#August 18 this year would have been the 20th anniversary of Devil's Eye

[sins-of-the-sea]

Okay, but full disclosure: The assignment of the Seven as the Seven Deadly Sins was actually a retroactive thing back in the day. For the first few years of me creating "Devil's Eye" in 2001, the Sins didn't become Sins until around 2003-2004. The Seven as a Crew were completed in mid-2002, with Giovanni as a latecomer (all the others were mid-late 2001). Prior to that?? They were just simply known as the Devil Pirates, and it was only Captain Frascona who donned a skull half-mask.

So where did the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins come from? 

Well, I wasn't brought up Catholic, so it had to come from somewhere else, right? Was it Full Metal Alchemist? Or what is now one of my most favorite films of all time, Se7en? No, it was initially from a webcomic with a.... notable reputation. Hey, I was 15-16 and didn't know better.

And even then, the Sin motif still came in AFTER I assigned powers; for the longest time, the only one whose power has been fairly unchanged is Ruixiong (levitation) and Guy (pyrokinesis). Everyone else was all over the place--in fact, Abena and Rashid were reversed at some point! And it wasn't until sometime after I gave them powers that I decided upon giving them Sin motifs, then wrote their histories around them. But even then, it was all over the place, and when I tried to write/design them closer to the traditional understanding of the Sins, the more I feel it was... actually against the core character of the Crew--thus why you have Giovanni being sweet and generous to his friends, Ruixiong never trying to take on the position as Captain, Phoebus just not sleeping and snoring all over the place, etc.

But I suppose all this, in the end, comes around in my favor as a writer--after all, Greed is more than just wanting money, Gluttony is more than just wanting food, Sloth is more than just wanting to sleep, etc. In any given understanding of these vices, there is a core reason why such notions are transgressions, from a secular standpoint as well as religious. They are elements to humanity that cause more harm than good, that exceed what is need, fair, and even righteous. But in the end.... they are human traits. Not every Wrathful person on the planet is wrathful in the same way. Envy takes on so many different forms across the world.  And so on and so forth.

It's just a reminder of how why these Seven are so fun to write--to explore the theme of Sin and what it means to them. And how it can doom them if they continue the path of destruction--to themselves and the world--as long as they continue to serve the Master.