History EarlyInstallmentWeirdness / ComicStrips

** A few strips in the first year don't feature Garfield at all, including the aforementioned "guy gets the girl in the end" strip, and another where Jon ogles a magazine centerfold. There have been other strips not to feature Garfield over the years, but they generally involve a "wacky" character (like a date or Jon's family) that Jon or another character can play StraightMan to (the two aforementioned strips do not have that dynamic).
*** This is due to the fact that Garfield actually started out its life as an earlier strip by Davis called Jon, which was more focused on Jon Arbuckle rather than Garfield, but had a good amount of the same characters.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Blondie}}'' :
** When the strip began, the main character was actually Blondie, rather than Dagwood, and explored class divisions, since Dagwood was actually an upper class guy, while Blondie was middle class, Dagwood's parents disapproving of the relationship, and Dagwood even going on a hunger strike to make his parents give their blessing for the marriage, but was disinherited instead. After this change, Blondie and Dagwood gradually switched roles, Blondie becoming the level headed sensible one, while Dagwood became the big source of comedy for the strip.

** The original lead characters besides Charlie Brown were Shermy and Patty, not to be confused with Peppermint Patty. And even when some of the iconic characters were introduced, their characterizations were quite different. For instance, Linus, Lucy, and Schroeder all entered the strip as toddlers. Linus originally was a hyper-intelligent youngster instead of an InnocentProdigy, and Lucy a precociously cute CloudCuckoolander instead of a bossy JerkWithAHeartOfGold. By TheSixties, the personalities had settled into place.

** In Susie's first appearances, she and Calvin both seem to internally acknowledge that they have crushes on each other underneath their insults and animosity. This soon changes with Susie switching her affection to Hobbes and Calvin panicking over even the thought that Susie likes him.

* ''ComicStrip/Blondie'' :

* ''ComicStrip/Blondie'':

*** Roger went from being merely clueless and harried to rivaling [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] in the BumblingDad department.
*** Andy went from merely being concerned for her family's well-being to an exaggeratedly meddlesome and overly-strict disciplinarian. Also, she had a different haircut early on, but this was changed in the strip's first year to make her look less like Paige. Finally, she was originally established to be a newspaper columnist, but this was [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything abandoned after a few years]].
*** Peter's massive ego and exaggeratedly BigEater tendencies were not established until several years in. Before this he was just a normal teenage male.

** The early strips' humor also relied more on wordplay (in one early strip, Lyman jokes about watching a movie where a student puts a tack on his teacher's chair because he likes movies where "the guy gets the girl in the end"; another has Garfield calling a diet "'die' with a T") and topical or American cultural references (such as Creator/BrigitteBardot, ''Series/TheMickeyMouseClub'', UsefulNotes/{{Labor Day|InTheUnitedStates}}, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball college football]], and Weight Watchers, among other things). Garfield also uses the Indiana-centric expression "Lawsey" upon seeing Odie for the first time. Jim Davis gradually phased out wordplay and topical references in order to make the strip more marketable in other countries.

** There was considerable ArtEvolution: Garfield had a much fatter, uglier design that was strictly quadrupedal; Odie had black ears instead of brown ears (Jim Davis has implied that this change was done to make him look less like [[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Snoopy]]), and the art was looser with less of the cartoonish roundness it would take on in TheEighties.

** The [[https://garfield.com/comic/1979/05/28 May 28, 1979 strip]] has Garfield states he loves Mondays. A running gag throughout the series' run is that Garfield [[HatingOnMonday hates or has bad luck on Mondays]].
** The early strips' humor also relied more on wordplay (in one early strip, Lyman jokes about watching a movie where a student puts a tack on his teacher's chair because he likes movies where "the guy gets the girl in the end"; another has Garfield calling a diet "'die' with a T") and topical or American cultural references (early strips reference Creator/BrigitteBardot, ''Series/TheMickeyMouseClub'', UsefulNotes/{{Labor Day|InTheUnitedStates}}, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball college football]], and Weight Watchers, among other things). In at least one early case Garfield uses an ''[[https://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=1117 Indiana]]''-specific expression that often confuses anyone from anywhere else (it's Odie's first appearance so it's often reprinted). Jim Davis gradually phased out wordplay and topical references in order to make the strip more marketable in other countries.

** The early strips' humor also relied more on wordplay (in one early strip, Lyman jokes about watching a movie where a student puts a tack on his teacher's chair because he likes movies where "the guy gets the girl in the end"; another has Garfield calling a diet "'die' with a T") and topical references (early strips reference Creator/BrigitteBardot, ''Series/TheMickeyMouseClub'', UsefulNotes/{{Labor Day|InTheUnitedStates}}, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball college football]], and Weight Watchers, among other things). Jim Davis gradually phased out wordplay and topical references in order to make the strip more marketable in other countries.

** A few strips in the first year don't feature Garfield at all, including the aforementioned "guy gets the girl in the end" strip, and another where Jon ogles a magazine centerfold.

** Early on, Charlie Brown was originally a more cheerful child who liked to play pranks instead of the sadsack loser he'd be known for, and Snoopy was a non-sentient dog who didn't seem to belong to anyone in particular, as opposed to being Charlie Brown's pet and clearly sentient enough to enact his own myriad fantasies. Overall, the writing was a lot more lighthearted and of a "kids say the darnedest things" nature, as opposed to the drama, philosophy, religion, and fantasy of later strips.

** Many of the other iconic characters who would later become iconic members of the cast did not exist until well into the strip's run: Peppermint Patty (1966), Woodstock (1967), Franklin (1968), Marcie (1971), Rerun (1972), and the unseen Little Red-Haired Girl (1977).

* ''ComicStrip/FunkyWinkerbean'' was at one time ... we swear we are not making this up ... actually a ''humor'' strip, in contrast to the maudlin-drama-with-occasional-comedic-moments strip it later became. For the first two decades or so the main characters were permanent high schoolers who did not age (similar to the gang in ''ComicStrip/{{Archie}}''); in the early 90s, the characters were retconned so that Funky had graduated a few years previously and began aging in real time. In 2007, the strip suddenly jumped forward ten years (or at least the characters suddenly got ten years older).

* ''ComicStrip/FunkyWinkerbean'' was at one time ... we swear we are not making this up ... actually a ''humor'' strip, in contrast to the maudlin-drama-with-occasional-comedic-moments strip it later became. For the first two decades or so the main characters were permanent high schoolers who did not age (similar to the gang in ''ComicStrip//{{Archie}}''); in the early 90s, the characters were retconned so that Funky had graduated a few years previously and began aging in real time. In 2007, the strip suddenly jumped forward ten years (or at least the characters suddenly got ten years older).

** Pretty much everyone's characterizations got {{flanderiz|ation}}ed along the way. Of special note are the parents: Roger went from being merely clueless and harried to rivaling [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] in the BumblingDad department, and Andy went from merely being concerned for her family's well-being to an exaggeratedly meddlesome and overly-strict disciplinarian. Also, Andy had a different haircut early on, but this was changed to make her look less like Paige.

** The [[https://garfield.com/comic/1979/05/28 May 28, 1979 strip]] has Garfield states he loves Mondays. A running gag throughout the series' run is that Garfield hates or has bad luck on Mondays.

* ''{{ComicStrip/Dilbert}}'' was initially focused on the personal life of Dilbert and Dogbert, and was largely ''Garfield'' except with a dog who can talk. The office-based strips came a few months later and even then only occasionally appeared. They more or less took over a few years later.

** Eileen Jacobson and Morton Goldthwait, the respective rivals of Jason and Paige, did not appear until several years in. Also, Jason's teacher was an elderly woman named Miss Grinchley, who was soon replaced by a different teacher (Ms. O'Malley); this was justified in-universe by pointing out that Miss Grinchley had chosen to retire.

** One very early Sunday strip has a throwaway gag of Jason playing ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' with Peter, who has never been seen doing anything of the sort since (likely because it was before Jason's close friend Marcus was introduced).

** Jeremy's garage band originally had an African American drummer named Y.A., who [[FlatCharacter never really developed]] and [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome quit the band early on]]; he was replaced by Pierce, who quickly became an EnsembleDarkhorse.

* ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' evolved massively. Early on, it was a bunch of people living in a boarding house, with Milo as the main focus. Over time, many details were fine-tuned, many characters were dropped, and the strip shifted to the main focus of Milo, Binkley, and [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins Opus the penguin]]. (Berkeley Breathed himself has said that he felt the strip didn't really find its focus until Opus became a regular.) The art style was also very blobby and unrefined, with a different lettering style.
* When it started out in the 1960s, ''ComicStrip/TheFamilyCircus'' had a radically different art style; PJ didn't exist yet; and the dad was more of a stereotypical deadbeat dad/buffoon type who smoked, drank, and ignored his wife. His personality was overhauled to a more sympathetic figure, and the art was smoothed out come the 1970s.

[[caption-width-right:350:Left to right, up to down: [[https://garfield.com/comic/1979/05/28 May 28, 1979]]; [[https://garfield.com/comic/1981/09/07 September 7, 1981]]; [[https://garfield.com/comic/1996/10/21 October 21, 1996]]; [[https://garfield.com/comic/2019/09/29 February 18, 2013]].\\

%% Image pulled per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1564371158062032400
%% Please see the thread to discuss a new image.

[[quoteright:204:[[ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/garfiel_eiw_9878.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:204:Uh, Garf buddy, are... are you feeling all right?]]

** The character of Lyman (Jon's roommate and Odie's original owner) who slowly [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome vanishes entirely without explanation]].

** Sergeant Snorkel started out as long-faced and only mildly overweight, and he acted like an actual drill sergeant should. Most notably, during this period he never acted violently towards Beetle, instead issuing various standard army punishments, like peeling potatoes.

** Pretty much everyone's characterizations got {{flanderiz|ation}}ed along the way. Of particular note are the parents: Roger went from being merely clueless and harried to rivaling [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] in the BumblingDad department; and Andy went from merely being concerned for her family's well-being to an exaggeratedly meddlesome and overly-strict disciplinarian.

** Garfield's wildly different appearance in the early years of the strip: much fatter, more cat-like, and strictly quadrupedal.

** Several early strips used more than three panels, which rarely happened again after the first year or so.
** One early strip features Jon ogling a centerfold in a bachelor magazine; Garfield doesn't appear at all, nor is he even mentioned.

** Pretty much everyone's characterizations got {{flanderiz|ation}}ed along the way. Of particular note are the parents: Roger went from being merely clueless and harried to rivaling [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] in the BumblingDad department (and to TakingALevelInDumbass to the point that an online chess server matched him with a three-year-old); and Andy went from merely being concerned for her family's well-being to an exaggeratedly meddlesome and overly-strict disciplinarian who inflicts disgusting health food on her family and freaks out over the slightest deviations from her preferred methods.

** The art was quite different: heads were more oval-shaped, and three-fourths views were more common before the strip shifted to its famous minimalistic style.

** Most of the characters who would go on to become iconic did not appear for the first few years. The original lead characters besides Charlie Brown were Shermy and Patty, not to be confused with Peppermint Patty. And even when some of the iconic characters were introduced, their characterizations were quite different. For instance, Linus and Lucy entered the strip as toddlers, with Linus originally being a hyper-intelligent youngster instead of an InnocentProdigy, and Lucy originally being a cute CloudCuckoolander instead of a bossy JerkWithAHeartOfGold. By TheSixties, the personalities had settled into place.

* Early on, ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' was a lot more realistic and down-to-earth family strip that stood out with a still somewhat believeable dash of "nerd" humor. Throughout the 1990s, it began gradually shifting more and more toward [[DenserAndWackier a less reality-based strip]] with greater emphasis on "nerd" humor, pop culture references, satire, and [[BreakingTheFourthWall increasing damage to the fourth wall]]. The art and lettering were also a lot looser and more sketchy, as opposed to the stiffer, more "geometric" style the strip has had since roughly the mid-90s.

** One very early Sunday strip has a throwaway gag of Jason playing ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' with Peter, who has never been seen doing anything of the sort since. (This was likely because the strip predated the addition of Jason's BlackBestFriend Marcus.)

** The art was a a bit rougher early on, and some early strips had Jeremy serving as TheNarrator.

* Early on, ''ComicStrip/{{Pluggers}}'' was drawn and written by Jeff [=MacNelly=], creator of ''ComicStrip/{{Shoe}}''. After a few years, so many readers began submitting gags to him that he [[RunningTheAsylum made the gags entirely user-submitted]], and later handed art duties to Gary Brookins so that he could focus all of his efforts on ''Shoe''. (Brookins also became the artist on ''Shoe'' after [=MacNelly's=] death in 2000.)

* ''{{ComicStrip/Peanuts}}'' had a very different art style (far more 3/4 angles as opposed to the strip's signature style of only ever showing people from the front or side), far lighter humor, and a mostly different cast of characters (Shermy and Patty, not to be confused with Peppermint Patty). Charlie Brown was very different from the self-hating loser he'd later become: he was a cheerful kid who liked to play pranks on others and boasting about himself. Snoopy was just a normal dog, and he wasn't Charlie Brown's pet. Linus and Lucy didn't exist. (And even when they ''were'' added, Linus was a super-smart little kid as opposed to an InnocentProdigy, and Lucy was a wide-eyed CloudCuckoolander toddler before becoming her JerkWithAHeartOfGold self.)
* Early on, ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' was a lot more realistic and down-to-earth family strip that stood out with a still somewhat believeable dash of "nerd" humor. Throughout the 1990s, it began gradually shifting more and more toward [[DenserAndWackier a less reality-based strip]] with greater emphasis on "nerd" humor, pop culture references, satire, and [[BreakingTheFourthWall increasing damage to the fourth wall]]. The art was also a lot looser and more sketchy, as opposed to the stiffer, more "geometric" style the strip has had since roughly the mid-90s.

** One very early strip before the addition of Jason's BlackBestFriend Marcus has Jason playing ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' with Peter, something which Peter would never do once his character got more established.
* In the early ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'' strips, the art was less polished, and some characters were different. Jeremy's band had a black drummer named Y.A., who [[FlatCharacter never really developed]] and [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome quit the band early on]]; he was replaced by Pierce, who quickly became an EnsembleDarkhorse. Jeremy's mom was supposed to be a child therapist, but it was only brought up a couple times. His older brother, Chad, was originally a stereotypically "[[TheAce perfect]]" guy whose face was always blocked by word balloons, before being retooled into a more "normal" character who looked much like an older Jeremy with a goatee. A few early strips have Jeremy as TheNarrator, a trait which was quickly dropped.

* When it started out in the 1960s, ''ComicStrip/TheFamilyCircus'' had a radically different art style; PJ didn't exist yet; and the dad was more of a stereotypical deadbeat dad/buffoon type who smoked, drank, and ignored Thel. His personality was overhauled to a more sympathetic figure, and the art was smoothed out come the 1970s.

* Early on, ''ComicStrip/{{Pluggers}}'' was drawn and written by Jeff [=MacNelly=], creator of ''ComicStrip/{{Shoe}}''. After a few years, so many readers began submitting gags to him that he [[RunningTheAsylum made the gags entirely user-submitted]], and later handed art duties to Gary Brookins (who also took over on ''Shoe'' after Jeff's death).

** The series of strips with Uncle Max was intended to open up storytelling possibilities, but Watterson realized how awkward it was to have characters interact with Calvin's parents [[NoNameGiven without ever referring to them by name]] and dropped the idea; Max never appeared again in the comic's run.