From a same story-arc, between artists sharing every issue of it – the 1996 Marvel Versus DC had at least three inconsistencies between Dan Jurgens' and Claudio Castellini's art:
1- Mjolnir's handle: Jurgens drew it tied to a leather strap; Castellini drew it tied to a chain.
2- Elektra's headgear is a kerchief to Jurgens, and just a red strip around her forehead, not covering hair in Castellini's art.
3- Lobo's hair - wavy to Jurgens, straight to Castellini.
The number of fingers in the hands of Shatterstarfire (a merge of Marvel's Shatterstar and DC's Starfire). In X-Patrol, drawn by Roger Cruz, she had four fingers per hand, as Shatterstar; In The Exciting X-Patrol, penciled by Bryan Hitch, she had five fingers per hand, as Starfire (and most humans).
The appearances of Silver Racer (a combination of Silver Surfer and Black Racer) in the titles Challengers of the Fantastic and Spider-Boy Team-Up are meant to be part of the same event, but his costume is much more complex and detailed in the latter title than in the former.
Just how much of a gonk is Big Ethel? She has gotten Progressively Prettier over time but that only added more variety to her designs. Sometimes she's a gangly girl wearing "unfashionable" clothes while sometimes she just has a different body type than the others. Sometimes her supposed "ugliness" goes into Informed Flaw territory. Normal girl with overbite, barely human, and everything in between has been seen.
How attractive is Midge? She is often treated as very attractive but she tends to not be portrayed any differently than the background girls are, making this more of an Informed Attribute.
How big Jughead's nose is depends on the artist.
On default everyone has Black Bead Eyes but when they're depicted with eye colors it's rarely consistent. The main group of Archie, Betty, Jughead, and Veronica have all been depicted with either brown or blue eyes (though Betty is usually blue eyed). The Archie Comics (2015) reboot mixes things up by giving Archie green eyes, Betty blue eyes, and both Jughead and Ronnie brown eyes.
Some artists such as Al Fagaly and Irv Novick drew Betty and Veronica looking more like grown women than teenagers.
All the older characters in The Beano have outlived their original artists by some time, and succeeding artists have often made major changes to the character designs.
In the Beano and The Dandy favorites from the Forties there are two pages devoted to showing how Pansy Potter's appearance differed depending on the artist.
Subverted with Minnie the Minx in the 2000s. Long-serving artist Jim Petrie retired in 2001, and over the next few years a succession of artists all tried their hands at the strip, sometimes radically changing Minnie and/or her family. Then, when the editors finally settled on Ken Harrison as regular artist later in the decade, he undid not only the previous artists' changes but even those of Jim Petrie, taking Minnie all the way back to how her original artist Leo Baxendale had drawn her in the 1960s.
Kristian Donaldson's guest renditions of the main characters look very different and are more conventionally attractive, with smoother complexions, larger eyes and more angular features. Zee is also more Ambiguously Brown.
Kristian Donaldson does not draw Matty with his trademark nose bandage. After she filled in for Burchielli on issue 20, Burchielli apparently did homage to her choice by not drawing it on Matty's face for issue 21. In issue 22, however, it inexplicably returns.
The city of Duckburg tends to vary in size, from a quirky small town to a large city to (almost exclusively in stories by Marco Rota and the aforementioned Paperinik New Adventures, which is explicitly a different continuity) a bustling metropolis full of skyscrapers. Its most famous building, the Money Bin, varies in appearance too, sometimes having a dome on top, sometimes sitting on large hill.
Fables. Pinocchio suffers the most from this. It's most noticeable in The Dark Ages, between the first story in the collection, as opposed to when he appears later.
The many different artists who have worked on Grendel disagree most glaringly on the character design of The Wolf, Argent. Different stories have placed him just about everywhere on the spectrum from a Wolf Man to "very slightly humanised wolf who looks as if he has to make a great effort to stay bipedal".
Heroes: This is an odd use of the trope in a comic series based off of a live-action series. Claude's facial features tend to change depending on who's drawing the comic: when he first showed up in a storyline, he looked like Alan Rickman; the second time, he looked exactly like Christopher Eccleston, as he should; the third time, he and everyone else in the comic looked pretty generic.
In Carlos Ezquerra's original strips, Dredd had a rather sleeker, more police-like uniform; the modern, chunkier, big-booted look was created by Mike McMahon. Throughout the comic, his chin varies between prominent and ridiculous. In recent strips, as he's been getting older, his wrinkles have also been subject to artistic interpretation; while Colin MacNeil draws him with fairly smooth but weathered skin, Leigh Gallaher makes him look like a truly old man.
Since the Judges updated their iconic Lawgivers to the Mark II version, the depiction of that gun has gone through a strange amount of variance. General shifts in the gun's bulkiness is one thing, but some artists change what is arguably the gun's most recognizable feature, the half-circle ammo indicator, to a flat row of lights.
The Dark Judges have been portrayed as both bizarro zombie-judges with green skin and claws, as well as truly disgusting creatures who seem to be falling apart at the seems.
In the early days of colour Dredd (both on covers and then later when the stories began being printed in colour) the judges’ elbow pads would sometimes be coloured the same yellow (so presumably gold) as their shoulder pads.
At least one story has the SJS wearing the same uniforms as street judges, but with ‘SJS’ written on their helmets in place of the badge.
In Looney Tunescomics, Bugs' girlfriend Honey Bunny has been depicted as a rabbit with tan or yellow fur with varying body types, as a white and gray furred rabbit with a similar expression to Bugs, or as a near identical Distaff Counterpart of Bugs.
The Brazilian Mega Man comic Novas Aventuras de Megaman suffered from this trope especially hard, as it had a different artist for each issue... and sometimes had multiple artists within one issue. Characters could be drawn Super-Deformed in one issue, and with human proportions in another. This was the least of the comic's problems.
In the second story-arc of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) Luna sports her Season 1 appearance in spite of the series taking place after Season 2. Colorist Heather Breckel says this is story related, however, and she has her post-"Luna Eclisped" look on the main cover for Issue #8.
Paperinik New Adventures: Over twenty artists worked on it and no one did two issues in a row. Lyla is the most extreme case: she has been depicted from extremely sexy, especially drawn by Sciarrone, to slightly macrocephalic (in the first issue) or an Amazonian Beauty. Generally the Sciarrone's version is the most used (and the favorite among PK fans).
The color of The Phantom's bodysuit varies greatly depending on which country the comic is published. In some it's gray, or purplish-blue, or green, or red. That's right, the Ghost who Walks sneaks up on his foes in a bright red body stocking. Ninjas have nothing on his skill.
Her '50s comic was notorious for changing her appearance even in the same story. She would change from a blonde to brunette, and her face and chest changed from panel to panel.
While her Most Common Superpower has remained relativity consistent, the height that goes with it has changed radically. In her earlier comics she seemed fairly short - maybe 5'2" (1.6 m). In modern era even her WW2 version is about 6' feet tall and much more modelesque.
Ever since the 90s Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch has been a black cat; however whether he's completely black or two-tone, and exactly how the markings are, differ. Likewise Sabrina has gone through various hair lengths in the last 20 years but Archie has gone back to the original bob haircut.
The Sandman (1989). This does make a bit of sense, considering it's stated early on that everybody who perceives the Endless see them a little differently. However, the way this attribute works is sometimes inconsistent. In the first volume, when he meets Nada in Hell, Dream still has his trademark chalk-white skin, only with African-style facial features. When they meet again in volume 4 he suddenly becomes black.
The titular duo of Sinister Dexter have undergone a massive amount of redesigns over the years, as each artist is allowed to put their own personal stamp on the character designs. The only consistent elements is that Sinister always wears shades, and Dexter is extremely dark, with white eyes and the "Sony" (later "Fony") logo from his headcase tattooed over his left eye. Beyond that, they've run the gamut from heavily-muscled 80's-style street toughs to normally-proportioned slick businessman-looking types, their outfits ranging from bright and garish colours and styles to darker, muted and more realistic ensembles. Sinister, in particular, has been subjected to a whole host of appearance changes, his hair colour going from red to dirty orange to blonde to purple, and his look has ranged from "badass clown" to "leather-wearing villain from an 80's sci-fi movie" and everything in-between. One early story even had him sporting a Glasgow Grin, purely because the artist could.
Depending on who's doing the penciling the characters will either have four or five fingers. Patrick Spaziante (who did most of the covers) tends to do five. It happened to the Overlander race with such frequency that, when Station Square made its appearance, they Hand Wave the mistakes by saying that they were descendants of humans.
How the Modern Era Sonic's quills were drawn varied a lot, especially in the months after the reveal and the switch-over. A lot of times, his quills were drawn exceptionally long and sometimes not long at all.
There's also how females that aren't Amy Rose and Rouge the Bat are drawn. Are they SEGA-isque? Are they more human-like? How much clothing do they wear? Sally and Bunnie are easily the worst offenders of the bunch, with Sally's proportions and fur varying and Bunnie becoming more like the "Sax Cymbal" she's depicted today, her robotic parts slimming out and her front being modified from just her body fur to an actual leotard.
Poor Elias Acorn was subjected to this. Ever since his first appearance in the comic his hair style would change constantly, and even his hair color would go from red to brown and back again.
Hershey the cat is sometimes about as tall as Sonic and Sally Acorn are, and sometimes as tall as an adult human.
Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis sometimes wear gloves and shoes and sometimes don't (once they wear clothes at all, anyway).
What color are everyone's eyes in the Sonic Adventure adaptation? Sonic is portrayed as having green eyes and Amy with brown eyes but everyone else is up in the air. Does Tails have brown eyes or blue? Are Knuckles purple or blue? Johnny and Lewis, blue eyes or not?
Early issues have Dr Robotnik's initial appearance vary between a design adapted from the Sonic 2 cover art and sprite, and Richard Elson's own design that combined the Sonic 2 design with elements from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog design. The latter became canon until the Adventures design was fully adopted.
Early issues also vary on the design of the Emerald Hill Zone, from being closely based on the game's version to being a generic grassy field.
Super Duck has been subjected to this, most obvious in his girlfriend Uwanna, whose depictions range from towering over Super Duck himself, to a girl the same size as him.
In the Star Wars comic crossover series Vector, main character Celeste Morne went from looking like this◊ in the first issue of the series, to looking like this◊ in the final issue.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures April O'Neil started out looking like her cartoon counterpart, but as the years went on her appearance began to vary, her hairstyle was always changing, and in some issues she looked like Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
The various Transformers comics constantly have characters switching between designs - be it the cartoon design, the model they were supposed to work from but tweaked, or art based on the toy but one artist using a different version. Sometimes, UK-written stories have slightly different color schemes from the US-written ones. The most egregious modern examples from IDW's series are The Transformers: All Hail Megatron (G1 designs vs. designs based on newer toys vs. the designs used in Simon Furman's books) and the movieverse version of Arcee (goes from looking like her unused Movie 1 design to looking like Transformers: Energon Arcee and back, until Revenge of the Fallen gave us a new official design.)
The post-AHM Transformers comics are an even better example. In the ongoing series, Bumblebee had his E.J. Su design with Don Figeroa's current movie-inspired high detail style. But in the Bumblebee mini-series, running concurrently with the main book, Bumblebee is drawn with his G1 cartoon character model. Blurr is shown to have adopted an terrestrial vehicle mode in the ongoing series, but in a continuation of the very same scene at the beginning of issue 2 of the Bumblebee mini-series, he's shown with his Cybertronian vehicle mode! Artistic license is one thing, but swapping character models is going a little too far. It's gotten where each artist uses his preferred look for the characters, and to the Pit with what they looked like last issue.
And then you have Rumble and Frenzy, who can suddenly swap colors in between (or even during) stories - see the FIRRIB page on TFWiki.net for more.
Once James Roberts and John Barber took over the G1 books, designs largely became consistent across artists, only changing when there was an in-story reason for it. Unfortunately, this led to a different problem becoming apparent; while the main artists like Alex Milne and Nick Roche had experience with drawing robots and created lavish designs with tons of unique flourishes, many of the fill-in artists like Livio Ramondelli or Agustin Padilla either don’t have that experience or struggle to translate the designs into a more simplistic style. This led to more than a few oddities, like the short and stocky Swerve suddenly being the same size as the towering and gangly Whirl, or Cyclonus suddenly having a humanlike face instead of his trademark oni-mask look. Things got even worse when the fill-in artists made designs themselves, which often forced the main artists to totally rework said designs so they wouldn’t stick out like sore thumbs. Take, for instance, Ramondelli’s strange, abstract design◊ for Zeta Prime and compare it to the reworked version◊ Alex Milne made for Zeta’s later appearances; the overall idea is the same, but the details vary so much that they could easily be mistaken for different characters.
In X-Wing Rogue Squadron, Huff Darklighter is a large, clearly overweight older man, balding but with long straight hair, also argumentative and contrary, particularly with the Rebels. In Darklighter, Huff is a slim older man with a full head of curly hair, a neat beard, and a decidedly more Rebel-loving bent.
In the first set of The Thrawn Trilogy comics, the Noghri, alien commandos that can and have passed as Jawas or children, are depicted as hulking behemoths. The other comics promptly changed back to how they were described in the novel. And in that first set, Wedge had black hair. Everywhere else, it's brown.
In the same series, is Fel's build massive or slim? For that matter, what's his chosen formalwear, New Republic or Imperial with Rebel crests? Is 'Doc' Ceresi big and stocky, or your standard tiny female Twi'lek? Is Plourr an Amazonian Beauty or not? Is Isardyoung-looking◊ or not◊?
Bothans have variously been drawn as looking more like lions, horses, or goats.
Vampirella: Vampirella's outfit is sometimes drawn as a one-piece, form-fitting swimsuit with a massive Cleavage Window and open back, but other times as a tiny, physics-defying strip of fabric that pretty much only covers her nipples and crotch. Her boots vary in length from over-the-knee to only covering half her ankles. When she develops wings, they either sprout out of her shoulder blades or her arms change into wings instead. Of course, their size varies as well, from itty bitty wings that would never be able to get off the ground to absolutely enormous ones that could easily lift up a human body. Her body type fluctuates between voluptuous and muscular, and some artists give her a very youthful, almost teenage appearance while others draw her as a grown woman.
says this is story related, however, and she has her post-"Luna Eclisped" look on the main cover for Issue #8.
