about the range…

  • Review: To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts, vol. 1, by Maybe There’s something intoxicating about dark fantasy. The most popular manga in the USA is Attack on Titan, a dark fantasy giant zombie title I haven’t kept up with (I did review the first volume a long time ago in another life, review forthcoming?).  To The…

  • Review: Handbook by Kevin Budnik Kevin Budnik’s Handbook is a mixed narrative, one of anxiety and disordered eating, and another of relationships in a post-recovery world. In a 2×2 grid that I’ve come to associate with Budnik’s autobiographical work, we see him navigate the present as he contends with a past that is part ghost,…

  • Sequential Statement #10 – Back in Orbit

    Sequential Statement #10 – Back in Orbit

    Episode #10: Back in Orbit Alex and Nick talk about Alex’s recent trip to the Toronto Comics Arts Festival in Toronto, ON. We chat about the last month’s lost episode, Captain America: Civil War, and the recent Captain America/Hydra comic and the resulting fallout. Reviews of: Dimension W #1 by Yuji Iwahara Hilda and the…

  • Thoughts On The Nostalgia in Mag Hsu & Nao Emoto’s Forget Me Not

    Kodansha USA has been publishing some titles that seem like a hybrid between shonen and shojo romance; Your Lie in April, which I reviewed last year, is up to seven volumes now, and a new release, Forget Me Not, is now up to its second volume with a third scheduled to be released in July.…