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Hornschemeier, Paul – Sequential: The Best of #1-3

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Sequential: The Best of #1-3

The first thing I noticed about this book was that it looked damn good. Turns out that this guy has been doing this book for 5 issues and he says that the print run for #5 is 2000, which is huge for a small press comic like this. It’s not exactly mini, in fact it’s a little bigger than a normal sized comic. What about the inside? Well, the early parts are a bit raw, which he readily admits. But I saw the book getting better and better as it went on, which bodes well for #4 and 5. It’s all short stories, the highlights of which are “Bye Bye Elsie 5” (about the main character in a bar trying to get the nerve up to talk to a girl and imagining their life together) and “Seizure!” (a man has a seizure and a mysterious stranger comes by and saves the day). Those were also the longer pieces in the book. The one page strips were pretty hit or miss, but most of them were good. “I’d Do Ya!” probably being my favorite, but I also liked “First, Worst” (about the end of a first date) and Hip and Trip (about a hippy and an indie kid arguing about the nature of life), among others. Look, this is a pretty fat book with a lot of stories for $3.50. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you should probably order #4 or 5 first and then go back and get this if you like the other stuff, but this stuff does hold up pretty well on its own. It’s just that it might be even better when compared to his later and (in theory) better work. Don’t forget the website

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