Character Development

The sort of characters that inhabit Garfield or Dilbert are very different than those that star in strips like For Better or Worse and Doonesbury. Jon and Odie will never have to deal with war or losing a limb as B.D. did recently in Doonesbury. In fact, they are not even emotionally equipped to deal with experiences of that magnitude. How would they react? How could they, static unchanging characters, deal with such profoundly life-changing events?

It is a difficult thing to grow characters from frames for jokes to real people. It is even harder to do it believably. A comedy has different needs from its stars than a drama, and if to fit into their new "serious" roles people start changing completely, the audience isn't going to buy it. As Ghastly [G] (Warning: link not safe for children/work) put it [G]:

"People are the way they are and by and large they don't change. They may mellow perhaps but big life-altering change, that's pretty rare....If you're going to start changing characters 180 degrees for no damned reason other than the fact that you want them to be different then you're best off just starting a whole new series or at least adding a new character who is the way you want him or her to be. "

In other words, that wacky crazy character isn't going to start acting all serious just because that's how your comic is now. If you want him or her to start acting serious, something important has to happen to change him or her, and even then too radical a change will stretch your audience's suspension of disbelief.

A better way to do it is rather than changing a character's personality, to show the reasons behind their old, seemingly shallow behavior. Whereas before their antics seemed like random wacky craziness, make your audience believe that they are a real person and that's just the way they are. Make them be more than a living plot device.

This is not to say that characters shouldn't change; they should, of course. All real people change at least a little bit over time. The key is that they need to change believably. Real people change, but they don't do it overnight.

The example comics for character development are College Roomies from Hell!!! [G] and Roomies [G]. To see the discussion of the example comics, go to:

Character Development in Practice.

Or, to see other important elements of a Cerebus transition,