CSotD: Coming to a cosmos near you
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I enjoy Sinfest even when I don't know what in hell is going on. Or what on earth is going on. Or even what in heaven is going on.
The last couple of weeks have seemed a little vague in that regard, but the art always makes it worth dropping in, and I think that's one of the strip's greatest strengths.
Web comics succeed because of their ability to cater to niche audiences, but, if that niche audience is anything other than techies, gamers and fantasy buffs, you need to draw them in, because they may not be doing as much talking to each other on-line and wandering around looking for things on the net as that group.
Which is to say, you could do a fabulous web strip aimed at and sure to please fly fishermen, but would they find it? Part one is creating an attractive strip. Part two is attracting people to that attractive strip.
Unshelved, for example, became successful because it's set in a library and the jokes are insider humor about working in a library. Librarians aren't necessarily geeks, but they have to be computer literate and they do talk to each other a lot.
Sinfest isn't particularly geeky but I suspect its combination of cosmic justice being dealt out and its innocently sensual characters appeals to the fantasy demographic — particularly those more inclined towards "Lord of the Rings" than "Star Wars" — and it has a solidly loyal fanbase who, after their daily fix, may well head over to the far geekier confines of xkcd or Penny Arcade or Schlock Mercenary.
Or they may not, because Sinfest casts a wider net and, while you have to read the strip for a little while to get into the flow of what's going on, you don't have to actually know the characters' names or study up on the strip to enjoy what's happening.
I think it's easier, for example, to enjoy Sinfest cold than its cultural cousin, Usagi Yojimbo, which, like a lot of comics over in that corner of fantasy, I have felt requires you to be more of a fan than I really wanted to be.
The forum at Sinfest shows how obsessive web comic fans can be, but not everybody who bought the Beatles white album knew that Martha was Paul's dog and nobody really needed to.
Still, some fan had to be obsessive enough to try playing "Revolution #9" backwards before the alleged death of Paul McCartney* could become a media circus. Fan loyalty at its best includes a white-hot core to keep the rest warm: That's how you sell the collections and that's how you make a living at it.
If nothing else, a web strip has to have "pass along" strength: Will people share it, and will the people with whom they share it pass it along in turn? That's how strips like Perry Bible Fellowship and Bug build without actually making jokes about quantum mechanics or Schrödinger's cat or writing their punchlines in binary code.
Sinfest has more continuity than either of those strips, but, as said at the start, I enjoy it even when I'm not sure what's going on. If you're the type of person who doesn't whisper "What's he going to do?" during movies, you might enjoy it, too. And it looks like this might be a good time to jump in, hang on and enjoy the ride.
*(Yes, it will be ironic if he outlives Ringo.)
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