Sequential State – the comics criticism archive of Alex Hoffman

My 2014 Comics Journey (so far)


Subtitle: How I started reading Asterios Polyp at the same time as Hawkeye: Little Hits and Tezuka’s Message to Adolf.

(I’m heading to TCAF today, so instead of a review or booklist, I’m putting up a more personal piece. Hope to see you in Toronto!)

Today, in the mail, I got a copy of The Nao of Brown and a copy of Frontier #4. while I’ll probably hold off on Nao for right now *hyuk*, getting both at the same time is emblematic of my current journey through comics.

One of the things that I’ve been amazed at the past week is how the world of comics expands the more you look at it. This really shouldn’t be a brain-bender, but here we are. 

From the smutty danger and action of Cannon, the moody and beautiful Nothing is Forgotten, the dense NYC lovestory of DMZ, to the can-do attitude of One PIece, there is a lot going on in comics.

My experience over the past 5 months has been breathtaking. Before 2014, I had been looking at the medium like someone looking through a telescope – I was up close and personal with one tiny piece of sky, and nothing else. When you take away that telescope, you lose a lot of focus – but you get to see all of the stars.

It’s been a wild race to catch up. I’ve got a lot of reading to do – and that’s pretty exciting.

See you next week (or this weekend if you’re at TCAF!)

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Shout out to Ryan Sands of Youth in Decline and the Frontier anthology for getting me interested in minis and zines in the first place. Ryan sent me a pile of zines in 2013, and that got me started on the path to where I am now.


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