The Collected Sequential

by Paul Hornschemeier

The Collected Sequential assembles the long-out-of-print series Sequential, where Paul Hornschemeier honed his comic craft. These seven comics have been long sought by fans of Hornschemeier, and AdHouse Books is proud to offer them in a beautiful hardcover format.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2004

About the author

Paul Hornschemeier was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1977 and raised in nearby rural Georgetown, Ohio. As a child he liked to draw, dreaming that he might publish his own comic books one day. While majoring in philosophy and psychology at The Ohio State University, Hornschemeier was introduced to the graphic novel Ghost World by Daniel Clowes and began exploring underground and literary comics. He saw that comics could be a venue for exploring issues from his studies and other interests, and within a year he began publishing his own black and white comics, under the banner "Sequential". Those early experimental works have since been compiled by AdHouse Books under the title The Collected Sequential. After graduation from college, Hornschemeier began using colors in his comics. In 2001, after moving to Chicago, he self-published the final issue of "Sequential," and began publishing the full-color comics series "Forlorn Funnies" with (now defunct) Absence of Ink Press. In 2003, Dark Horse Comics published his first graphic novel titled Mother, Come Home.
In 2007 Hornschemeier colored the Marvel mini-series Omega The Unknown.
Hornschemeier also sang and played guitar for the now defunct band Arks.

Reviews

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made the mistake of reading this a week after the same author's Mother, Come Home, and even though I had been warned that this was not of the same caliber, I went ahead and picked it up from the library anyway.

This is a collection of Hornschemeier's primarily black-and-white comic strips from his earlier years. It's not fair to make comparisons to Mother, Come Home (since one is a collection of strips and one is an actual graphic novel), so I won't do that here.

But I will say that this sort of comic work, similar to what I used to see in the Sunday paper (except much more adult in style and content), does not work very well for me. It's too brief. Give me more! I am insatiable! There are some in this collection that cover more ground, are clearly more autobiographical, and I did enjoy those a lot.

Also, black-and-white. Sigh, yes, I need some color, especially for this sort of layout, there has to be color or else I want to flip through the pages as quickly as possible to just get through it.

I still want to read more Hornschemeier because, again, Mother, Come Home is incredible and I want more like that.

[Christian Lipski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Indie comic, self-published for seven progressively more creative issues. Lots of variety, good look at the artist himself. More and more 'real'/autobiographical/depressing, but it's a shame it ended so soon.

[J Chris Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty amazing tour through the growth of an artist.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent collection but I prefer the individual books to the one volume set. Somehow the Collected Sequential is missing bits and pieces from the noncollected books.

[Ademption · Rating 3 out of 5]

Juvenilia from Paul Hornschemeier. That said, it is impressive juvenilia.