>>1913
I'll admit that Tatsuya lifted a lot in his early days, but I viewed it as more of a homage to the things he was lifting from. He described Slick as a Calvin clone to begin with. The opening strip is a shout out to The Peanuts. I think there's a fine line between homage and plagiarism, but I think that Tatsuya was on the safe side for most of the strip.
That's what makes its fall so tragic.
I agree with the previous poster. I loved the comic. I loved the characters. I felt for them. They grew and changed and developed, but always in meaningful and significant ways. Slick and Monique became better people, the devil girls developed, everybody grew, and everybody grew in a sensible and logical way based on their pre established exploits.
A lot of the earlier arcs found a pleasant middle ground between status quo being god and armor piercing realizations. Characters changed, backslid, and altered. They did this in ways where we could feel for them and feel with them. It was really the emergence of The Sisterhood that derailed everything.
Monique is now a lesbian. Because of course she is. Because men are even and men were always the problem. What about the brilliant last arc between her and Slick? It was so wonderful, so well done! They've barely had any interaction since then.
Slick and Monique both started as bad people with somewhat redeeming qualities. They developed into people with a realistic mix of both as they struggled between conflicting expectations and desires.
Now, men are bad, women are good, and minorities are best. There is no middle ground. Slick's attempts to be good are doomed to fail, in spite of his great progress in the lead up to the Sisterhood strips, simply because he is a man, and worse, a white one.
Scott Kurtz, when he gets overly political in PVP, at least had the decency to try to defend and elaborate his positions. They were wrong, and they were simplistic and idiotic, but they were at least articulated and could be commented on. With Ishida, we get only his work. I doubt, I sincerely doubt, that he could put together a coherent vision of what he actually wants for society, or how he would hope to see it achieved. Even ignoring whether or not it's possible, I doubt he has any actual, usable, ideas for what to do to improve his various causes.
And hence we have this.
He has problems, but he has nothing even resembling solutions. He has a mouth, so he must scream. Having established a world and universe that people cared about, he developed an audience, and onto this audience, he vomits a never ending stream of whatever wells up inside of him, half digested, and vile. He can't argue a position, because he doesn't have one. The world is as black and as white as his dailies, and there's no room for anything in the middle.
The only reason we're here at all, any of us, is because this is a man who once created something of, at the very least, merit, and some might say, of beauty. This strip, in its heyday, moved me with its thoughtfulness and with its expressions on the difficulties we face as people.
Now? I finally gave up a few months ago. I sometimes think about going back through the archives, but it's just too difficult. For five years, I watched the characters I love turn into paper dolls played with by the bastard child of a second year women studies student and an absentee father.
I would like to say, "I'm done," yet, somehow, for some stupid reason, I keep hoping against hope that somehow, someday, he'll post a big, "Just kidding, kids, did you really think I'd make anything that terrible?"
I want this to be an experiment.
I know that it isn't.
Oh how I miss Sinfest.