Product Code Database
Sequential Tart (ST) is an online magazine focused on comics and popular culture from a female perspective. It was created in the late 1990s to serve "as an advocacy group for female consumers frustrated by their historical neglect or patronizing treatment by the comics industry." The magazine's title is a play on the term "sequential art"; the webzine's writers are referred to as "Tarts."
Sequential Tart "combines interviews with comics creators, retailers, and industry leaders, reviews of current publications, and critical essays about gender and comics. It showcases industry practices that attract or repel women, spotlights the work of smaller presses that often fell through the cracks, and promotes books that reflect their readers' tastes and interests."
ST contributor Kimberly DeVries "argues that the group self-consciously rejects the negative stereotypes about female comics readers constructed by men in and around the comics industry but also the well-meaning but equally constraining stereotypes constructed by the first generation of feminist critics of comics."
A regular feature of the webzine was Culture Vultures. Traditionally, each new issue featured an illustration by a comics professional.
Osborne discussed the impetus for the creation of the webzine in its first official issue (Sept./Oct. 1998):
ST started out bimonthly, but with its third issue, released in January 1999, it moved to monthly publication. In July 2007, the webzine became a weekly publication.
For a number of years, cartoonist Pam Bliss wrote "a series of essays about making minicomics for Sequential Tart entitled Hopelessly Lost, But Making Good Time." She collected those essays into a publication of the same title in 2002.
In 2008, ST editor Katherine Keller served as a judge for the Glyph Comics Awards.
Sequential Tart's August 2010 issue focused on Wonder Woman, with a "Tart Symposium on Wonder Woman's costume, a look at all of Wonder Woman's toys, and ... Visions of Wonder Woman, where the women talk about how they view Wonder Woman as a comic character and in pop culture. She's not always as popular among women as you might think."
In his book Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book (Temple University Press, 2009), author Paul Lopes called Sequential Tart "one of the more popular comics web fanzines," and credited it for promoting "greater awareness of women artists and readers in comic book culture" while "maintaining general coverage of comic book culture."
Media scholar Henry Jenkins, in his book Convergence Culture (New York University Press, 2008), wrote that:
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