Sinfest

Sinfest

Cover of the first Sinfest book, collecting strips up to late 2002.
Author(s) Tatsuya Ishida
Website http://www.sinfest.net/
Current status / schedule daily
Launch date January 17, 2000
Genre(s) Humor, Satire

Sinfest is a webcomic[1] written and drawn by American comic strip artist Tatsuya Ishida. The first strip as a webcomic appeared on January 17, 2000,[2] although the very first strip appeared in print on October 16, 1991 in the UCLA newspaper, Daily Bruin, while Ishida attended UCLA.[3][4] A new strip is published daily on the Sinfest website. On July 9, 2006, the Sinfest website underwent a redesign, and became self-published, no longer a member of Keenspot.

Contents

Overview

Originally, all strips were pure black and white line art, but larger Sunday strips with full color were introduced shortly after Ishida broke away from Keenspot in the summer of 2006, which also coincided with a site redesign. Starting around late February 2007 Sinfest's style changed, and it was for a time drawn with different shades of grey. This change in itself was commemorated in a strip.[5] Historically, the strip has been updated more or less every day, but the period leading up to the split saw significantly fewer comics, with two unexplained dry-spells lasting at least a month. Since the new site was introduced on July 10, 2006, there has been a new strip every day.[6]

The subject matter of Sinfest is often human nature,[7] with particular attention paid to sexuality, gender roles, addiction and religion. Less frequently, the strip will parody popular culture or indulge in political commentary. There are some recurring types of strip, such as "You Had to Be There" (where the reader is not told what the characters are discussing), "Japanese Calligraphy" (where one of the characters transforms over four panels into a kanji ideograph, usually related to the strip in some way.), "Porn Script Readings" (where Monique and Slick read porn star dialogue in deadpan style, except for once where they used flash cards for a Silent Film reading) and "Ninja Theatre" (where the characters take on the roles of heroes and villains in a martial arts movie). Though there is little in the way of overarching story or continuity in Sinfest, the central characters do undergo some development.

In each strip, a unique epigram appears above Ishida's name, for example: "Da Bomb," "Patent Pending" and "Some Assembly Required." The new-style Sunday strips include no epigrams.

Sinfest in print

According to the "Futility Watch" that was on the website previous to the July 9, 2006 redesign, Sinfest had been rejected by newspaper comic syndicates eleven times as of January 25, 2006.

Sinfest has appeared in print in the form of anthology books, released by Ishida's own production company Museworks. So far, four books have been published:

In Norway, Sinfest has appeared in the comic magazine Nemi.[8] Unlike the web version it was colored before printing (in addition to being translated) and the epigram was cropped.

In June 2009, Dark Horse Comics republished the first volume of compiled strips and added a bonus section entitled Sinfest: The College Years (When It Was Even Worse). A note from the author introduces the section by admitting that "Sinfest used to be even cruder and harsher back when I did it for my college paper. The original cast had no Monique, no Pooch, no Percy. And certainly no Buddha. It took years and years for me to learn the value of the soft touch."[4]

As of February 2010, Dark Horse has announced it will republish the second volume.[4][9] A two-page strip, without the usual epigram, entitled Sinfest: Street Poetry appeared in the May 2009 issue of Dark Horse Presents.[10]

Characters

Main Characters

Slick: The main character of the series, Slick is a short blond male whose early appearances document his desperate attempt to sell his soul to the devil. In an interview Ishida described Slick as a "stereotypical 14-21 year old man". He likes to refer and think of himself as a "pimp" but has yet to actually achieve any obvious romantic attention from a woman besides on arc where a woman was genuinely interested in him at a bar (only to be chased off by Monique out of apparent jealousy). Slick has no apparent job but is apparently quite well off being able to afford to style his house like a stereotypical pimp's.

Despite being almost always rebuffed, Slick is an unrepentant womanizer, hitting with every girl he can manage to meet in the strip. He often tries to restrain his istinct, especially to hide his lecherous side from Monique, but he always fail, and the many, nameless girls he meets see him as a mild nuisance, or a bore.

He's also been shown to be based of off Calvin from the comic's Calvin and Hobbes when he and Monique dressed up as them while discussing their comic's similarities. Despite his womanizing ways, he has real affection for Monique and even took his sunglasses off for her (something he apparently has never done for anyone ever, but sadly it was a little too late because she got fed up with his protests and left just as he did it).

At first Slick wore only a shirt with a red tie, his signature sunglasses and trousers, but lately he has begun to wear more casual clothes as he moves away from his goal of selling his soul.

Monique: She is a sexy young woman with short purple hair and blue eyes. Known in the world of Sinfest more as "It-Girl" (her Poet's alias) she also has a habit of styling her name to a theme to (i.e. Emonique, Andromonique (when dressed androgynously)). When she was first introduced as a fellow poet to Slick, she was a self-styled slut and a "Bimbo" but as the series went on she shed her party girl facade becoming a politically-aware activist, a vegan and an advocate for civil and political rights, the latter part reflecting on her "It-Girl" performances.

Despite her growing maturity, Monique has still a cheery, playful side, sometimes using disguises and innocent teases to help her friends (like helping Criminy and Fuchsia realizing their mutual attraction while dressed and acting as stereotypical Gypsy) and keeping a stylish, fashionable side, consistent with her past as a bimbo. She's currently nursing a complex relationship with Slick, in which, despite denying to be more than deep friends, she still tries to repress (with humorous results) her feelings of jealousy (she prevented a girl from hitting on Slick by dragging him away and calling him "My Slicky!") and she's acknowledged as one of the few thing keeping Slick from damnation.

In the late 2011 strips her maturity is further pushed as Baby Blue, in her role as a succubus, shows her how her seemingly innocent flirts and teasing antics are responsible for a spike in damnations in their town. Monique is deeply shaken, and only when Slick reminds her how, in a past storyline, she actually saved him from damnation, she starts to regain confidence in herself. Even this condition proves short-lived, as the Sisterhood comes to awaken her to the Patriarchy, a Matrix-like concept showing her every stereotype harbored towards women. Monique retaliates by adopting a more masculine, androgynous look and openly questioning the female role in modern society.

Monique often acts as Slick's voice of reason. Furthermore, she takes often a hen mother role for various characters in the strip: she helped the aforementioned Criminy and Fuchsia realizing their affection, helped the Devil Girls to defy the Devil asking for a more fair treatment, saved Slick from damnation and helped Squigly in avoiding Lil'E when he contracted a debt with him. Despite her attempts to be helpful always look overtly cheeky, or somewhat zany, her affection and loyalty to her friends is sincere and true.

Apart from these two, Sinfest features a vast number of characters:

Many of the laptops and books in the series belonging to the characters also have anthropomorphic properties. For instance, Slick's laptop once rescued him from Hell after being corrupted by malware, and Fuchsia has given Criminy a book that has been "demon-ized" that is now effectively his pet (later revealed to have always been the most powerful Grimoire in Hell, Malevolum).

Landmarks

The Sinfest universe houses some peculiar landmarks, constant fixtures in many strips of the comic.

Author

Tatsuya Ishida is the author of Sinfest. He was also a penciller for Dark Horse Comics, where he worked on comic books of the licensed properties G.I. Joe Extreme and Godzilla. In the 1990s he co-created and penciled a comic called StrangeLove for Entity Comics with partner Stacy Freeman.

References

  1. ^ Yim, Roger (April 2, 2001). "DOT-COMICS / Online cartoons skip traditional syndication and draw loyal fans on the Internet". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/02/DD160575.DTL. 
  2. ^ http://media.www.commonwealthtimes.com/media/storage/paper634/news/2006/09/07/Spectrum/Webcomics.Come.Into.Their.Own-2260950.shtml
  3. ^ http://www.archive.org/stream/bruinlife9192univ#page/140/mode/2up/search/ishida
  4. ^ a b c http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/16-026/Sinfest-Volume-1
  5. ^ Ishida, Tatsuya (February 21, 2007). "Creep-Os 3". Sinfest. http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2360. 
  6. ^ Ishida, Tatsuya. "Sinfest Archives". http://www.sinfest.net/archive.php. 
  7. ^ http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2001/08/09/comics/index2.html
  8. ^ http://www.bt.no/kultur/litteratur/article7455.ece
  9. ^ http://www.darkhorse.com/Press-Releases/1679/Dark-Horse-Continues-to-Collect-the-Best-Comics-on-the-Web-with-the-Release-of-Sinfest-2-6-09
  10. ^ http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents

External links