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thewebcomicsreview · 4 years

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The more tidbits you reveal from Sinfest the more I start to wonder if this is a real comic

So, I was reading today’s Sinfest, and I had a random thought:

“What’s up with Tangerine’s tail? It looks like it’s part of her hoodie, which is probably artistic license, but why it it a cat tail?”. The actual answer to the question wasn’t very interesting, but check something out I noticed while looking it up:

On March 11th, 2011, Satan turned a random girl into a succubus for no apparent reason beyond “he’s Satan”, which is good enough because back then Sinfest was a gag-a-day strip with no plot as opposed to now where it’s a plot-heavy allegorical epic.

Slick and Monique tried to change her back, but failed in what would actually be the last time those two characters were on the same side.

In April, a gag storyline establishes the River Lethe, which erases people’s memories.

Seymour tries to baptize Tange (who will not be named for three fucking years but that’s neither here nor there)

Which of course mindwipes her, and gives her a much more childish and mildly less feral personality.

She spends a few months occasionally appearing to learn things about the world and her powers

Then we get a gag strip reminding us what the Lethe does and how it works.

Which becomes relevant a week later when Lil’ E unknowingly splashes himself with the Lethe water and erases his own memories. Lil E has been a relatively major character for years, so this is a major (and permanent!) change to the comic’s status quo.

Tangerine, who was hanging out in the area and learning about shoes, bumps into Lil’ E, and they bond over their shared ignorance.

Over in the other plotlines, Fuchsia learns that her secret dates with Criminy are less secret than she thought.

The day after that, Xanthe and the Sisterhood are introduced.

Monique doesn’t join them, but he’s radically influenced by them in another major (and permanent!) change to the status quo for a main character. She changes her hair and becomes a radfem.

The very next strip is a joke about trans people, which from the perspective of living in 2020 and knowing where this went is obviously pretty yikes, but wasn’t thought of as a big thing at the time.

There’s one of these strips, with Monique, Tangerine, Lil’ E, and Monique reflecting on how much they’ve changed over this year’s worth of strips. Although, even though Lil’ E is one of the four characters to radically change, he’s not actually in this strip, with his spot inexplicably given to Xanthe, a character who was literally just introduced.

We don’t have time to unpack all that, because Fuchsia has realized that she has to choose between Criminy and her job, and she chooses love in another major (and permanent!) change to the status quo for a main character.

Blue is devastated by this, but covers for Fuchsia by blaming the Sisterhood for Fuchsia leaving. This, not patriarchy, is the actual canonical reason Satan is opposed to the Sisterhood, who he didn’t care about before.

The New Year’s 2012 arc happens. I call it an arc, but it’s one page.

Then, in April 2012, Tangerine is cold and gets a hoodie. This hoodie has a tail sleeve, which answers my original question in a boring and anticlimatic way (warned you): Tange’s tail looks like part of her hoodie because it actually is. (Why does Lily, who does not have a tail, have a hoodie with actually fuck it this post is too long as it is)

So, uh, what’s the point of this recap?

The point is that this is a recap of Sinfest from March 2011 to December 2011. This is less than a year’s worth of strips. Look how much shit happened! Tangerine was created and had this whole character arc of becoming less “feral monster” and more "manic pixie dream girl”. Lil’ E the hateful internet troll who secretly wanted his father’s love became Lily the philosophical amnesiac child! Monique shaved her head and became a radfem! Fuchsia quit her job to live with Criminy forever! The Sisterhood became a major force in the comic and then Satan got into a war with them! And between then and Tange getting a hoodie, Slick started re-evaluating if he was actually a douchebag, and Sleaze was created as a personification of his evil tendencies. This year had a huge amount of plot movement and character development, and shortly after it there was another big shakeup when Slick and Monique had a falling out.

And nothing has changed since.

Every single one of these characters is in exactly the same place they were in early 2012, like the Sisterhood froze the world in amber. Slick is still questioning if he’s evil without moving either way. Monique is still doing radfem poetry in front of an audience that hates it. Fuchsia and Criminy have so little to do that they basically never appear any more. Tange and Lily are in the exact same place as they were in 2011, except that they’ve physically moved to Satan’s house but even that hasn’t actually changed anything. Instead of having plot development or character development, Sinfest just introduces a robot for a while and then slowly gets bored of them, and while the 2012 new year’s story was one page, now the New Year’s storyline lasts for months, intertwined with but not actually affecting anything. The tone of the strip has gotten a lot grimdarkerer, but despite these months-long arcs, nothing fucking happens in Sinfest anymore, because the plot and the characters has been entirely subsumed into the transphobia.

#Sinfest #Anonymous

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robbyrobinson · 6 years

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So, Sinfest. It's hard to really say when I began to follow the webcomic, but if I were to choose, I'd have to say later 2006. Since then, I had been keeping up with the story. Created by Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest originally revolved around Slick, a self-proclaimed pimp midget who thinks he's all hot stuff when he really can't get a girl. Along the way you have Monique, a self-absorbed woman who took advantage of her looks, Squig, an anthropomorphic pig who loves burritos and smokes pot. There is also Seymour, a Christian fanatic, Li'l E, a young boy who wants the Devil to notice him, the Devil himself, and a truckload of other characters. For the most part, Tatsuya tended to take the middle ground when regarding societal issues. For instance, Seymour is exaggerated because of his extreme devotion to his faith, or other extremities were poked fun at. Tatsuya hardly ever took sides with any of these subjects.

For story arcs...for the most part, one thing that Tatsuya has difficulty with is telling a story. With the earlier strips, they were often episodic, but one storyline that I did like was the one concerning what is my favorite pairing, Fuchsia x Criminy. Essentially, Fuchsia was a succubus who worked for the Devil, her job being to ensnare the souls of men. But all that changed when she met Criminy, a young nerdy boy who was an avid bookworm who had a fortress built out of books that served to protect him from the outside. At first, Fuchsia tries to tempt Criminy as succubi do, but Criminy actually makes her question her position. The build up was slow, but it is revealed that Criminy's words had made Fuchsia reevaluate her life, and she gradually becomes less evil over time. Eventually, she quits her job altogether to be with Criminy. Yes, taht's right: she gave the Devil the middle finger and hightailed it out of there. Honestly, I found Fuchsia as one of the better characters in the webcomic. Her development was believable, and it actually further delves into showing how demon folk are mistreated by society. She was mistreated to the point where you can say that she believed that there wasn't anything good about her. But Criminy actually treated her like an ordinary person. No wonder she fell for him. My only gripe is that we hardly see her or Criminy as much in the webcomic like we used to, which sucks because that was one of the main reasons as to why I continued to read the strips.

Another character that received some massive character development was surprisingly Li'l E. After he received amnesia (long story), we learn that he was actually the son of the Devil and Lilith (a woman who was ostracized for forming a relationship with the Prince of Lies). Really, everything about Lil E's life is depressing. He was bullied for his appearance, his father was distant because he was disappointed that his son wasn't that evil as he'd hoped (he still does care for him), and his mother's missing...or dead. Though my only issue is that it doesn't seem complete yet. We still don't have the crucial point wherein Lil E became who he was prior to his amnesia. So with these story arcs, they were okay to say the least. Tatsuya still kept the middle ground on social issues, the characters were likable. It seemed that nothing would go wrong. That is, until she came....

Without much prompt, the webcomic became very pro-feminism. While I do agree that women should have rights in some areas, the webcomic completely went off the rails with it. The Sisterhood is introduced into the webcomic, led by a tricycle riding young woman named Xanthe. Now, when she arrived many thought that she was going to be an exaggeration of feminism much like how Seymour was one for Christian fundamentalism. But the problem was that the Sisterhood was always proven right in their accusations which gave little to no legroom for a middle ground. Suddenly, the webcomic became cynical as the Sisterhood completely derailed the plot of the story. For instance, Monique's character was completely changed. Xanthe gives Monique a red pill which reveals that everyone hated her (even though previous comics showed the contrary). Suddenly, Monique shaves off her hair, and becomes an embittered cynic convinced that everyone hates the very ground she walks on. The Sisterhood completely destroyed her life, and yet somehow they were in the right. That's not even getting into Monique's relationship with Absinthe, a demon girl who's kind of an airhead. Now, the strip wants to portray their relationship as cute. I know that many debate that this relationship was not fully developed, but I personally felt that the build up was okay. My only issue with this is that at no point in the webcomic's history was it ever implied that Monique was a lesbian. Throughout her appearances, it was made explicitly clear that she was boy crazy. She flaunted her looks, dated several men which ended in one nightstands, among other things. It would be different if at the very least she were bisexual, but that wasn't the case either. One strip was about Slick reading a porn magazine, and Monique makes a comment on it, and she also compliments a woman for her....assets. But that was because she was someone who craved attention. She always did something outrageous as she was a black hole for attention.

It doesn't especially help that by having Monique date Absinthe it actually destroyed one of the prevalent themes of the comic. That being whether or not Slick and Monique were ever going to hook up. Nowadays, Slick hardly ever hangs out with Monique during her post-transformation. After one of her poetry nights goes awry, all Slick does is accidentally give Monique bad advice that she takes as him labeling her a victim. There are even times where she nearly got Absinthe, her own girlfriend mind you, fired. Out of all of the changes the comic's gone through, Monique suffered the worst. Going back to the Sisterhood, though. These groups of girls started out as borderline terrorists. They would bomb factories, reprogram sexbots to kill people who took advantage of them, the vandalized property, etc. Yes, I know that the Patriarchy is seen as the evil force within Sinfest (with the Devil now being upgraded to the head of the organization), but the Sisterhood alone had done more damage than good, and yet, they're the ones who are supposed to be the good guys.

Though one of the worst aspects of this is how like I have said, Tatsuya doesn't know how to tell a story. One such story arc was the zombie one. Fuchsia originally would tell stories to the damned in Hell after her redemption arc. After she severed her ties with the Big D for good, the damned came together to form an undead zombie, and they went out to search for her. That story hadn't been updated for a long time. Or another regards Slick's doppelganger trying to become the dominate of the two. This hasn't been resolved yet either. And there are many other instances of where there are too many story arcs being juggled at once.

Overall, Sinfest was a good webcomic at first before it slowly became preachy. Really, Tatsuya himself had the habit of bashing anyone who complained about the drastic chanegs, assuming that they were misogynists who were peeved that Monique didn't shake her ass anymore. The art style is still alright. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes and other newspaper comic strips. It's simplistic, and cute to an extent. Though the Sunday comic strips are especially great. I would ultimately recommend the first half of the webcomic before its descent into radical feminism.

#austindr #sinfest #webcomic #web comix #monique #slick #robbyrobinson #deviantart'#tatsuya #ishida #feminism #radical feminism #absinthe #fuchsia #christian fundamentalism

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thewebcomicsreview · 4 years

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So, Sinfest has revealed that Vainglorious does not actually have devil horns, but has antlers he sands down to look like them

Previously, Sinfest has strongly hinted than Vainglorious was the son of Satan. Now that we know he’s some kind of Deer/Devil hybrid, there’s only one person in the whole comic who could be his mom:

The witch Hecate, ally and and ambiguously one of the leaders of the Sisterhood, who has a personal vendetta against Satan for reasons that have never been explained except maybe just now. And since Vainglorious is older than Lil’ E, whose Satan’s child through Lilith....

And Lilith and Satan were a thing before he met Katie....

That would mean that Satan cheated on Lilith with Hecate, quite possibly when she was in high school, and never found out he’d knocked her up.

Sinfest has long since descended into the openly transphobic and subtly anti-Semitic ranting of a sad and bitter old man, but I strive to be fair in my reviews, and in the interest of fairness this twist is fucking great. It explains why VG has longer horns than other devils, something even I never thought to question, it explains why Hecate hates Satan, it adds a big ole dash of soap opera into a veeeeeeery dry story, and it raises the possibility that the Sisterhood itself was created purely to settle a high-school drama feud, which is both funny and explains why the Sisterhood’s leadership always seemed so much less interested in all the radfem stuff than the foot soldiers were.

If I had any faith whatsoever that anything would come of this in the next five years, I’d actually be kind of excited to see what happens next, but I’ve been burned so many times by Sinfest that I know better now. This will never be mentioned again, nothing will come of it, and there’s a 75% chance Tats will forget about it outright.

But still, it’s a really good twist, even if the comic is trash and it’s going to be squandered.

#Sinfest

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thewebcomicsreview · 5 years

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I continued to check in on Sinfest like maybe one or twice a year because some storylines were still entertaining enough, but I gotta say, this TERF zombie storyline is enough to make me stop altogether now.

Yeah, it used to be fun to try to figure out what the hell Tats was trying to say, and now that I know there’s just no point to any of it.

Anonymous said to thewebcomicsreview:

You know one of the things that annoy me a lot about Sinfest? That its storylines could actually be good, if it focused more on one of them. Like, the Lil E and the Devil story had potential to be an interesting, if it was the comics main storyline and had proper pacing, instead of Sinfest jumping between 12 different storylines, with several pages stopping the plot to tell the same terrible joke for the third time.

It’s a political comic first and foremost. He’ll never advance any of the plots because they’re metaphors and he doesn’t care about any of the characters as characters.

#Sinfest #Anonymous

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thewebcomicsreview · 7 years

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I don’t know who this is.

Like, I literally don’t know. Is it Mecca, Slick’s Fembot who’s mellowed out slightly on her quest for vengeance but is still generally concerned with the liberation of her kind, or is it the STILL unnamed Fembot I call Kate, who escaped from an abusive relationship, is generally curious and upbeat, doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her her life, and hangs around with Liberty?

Because they look exactly the fucking same and there’s nothing here to indicate which one it is, unless the three assassinbots being shown are meant to indicate it’s Mecca. And it matters here, because the two characters would probably have different reactions to seeing the fembot factory cause pollution, given their wildly different experiences. Or maybe they wouldn’t, since all female characters in Ultra-Feminist Comic Sinfest eventually degrade to standing around looking sad at things men do. Speaking of: does Mecca, like, not care about freeing Fembots any more? These characters literally rode off into the sunset, why do we keep cutting back to them if they’re not going to do anything. And did Satan just stop caring about Vainglorious, who you’d think would be his number-one priority? Why isn’t he doing something about that? Why isn’t Vainglorious doing anything? Has anyone seen Lil’ E lately? Why does no one in this comic ever do anything when it’s supposed to be an epic sci-fi story with feminist themes?

Oh, wait, I forgot there were some other identical fembots living with the witches. So this could be the one who got the femininity upgrade a while back. Who knows? Who cares? I really wish Tats gave a shit about his female characters, instead of starting an arc and then forgetting about them entirely (remember the human prostitute? Remember Mint?).

Ugh.

Sinfest really sucks, guys.

#Sinfest

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