On Backtracking
A Cerebus Syndrome [G] transition changes a strip. That's a lot of the point to it. It almost always involves large, important events that change the characters and the landscape they live in forever.
The problem is, sometimes, that they don't. There are a variety of reasons why this might happen. Maybe the author decided he or she didn't really like writing about serious things after all. Maybe the characters have no capacity for personal growth. Maybe the storyline was always written that way. For whatever reason, sometimes after a move into dramatic territory, the strip returns to business as usual.
For comic storylines, this makes some sense. Characters in silly strips aren't expected to be dynamic, changing, real people. But once the strip veers into drama land, more is expected of it.
For example, in a funny strip, a character's father could be killed off in a storyline with no further repercussions. In a drama, the character would come off seeming callous and uncaring if this event didn't affect them onwards into the future. In a drama, she is a real person, and her father just died.
An artist shouldn't make a Cerebus attempt unless he or she is willing to follow through. Maritza Campos of College Roomies from Hell!!! [G] said [G] that
"[t]his is one example of what doesn't work when trying to go Cerebus. Chickening out. 'It was all a dream'. Resetting buttons. Putting characters through horrible experiences and leaving them unchanged and non the wiser.
It takes courage to do it. The worst thing to do however is pulling your own punches"
When a strip becomes serious, it cannot suddenly ignore the serious events and go back to being a silly frivolous strip. The serious parts still happened. They're right there in the archives. And ignoring them just makes what follows seem like a shallow pantomime of what came before.
The example comics for meshing of tones are College Roomies from Hell!!! and General Protection Fault [G]. To see the discussion of the example comics, go to:
Backtracking in Practice.
Or, to see other important elements of a Cerebus transition,
Character Development
Meshing of Tones
Plot Motivation
Enjoyment
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