This article needs to be updated.(December 2022) |
Sinfest | |
---|---|
Author(s) | Tatsuya Ishida |
Website | www |
Current status/schedule | Daily |
Launch date | January 17, 2000 |
Genre(s) | Comedy, satire |
Sinfest is a long-running American webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. Updating daily, Sinfest started as a black comedy strip in January 2000. It has featured a wide range of perspectives over its long history, including on American politics, [1] organized religion, [2] and radical feminism. [3] [4]
Sinfest originated as a four-panel comedy strip relying on dark humor with frequent pop culture references. Over its first decade it evolved into a more serious work, with a large cast of regular characters commenting on such themes as organized religion, [2] American exceptionalism, [1] and economic insecurity. [5] It abruptly shifted focus to radical feminism in 2011, [6] tackling issues such as slut-shaming, misogyny, and street harassment. [4]
In an interview with Publishers Weekly , [5] Ishida stated that he knew he wanted to become a comics author ever since he read a Peanuts paperback as a child: "[S]omething about the simplicity and solitary nature of the medium appealed to me." [5] Ishida briefly served as penciller for Dark Horse Comics' G.I. Joe Extreme in the early 1990s. Ishida said that he botched this job, noting that "several [of his] pages were so poorly drawn they had to get another guy to redo them entirely". [5]
In 2000, Ishida taught himself HTML, put together a Geocities web page, and started uploading Sinfest strips seven days per week. Ishida stated that he managed to sustain this strict schedule during the first seven years purely through "coffee and revenge". [5] Ishida is rather private and has little interaction with his readership. [7]
Over the years, Sinfest has gone through many shifts in tone. [8] Ishida views his older works as an indicator of his emotional state during that period, describing his early Sinfest strips as "unhinged, totally off the chain". [5] In 2009, Ishida claimed his strip was "still pretty wild, but there's also more warmth, more tenderness", [5] citing 2005 as a turning point towards more sentimental, character-driven storylines. Sinfest was nominated for three Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards in 2004. [9]
Ishida self-published three print volumes of Sinfest between 2002 and 2005. Two volumes of early Sinfest have been published in print by Dark Horse Comics. The first of these was released in mid-2009 and reprints the entire first year of the webcomic. The second volume, a 2011 collection titled Viva la Resistance, covers the webcomic's run from 2003 to 2004, featuring over 600 pages that were previously uncollected. [7] Sinfest has also appeared in the Norwegian comic magazine Nemi . [10]
During the 2008 United States presidential election, Sinfest incorporated more political themes. [5] Ishida stated that he switches between characters and situations in his webcomic "pretty much on a whim", [7] claiming that the longer storylines of his webcomic help to tie it all together. In 2011, Ishida started to produce weekly colored strips, giving readers "something extra fun and engaging" [7] on Sundays.
In October 2011, the comic abruptly shifted in tone, focusing heavily on radical feminist themes. [3] [4] [6] PC Magazine listed Sinfest among the best webcomics of 2015. [11]
By 2024, the strip had changed direction again; author Sean Kleefeld said that when catching up on Sinfest issues, he "wasn't understanding them", and that the comic's political themes had gone on a "downward spiral". [12]
Webcomics are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Achewood is a webcomic created by Chris Onstad in 2001. It portrays the lives of a group of anthropomorphic stuffed toys, robots, and pets. Many of the characters live together in the home of their owner, Chris, at the fictional address of 62 Achewood Court. The events of the strip mostly take place in and around the house, as well as around the town of Achewood, a fictional suburb.
Fetus-X was a weekly romantic horror comic written and drawn by Eric Millikin and Casey Sorrow. Millikin is an American artist and former human anatomy lab embalmer and dissectionist. Sorrow is an internationally known American illustrator and printmaker.
Bob and George was a sprite-based webcomic which parodied the fictional universe of Mega Man. It was written by David Anez, who at the time was a physics instructor living in the American Midwest. The comic first appeared on April 1, 2000, and ran until July 28, 2007. It was updated daily, with there being only 29 days without a comic in its seven years of production and with 2568 comics being made altogether.
Maakies is a comic strip by Tony Millionaire. It began publication in February 1994 in the New York Press. It has previously run in many American alternative newsweeklies including The Stranger, LA Weekly and Only. It has also appeared in several international venues including the Italian comics magazine Linus and the Swedish comics magazine Rocky.
Nemi is a Norwegian comic strip, written and drawn by Lise Myhre. It made its first appearance in 1997 under the title Den svarte siden. At that time, it was a tonally dark cartoon concerning heavy metal subcultures. Over the years, Myhre made the comic generally brighter and more comedic, though still frequently published with strips about serious issues, especially in the larger Saturday panels. The strip was renamed Nemi after its protagonist, a young goth woman.
Nothing Nice to Say is a webcomic, touted as "The world's FIRST online punk comic", created by artist Mitch Clem. It is sometimes abbreviated as Nothing Nice, NNTS or NN2S.
A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible (ALILBTDII) is a webcomic drawn by David Hellman and written by Dale Beran. Ted Rall described the comic as "explor[ing] the limits of pessimism and fatal consequence in a universe that would be difficult to imagine on the printed page." David and Dale are the primary characters, although they do not appear in every episode, and there is a small cast of real-life supporting characters, including schoolfriend/mad scientist Paul, Dale's sister Sally, and David's mother, Debby Hellman.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
David M Willis is an American web cartoonist currently living in Columbus, Ohio. He is best known for his interconnected series of webcomics Roomies!, It's Walky!, Shortpacked!, and Dumbing of Age. Willis is also known online for his chatrooms and forums including "ItsWalky". KUTV in Salt Lake City calls him a satirist who is "a little bit edgy."
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life. SMBC has run since 2002 and is published daily.
Zachary Alexander Weinersmith is an American cartoonist and writer, best known for his webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). Outside of SMBC, he has worked on a sketch comedy series, a podcast, and multiple other webcomics. With his wife Kelly Weinersmith, he has co-authored the 2017 book Soonish and the 2023 book A City on Mars. He illustrated the 2019 book Open Borders by economist Bryan Caplan, and wrote the 2023 children's book Bea Wolf, a loose adaptation of Beowulf.
The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is a daily webcomic created by Pab Sungenis. It uses the photo-manipulation technique popularized by Adobe Photoshop and other image editing programs to insert actual photographs and paintings of the characters into situations, instead of more conventional methods. It was syndicated online by GoComics, a division of Andrews McMeel Universal, and has been collected into six trade paperback editions.
Although, traditionally, female comics creators have long been a minority in the industry, they have made a notable impact since the very beginning, and more and more female artists are getting recognition along with the maturing of the medium. Women creators have worked in every genre, from superheroes to romance, westerns to war, crime to horror.
Brawl in the Family was a gag-a-day webcomic written and drawn by Matthew Taranto. The webcomic was inspired by the Super Smash Bros. series and features characters from various video game franchises, predominantly Nintendo series such as Kirby, Super Mario, Pokémon, F-Zero, and Metroid. The webcomic concluded on October 3, 2014, having produced a total of 600 comics.
The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.
Notable events of 2000 in webcomics.
Dumbing of Age is a webcomic about college life at Indiana University by cartoonist David Willis with themes involving drama or comedy, occasionally with a mixture of both. The series itself is a reboot reusing characters from Willis' previous comics. While Willis' previous webcomics shared a science-fiction universe, Dumbing of Age is independent of these, reflecting more slice-of-life than the previous works. The comic is generally set in the present day, yet not set in any particular year due to the glacial pacing, current technologies are depicted in-comic anachronistically so the comic is not a period piece. Willis has reported Dumbing of Age to be his most popular webcomic, with a readership that around three times that of Shortpacked!.
"Loss", sometimes referred to as "loss.jpg", is a strip published on June 2, 2008, by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. Set during a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child, the strip—presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue—shows Ethan entering a hospital, where he sees Lilah weeping in a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage. Buckley cited events in his life as inspiration for the comic.
Sinfest has recently become a more specific and pointed criticism of the most toxic parts of American exceptionalism. […] [Ishida's] sharp use of The Matrix as a visual metaphor for the ways in which people are blinded has proven particularly poignant during this current presidential election cycle.
This comic takes a very irreverent view of organized religion and should not be viewed by the overly devout or by the closed-minded.
I'm launching a new forum for people who like the message of my comic. The new forum will be anti-pornography, anti-prostitution. It will favor the radical feminist perspective over a liberal or conservative one. So if you'd like to participate in a forum environment more in harmony with the comic, I invite you to join.
Over the past year or so, however, the strip has gone through a revolution of sorts, tackling numerous feminist concepts like slut-shaming, misogyny, problematic porn, and street harassment, sometimes requiring great personal adjustments from its main characters.
The first seven years it was coffee and revenge. That's what kept me going. My attitude was, 'I'll show them. I'll show them all!'
A more dramatic shift occurred in Sinfest when creator Tatsuya Ishida switched his focus after a decade from, as one reviewer described, "jiggly pimps-n-hoes humor" (Garrity, 2012) to a more overtly radical feminist message. The change in direction was fairly abrupt and unannounced, surprising many readers.
Less socializing means I can concentrate more on the strip.
Hi, I'm the creator of Sinfest, an online comic that's been running since 2000. Over the years it has gone through many changes, to the delight of some and dismay of others. I hope to continue polarizing audiences for many years to come. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Outstanding Black and White Art […] Outstanding Character (Visual) […] Outstanding Short Form Comic.
Nå fremhever hun amerikanske Tony Millionaires Maakies og Sinfest av japanske Tatsuya Ishida, som går i Nemi [She now highlights the American Tony Millionaire's Maakies and Sinfest by Japanese Tatsuya Ishida, which appears in Nemi].
Tatsuya Ishida's perfect line work is a beauty to behold […] as is his bravery to cover the topics of religion, patriarchy, sex, and drugs, all in a humorous fashion.