Character Development in Practice

Normally, for each important feature of the Cerebus transition [G], two comics are chosen out of the four example comics. One comic would be chosen to help exemplify how to do the element correctly, and one to show how the element can be done poorly or what the pitfalls are. The problem is that none of the example comics exemplify poor character development. Therefore, instead of a comic overall, one instance of character development has been chosen for the negative example. So, for Character Development, the comic that does this well is College Roomies from Hell!!! [G], and the comic that contains the instance done poorly is Roomies [G].

College Roomies from Hell!!!

The characters of CRFH!!! were in flux almost from the comic's inception. However, for a while, that was less "development" and more that the characters were still gelling in the author's (Maritza Campos's) mind.

The characters really started to develop in the storyline Sub-love-me-nal [G] which, not so coincidentally, was the first storyline with anything resembling a serious element. They developed slowly over the next set of plotlines, but for the most part by 5-2=0 [G] they were the same people they were after the Misery Journey [G].

Then came The Adversary [G]. This was the first full-on serious storyline, and it was a doozy. The strip had been growing into this for a while. Margaret's antisocial behavior, Roger's [G] "issues" with his mother, and his canine side (*SPOILER* Roger's a, uh, werecoyote *SPOILER*) were all expounded on and explained, and we got to see just how determined Dave [G] was to be with Margaret [G].

The thing of it was, all of it had precedence in the humor that had gone before. We knew Margaret was antisocial, we knew she was a gun nut, but we didn't know why. What were empty character traits became organic extensions of living beings.

And people did change. A little. As real people do. Margaret became a little less anti-social, opened up a bit more. Roger did the opposite, and started to slowly close himself in on his problems. All the changes made sense, especially in context with the strip's past.

Basically the character development worked because Mrs. Campos always kept in mind who her characters were and how they would react to the events that occurred to and around them.

Onwards to discuss Roomies