Sequential State – the comics criticism archive of Alex Hoffman

Category: Features

  • Kickstarter Feature #2: New South, Hymn, Sparkplug

    Hi everyone! Good to be back up and running. I took a break last week to focus on studies for a big certification test. I tested on Wednesday, and I’ll know the results in 2 months.  Meanwhile, some interesting projects have hit the crowd funding sites, and I figured I would point a few out…

  • Review: Dear Amanda by Cathy G. Johnson One of the great joys of SPX for me this year (despite not getting to be there) was to see great cartoonists be recognized through the Ignatz Awards. Cathy G. Johnson is the winner of this year’s Promising New Talent Ignatz award on a slate of really great…

  • Review: Never Forgets by Yumi Sakugawa Yumi Sakugawa took the internet by storm in 2012 with the crushingly adorable I Think I’m In Friend-Love With You, now a book from Adam’s Media, and I’ve been following her work recently, especially since her minicomic Never Forgets was nominated for an Ignatz. Sakugawa’s keen eye for isolation in a social…

  • Review: SF: Liquid Planet Beta-14 by Ryan Cecil Smith Rarely do I use the word “joy” to describe a comic. Certainly there is satisfaction in reading a well-constructed comic, and there’s a certain joy in reading good literature, but rarely are comics joyful. The major exception is Ryan Cecil Smith’s SF series. I featured SF…

  • Taiyo Matsumoto has a penchant for writing stories about children. He examines the world through a child’s eyes, a child’s hopes and dreams, and most importantly a child’s questions. Questions are how Matsumoto starts his latest English release, Sunny, published under Viz’s Sig IKKI line. Not with panoramas or images of far-fetched monsters like his…

  • Review: In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang “Anda’s Game” is a short story collected in a 2007 book by Cory Doctorow titled Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, one of Doctorow’s books published under a creative common’s license. The license encourages remixing and sharing, provided proper credit is given and the same…

  • Pointers #1

    Everyone could use a little more “go and see” in their comics lives. We spend a lot of time wrapped up in what we’re interested in, so sometimes we miss new projects or comics. I thought I’d take a few seconds to point out some things you should have a gander at – new projects,…

  • Manga is a tricky type of comic. There’s a higher barrier to entry due to the flipped pages, cultural cues that may not be easily understood or explained, and there’s a lot of chaff available on the market. It’s hard to know where to start. Sequential State features manga I think are worth the effort…

  • It’s hard to believe that SPX is only three weeks away! There are a lot of interesting books that are going to be debuting this Fall, and although I’m not going to be able to go to spx this year, here’s what I think you should look for (and what I’ll be looking to grab…

  • Review: New Physics by Box Brown I jumped into a lot of comics subscriptions this Spring. I wanted to get an idea of the current small press landscape, I wanted to push my own boundaries as a reader, and I wanted to read work from people I hadn’t seen before. One of those subscriptions is Yeah Dude…

  • Review: It Never Happened Again by Sam Alden Earlier this year I did a review/thoughts piece on Sam’s Wicked Chicken Queen from Retrofit. I was thoroughly impressed with Alden’s mastery of graphite and the thoughtfulness of the book. Uncivilized Press has recently released a book with two collected stories, “Hawaii 1997” and “Anime,” the first…