Characterization Marches On/Web Comics

Examples of Characterization Marches On in Web Comics include:

• D'rizzl in 8-Bit Theater had his IQ go up 120 points upon joining the Dark Warriors, since the team needed a straight man.
  • The very first strips also have Fighter as not-dumb (He even remarks "Dude, that line sucks" when Black Mage does a Storm impression) and Black Mage as not-evil (He kinda feels bad for accidentally blowing up a forest. Really!). It says something about the comic when saying "Thanks. What's up?" to a guard instead of murdering him for speaking to him is out of character.

• It takes a while for the characters to get established in Achewood, and there are too many out-of-character moments in early strips to count. However the most Egregious (and Squicky) would have to be when Philippe -- later established to be perpetually five years old - has sex with Ultra Peanut.
  • Well, all we really see is that they've taken their clothes off. Chris Onstad suggests in the book that they went outside to play in the sprinklers.

• Minor example in Bob and George: In an early strip, Chadling is excited by the prospect of bananas. Bananas never come up in the comic again, and the rest of the time, Chadling's Trademark Favorite Food is ice cream (like most of the other dumb characters). In the commentary, David Anez says that the love of bananas was a reference to a friend of his whom Chadling was named after, and he never got around to using it again.

• Sil'lice from Drowtales brutality and cruelty seems to have been toned down in the later remake chapters compared to the earlier chapters. She actually seems to be somewhat reasonable now and has two little twins whom she clearly loves. It's widely agreed to be an improvement.

• El Goonish Shive
  • In the earliest strips, Elliot and Tedd were alike in perversion. Sarah was a borderline Straw Feminist. These days, it's hard to imagine Sarah giving more than an annoyed glare to Tedd's suggestion to strip, and it's hard to imagine Elliot going along with it.
    • Elliot "now fails at perversion". Then again, he more followed Tedd's lead in this back then and walked too far down the path of superheroics later.
    • Sarah got on-screen character development, though: she was Susan's friend and follower. After the incident with Elliot/Ellen, the status shifted - Susan is still Sarah's friend, but bugs in Susan's head are not so much. And later Susan was forced to admit her problems and toned it way down herself. Sarah still is a member of Susan's "Feminist Club", but then, at one point Susan wanted to enlist Elliot and Tedd...
  • Tedd, for his part... presumably he's still perverted, but now he got a girlfriend and isn't so blatant about it. He also lost a lot of his Mad Scientist cred with the revelation that he's just been reverse-engineering alien tech, and parts of it (which work on the same principles as Earth "magic") remain a mystery to him. Then again, he tries his best to get that Mad Scientist cred back.
  • Grace, as well, is much less naïve in early strips (in the most glaring case, later Ret Conned as having been explained to her, realizing what people would think of a woman wearing nothing but a trenchcoat), something Dan admits he regrets.
  • Also, Principal Verrückt's first appearance was a quick "the principal is Adolf Hitler" cutaway gag, complete with Gratuitous German; in his very next appearance, Ellen points out just how he looks with a wig, and from then on, he's bald with a bushier moustache, never once speaks another word in German, and comes off as a well-meaning loonie.

• Franz from Elijah and Azuu started out as an All Gays Are Promiscuous gag character, which feels at odds with the devoted relationship he's in once he has some Character Development. In particular, the author said that he regretted making Franz have a three-way with his boyfriend and mother because it was awkward to write around in a later, more serious story arc.

• In General Protection Fault, Trudy starts out as a Card-Carrying Villain who routinely drops safes on GPF's competitors, killing them. In the year before "Surreptitious Machinations," she gradually evolves into a Magnificent Bitch who manages to take over the world in an alternate future, becoming emotionally unhinged after killing Nick for rejecting her, the first time she had ever killed someone herself.
  • So now It's Personal?

• In Homestuck, Dave is known as The Stoic who can go off into epic wordplay at the drop of a hat and has a very consistent demeanor that's incredibly difficult to falter. However, the few times we see him talk to John pre-naming, he comes off as more emotional and brief, actually using punctuation and emotion, with John able to casually troll him with a simple reference to Little Monsters.
  • There's also the Trolls, though in their case not much was known about them at the time. Compare their earlier pesterlogs in Acts 3 and 4 to what is later revealed about them in Act 5 (looking at you, Tavros).

• Least I Could Do's main character suffers from this. At first, he is a Lovable Sex Maniac, an idiot who gets laid a lot, a lot like Joey from Friends. His stupidity was emphasized in early strips. As the series progress, his stupidity becomes immaturity, making him a very smart guy that just likes to act childish from time to time. He also gets geeker and geeker, up to the point where he is One of Us.

• Problem Sleuth, at the beginning of his series, didn't have the crippling phobia of ethnic cheer murals that he shows later on. He originally considered the mural in his office money well spent.
  • Of course, we have to take into account that the only other ethnic cheer mural he encountered attempted to beat him to death.
  • He was also more of a jerk to the other characters, though that one has elements of Fire-Forged Friends.

• In Questionable Content, Hannelore was first introduced when Marten was so drunk he went in the wrong bathroom, and she tried to pick him up. Later, her OCD was seriously played up. Eventually, she explains her earlier behavior by saying that she "was on some pretty powerful anti-anxiety meds" and "wasn't myself".
  • She seems to be deflanderizing a bit.

• Non-work safe comic Sexy Losers. In particular, early "Madame X" strips featured a couple of friends who mainly existed to bounce exposition off of...at first. Later strips saw the characters earning the Fan Nicknames Abusive Friend and Swearing Friend, based on strips like this. As the author put it, "But you said nothing happened last time," practically sounds like a doctoral thesis coming from a character known for lines like "Your fuck is shit, dickass."
  • This is also true for the Suicide Girl comics. At first, he would ask the girl if they would have sex prior making you believe he would have either or. Now he's only interested in corpses.
  • Also true for the Kenta's Hot Mom comics. At first, Kenta actually had feelings for his mother. This gets weird seeing how he is openly disgusted at his mom's sexual advances in every other comic.

• For the first year or so of Something*Positive, Davan is portrayed as being completely hopeless with women. He's shown being rejected by women multiple times, and the few relationships he has had have been with women who were either mentally unstable or who spontaneously decided to cheat on him (and in one instance, both). This changed due to a bit of outside interference: according to Word of God (in a YouTube post), Milholland had the idea of Davan meeting a really cool girl in the bar he frequented, then having her be creeped out by his getting involved in an altercation. A friend suggested that instead of going for the thousandth downer, that he cut Davan a break and let him be happy for once. His going for this idea and starting a romantic plotline for Davan probably killed the whole "women hate Davan" gag; since then, Davan has been involved with a handful of reasonably stable women, including some friends-with-benefits closet-action. Davan still references the idea that he only attracts crazy women, but then nobody in the comic seems entirely sane.