Broken Frontier

A lot of webcomics enjoy leaving behind the remnants of the past. I can't blame them - they have a whole new world to explore on the internet, with tons of new possibilities they can incorporate into their comics. New forms of art that defy expectations. New forms of layout that convey their stories so much more strongly than a simple series of panels. The ability to delve into detailed and elaborate plots, knowing full well the reader has the entire archives right at one's fingertips. They incorporate much that has gone before, certainly, but many webcomics leap entirely away from tradition in search of artistic experimentation and evolution.

Sinfest is not one of them.

From the start, you can see the resemblance between Sinfest and your standard newspaper strip -- four-panel format in black and white with the comic's name on one side, and the artist's on the other. Admittedly, every comic does feature a unique tagline above Tatsuya Ishida's name -- other than that, however, Sinfest starts out somewhat ordinary.

Now, you might quibble a bit with my words here -- ordinary seems a poor way to describe a comic whose first strip features the main character selling his soul to the devil. (Or any comic called "Sinfest," for that matter.)

Nonetheless, I'll defend the term. A lot of Sinfest's early run is formulaic -- Ishida has the same cast and crew going through the same motions, time and time again. Religion and relationships were the foremost themes, and many, many strips could be boiled down to simply "God and the Devil fight" or "Slick is horny and Monique is a tease."

The cast and crew of Ishida's world were inventive and engaging; that was enough to win him an audience and make some quality moments. The concepts themselves were good ones, and often well delivered -- the early Percy and Pooch strips were simply brilliant, despite being as iconic as could be.

Sinfest had its formula - a collection of stereotypical characters dealing with the same topics, over and over again. For all that the characters were clever and the topics racier than in most newspaper strips, it was the same road to success that others had walked many times before. As it turned out, unsurprisingly, it would prove Sinfest's greatest strength and greatest weakness.

It was easy enough for Ishida to put out new strips every day -- Sinfest had consistency, and that is key for anyone looking to find an audience. He might not have won his way into the newspapers themselves, but for a time, Sinfest was one of the most well-known strips on the net, and the biggest name at Keenspot.

What happened?

Oh, Sinfest remained popular without any great difficulty. But... it drew less attention, less discussion, less notice. It came into its own, artistically, within a year of its beginning -- and make note, Sinfest is a gorgeous comic -- but you can only tell the same joke so many times before it begins to grow old. That's why there is so much scorn for the current state of newspaper strips, which trot out the same tired laughs day after day -- and whether the topic is Garfield hating Mondays or Slick chasing booty, the flaw is the same.

But five years into the strip, Ishida shook things up. The characters suddenly started developing character. The storylines started feeling inspired. Slick actually had a girl into him -- but lost her due to his obsession with Monique. Monique finds herself attracted to an older version of Slick. Pooch and Percy somehow get even more brilliant. God and the Dragon throw down in a fantastic showdown.

Slick pours his heart out to Monique on stage - but can't quite follow through. And in a single storyline, Ishida manages to genuinely capture heartache and love in the lives of Percy and Pooch, Slick and Monique -- and shortly thereafter, Slick manages to actually ask Monique out on a date.

Strip after strip, Sinfest managed to weave together the characters in joke after joke, all within the context of this one developing story.

And then Squigley screws it all up, and life goes on .

Not long after, Sinfest left Keenspot and set up on its own. (Something of a rare thing, given the way collectives have been cropping up these days.) And along with the departure came a brand new site redesign - and full color Sundays. Another staple of the newspaper comic -- and one that Ishida makes work beyond belief. Room for his art and stories to breathe, for the characters to come alive -- every week, the Sundays alone make Sinfest worth the read.

Since then, Ishida has remained at the top of his game. The story still never actually changes -- Squigley tries to break his addictions, but eventually returns to the fold. Slick continues chasing after Monique, but never makes the cut.

But the potential is there. The characters feel as though they can evolve. The storylines aren't the focus, only a guiding force in the background, and we still have a punchline with every comic -- but they give the strip a structure that helps keep it contained, and helps keep it alive and moving forward. Slowly, sure -- but you can feel it moving, one step at a time.

The old jokes still come up, but in new and original ways. We have our old rotes, some of which stand just fine on their own. The strip doesn't seem to have attracted as much attention as when it was simply one offensive joke after another -- but attention isn't quality. Sinfest is living large, and doesn't look likely to scale down any time soon.

These days, it's certainly anything but ordinary.