Newsletter update today, with celebrations of our recent @eisnerawards nomination, thoughts about @cakechicago , a sneak peek at work from @jennyzervakis coming from @fieldmousepress in time for @spxcomics this year, and a recognition of the challenges of life — link in the bio and, if you like, in your inbox!
Thoughts on paper stock RGB vs. CMYK, and a review of MAMA CAME CALLIN' today at sequential.li. Sign up for the newsletter, it's free! Share it around if you want! Or don't, I'm not the boss of you
Starting something new at www.sequential.li - a newsletter/blog about comics publishing, the things I'm reading, and more. I'll be switching up my Instagram to be more "traditional" moving forward. Please check out the site and subscribe! There will be sneak peeks and other cool material shortly 😊
Image by @tommi_pg , commissioned in 2017 for Sequential State 💅🏻
One of my goals in 2025 was to read more literature. Along with the hundreds of comics and the @fieldmousepress submissions pile, I read 66 books this year. I finished the year digging into the work of Roberto Bolaño and Georges Simenon, and I've made it a project to collect their newly released paperbacks from @picador .
I've been feeling a push to write more, but Instagram posts are not the best place for that. Keep your eyes peeled for a new "blog" from me, platform TBD, coming soon.
"What exactly do you understand?"
When it comes to Pedro Páramo, the only answer I can truthfully give is, "very little." I'm not sure what I expected from this book; I didn't go into it with a lot of grand expectations. But it sitting with it, ruminating on it, makes me feel that is has carved a hole in my brain for itself to live in. Reading Rulfo's writing is like drowning - the panicked gasping, the struggle against; it's the sense that everything is happening so slowly, so painfully, and then it is happening all at once.
This is a book that defies easy review, and I'm sure, in translation, there is much I am missing. But Weatherford's translation communicates a style that is speculative and choppy, and has a beauty that I've not seen much of as "a serious reader."
What will a man do for power, for love, for pain? Rulfo reminds us - he will do anything and everything.
This one was recommended by @kricket_the_cat on their new blog at https://reillyacat.ghost.io/. Go check it out and sign up for the newsletter.
Davies' prose is delicious, sophisticated in its emotion but stark in its writing, I found myself enraptured by her characters and the strangeness and beauty of the land she asks readers to inhabit.
This book is deeply enamored with the natural and with language. It clamors for shared understanding, and manages to build a drama that is notable for its complexity despite the book's short length. If you are looking for something you can read in a sitting or two, but want a book with real teeth, CLEAR is that book. I only wish I had read it sooner.
I've been bad at writing reviews of recent books I've been reading (if you want to see my activity log, check out my @the.storygraph account (sequential_li) for my reading history - let's be friends! I'm trying to remedy this by going back and picking out some stellar books I've read over the last 2 months that are definitely worth your time.
I'm a self-admitted Han Kang enthusiast. I've loved all of her books, but none have touched me so deeply as her two-part series HUMAN ACTS and her latest, WE DO NOT PART, both books about the horrors of war, the past that is hidden in plain view, and the things that people do to move past tragedy.
WE DO NOT PART is about death and dying, it's about finding peace through struggle, and it's about sacrifice. A book that manages to be both concrete in its aims yet still mysterious and ephemeral, WE DO NOT PART is half of a ghost story, and half a record of war crimes.
If you haven't read any literature published in 2025 yet, this would be my recommendation of a place to start.
