Sinfest

Sinfest originated as a four-panel comedy strip relying on dark humor with frequent pop culture references. It evolved into a more serious work covering such issue as American exceptionalism,[1] slut-shaming, misogyny, and street harassment.[4] Wired.com stated that Sinfest "takes a very irreverent view of organized religion".[2]

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] Later on this decade, Ishida attempted to work in animation, but this path also did not pan out. 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]

Over the years, Sinfest has gone through many changes.[6][4] 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. During the 2008 United States Presidential Election, Sinfest became much more politics-heavy. This was in part because of the "collective anxiety"[5] regarding the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the magnitude of the $700 billion emergency bailout proposed by the United States Congress.[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 colored strips as well, giving readers "something extra fun and engaging"[7] on Sundays. Ishida remains rather private and interacts little with his readership.[7]

Ishida self-published three volumes of Sinfest in print between 2002 and 2005. Two volumes of 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, 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.[8]

On January 8th, 2018, Tatsuya Ishida announced[9] that he had created a Patreon account for the webcomic.[6][10] Four years later, the Patreon account was removed.[11] Ishida's Ko-fi account[12] was also shut down.[13] On December 8th, 2022, Ishida made a blog post stating that the reason for the Patreon removal was that Patreon had banned him.[14] Six days later, he tweeted that Patreon had removed his account for promoting "sentiments of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation".[15] Ishida had previously posted on the Sinfest forums claiming to have been locked out of Twitter for "hateful conduct"[16] in reference to a Sinfest strip.[17]

PC Magazine listed Sinfest among the best webcomics of 2015.[18] Sinfest has been nominated for various Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards.[19]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Sinfest.

• Sinfest website