Such is the evolution of an adventurer.note
Examples of Art Evolution in comic books.- Naturally, every Golden Age character has gone through this. For example, Superman's emblem wasn't quite the shape we know today when he first came out. Also, Batman's costume was modified a lot in the first few stories and, appropriately enough, it wasn't until Robin debuted that Bob Kane had come up with all the main elements of the design.
- Buddy Longway. Even if Derib's way of drawing landscapes has always been extremely detailed, his character design went from somewhat cartoonish to highly realistic and detailed during the years.
- Behold!
The exact moment Mickey Mouse's eyes changed in the comics! - Noticeable in The Beano when David Law was drawing Dennis the Menace (UK) the character actually grew over the years from a small child who looked about 8 to by the 70s the character was lanky almost teenage looking character. The character's design stayed constant when David Sutherland took over drawing him in the 70s and then finally the character was made smaller and younger looking in the 90s in time for the Animated Adaptation.
- Spider-Man: While Spider-Man's basic design has stayed pretty consistent, there have been a number of changes throughout the years. When he was first drawn by Steve Ditko, Spidey's eyes were much smaller, and he had web nets underneath his arms. When John Romita Sr. took over drawing the comic, the web wings grew smaller, and his eyes grew a little larger. By the '80s, the web wings were completely gone, and the eyes started being drawn absolutely huge compared to Ditko's art style. Today, the eye size still fluctuates from artist to artist, but hardly anyone includes the web wings. Also, his suit was red and black, rather than red and blue.
- Steve Ditko's work noticeably improved further into his run. When he was plotting his own stories, his work became more visual.
- John Romita Sr's work started out as a close copy of Ditko's, featuring nine-panel pages and such. But as Romita grew more confident with his work and as Ditko's run was further back in the memories of readers, Romita began to space out his work a bit more, allowing for more visual panels, and eventually, Romita adopted his own style.
- John Romita Jr.'s work noticeably improved in the interim between his first run with Roger Stern and his second run after the reboot (mostly with J. Michael Straczynski).
- Todd McFarlane's work started out fairly standard until proportions and anatomy became more and more exaggerated, some would say for the worse. Erik Larsen followed a similar trajectory.
- Mark Bagley's issue as guest penciller, The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #345, was rather rough and the proportions were off and Bagley didn't quite have the character design right. But by the time he'd grown into his role as a regular penciller, his work was so iconic that it was featured on just about every piece of Spider-Man merchandise.
- Speaking of Spider-Man, Venom's design has truly evolved from its humble beginnings. Originally, Venom was bulkier than Spider-Man, but in a way that was plausible — he had the physique of a bodybuilder — and he had sharp teeth, but they were straight. Everything else is recognisably Spider-Man, particularly the eyes, which started out like Peter's. Over time, he got bulkier and bulkier, and went from "big guy" to "basically Bane" to "ogre in black suit", his teeth became more monstrous and the eyes became more sketchy. He also got an insanely long tongue that couldn't logically fit into his mouth and began constantly drooling. These days, the closest Venom has come to his more human appearance is when he was bonded to Flash Thompson.
- Craig Thompson. You can tell Blankets and Habibi are done by the same guy, but the difference in skill and execution is amazing.
- Archie Comics has gone through some serious redesigns over the past 50+ years. The art was simplified sometime within the 60s and occasionally Archie tries out a new design - to which they always return to the "classic" one in the end. In 2015 their main comic ended and a reboot launched, with a more contemporary art style.
- Asterix, changing drastically within the same volume at times. Notably, Asterix and Obelix both started off quite crude and lumpy-looking but got more rounded, cuter features (Obelix also traded pointed helmet horns for small nubby ones, lost his body hair, and stopped carrying an axe); Cacofonix was altered from an older man to look like he was in his late twenties or so, became much skinnier and more angular, and his hair went from a smooth bob to Barbarian Longhair with a sticky-up fringe and finally to an entertainingly anachronistic '70s rock star hairstyle; and Fulliautomatix completely changes in both face and body from a rather plain overweight late-40s man with blond hair, to a late-30s, muscular, proud-looking character with hairy arms and red hair (although it's inconsistent). He also stopped wearing a shirt and replaced it with a leather apron. Obelix's dog, Dogmatix, also goes from a squarer, more terrier-like look with drooping ears to a more anthropomorphised, Disney-like appearance with raised ears, within the same story.
- James Howard got his start working on The Astounding Wolf-Man and his growth as an artist is very evident. In the early issues his art was cartoony and character anatomy was a little odd. Yet he improved so that by the last issue he was using much more shadow and his designs were significantly more intricate and detailed.
- Phil Foglio's work on his own Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire can be seen to become more streamlined, distinctive and iconic with literally every single installment of the series.
- Cerebus the Aardvark faced a drastic improvement in its artwork over the first 50 or so issues as Dave Sim moved from aping Frazetta-style fantasy art and started developing his own style. When Gerhard started doing the comic's background art, freeing Sim to concentrate on the characters, the art improved again.
- Barry Windsor-Smith's art on Marvel's Conan the Barbarian went through an astonishing art evolution in a very short time, but this ultimately had a negative effect; Windsor-Smith felt that his increasingly detailed drawing deserved a higher page rate than he was getting (it was becoming harder and harder for him to keep up with a monthly schedule, which meant his improved drawing was actually costing him money) and Marvel wouldn't pay. He left the title after just a couple of years.
- Lady Quark first appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths as the sole survivor of another world where she was queen of the monarchy. Her appearance reflected this, and she looked like she was in her forties or early fifties. When she appeared in Starman, this appearance was kept. However, when she became a regular on L.E.G.I.O.N., she was drawn to look a bit younger. As the series went on, she was drawn to look younger and younger until it seemed like she was in her twenties or very early thirties. By Convergence: Supergirl Matrix, she looked like she was in her mid-twenties, at oldest.
- John Romita, Jr. saw his art style change drastically in the 1980s. When he started out, his style was closer to his father's, but by his run on Daredevil in the late 80s, he'd developed his own unique style, which is a bit blockier and chunkier. The differences really stand out on his work on Iron Man; a subtle evolution is evident between Demon in a Bottle and Doomquest, but jump to his return to the book for Armor Wars II years later and the difference is very clear.
- Druid City: The graphic novel series starts with a very simple, poorly penned style, done entirely with a computer mouse. The artist for the series originally wanted to place as many limits on himself as possible. The methods changed starting in Volume 2, where everything is drawn with a stylus and the artist has more experience with the personal style used in the series.
- The Wolfrider elves in ElfQuest were originally quite short and stocky, since their design was influenced by the elves in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. As the series went on the elves appeared to gain about 6 inches in average height. When the original series was reprinted by Marvel comics additional pages had to be added to fit Marvel's page count, and the difference in style between the old and new artwork is very noticeable. (The new pages were retained in subsequent reprints and the online edition).
- Steve Moncuse's art in Fish Police took a more "shiny" appearance when the comic changed from black-and-white to color upon moving to Comico. Interestingly, he kept the color-friendly style even when it moved to Apple Comics and reverted to black-and-white.
- Frank Miller appears to be a complete inversion of the trope, with his quality taking a nosedive between Sin City and Holy Terror. In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Miller made the effort to include detail and backgrounds. But after Sin City, Miller made all of his art resemble the gritty minimalism of that work at the expense of background, detail, realism, and eventually any sense as Sequential Art, while experimenting with... questionable new methods. Of particular notoriety was his use of cheap Photoshop effects as substitutes for backgrounds in The Dark Knight Strikes Again.
- In Generation X, Skin has the mutant power of extra skin that he can control at will, sort of a pseudo-Rubber Man. However, it left him grey-skinned and ugly in the beginning. But by the end of the book's run, he had this roguish handsomeness going on. It's never addressed in the books, but it's fun to imagine that as he found new ways to make his powers useful, he began altering his appearance, or that his improved self-image made him more attractive on the outside.
- Gold Digger has improved a lot over time, the linework improving very noticeably over the first 25 issues or so and continuing to get better in smaller ways, and the jump to color which started good and became incredible.
- Invincible started with Cory Walker, who has a simple, clean style. A few issues in, he is replaced by Ryan Ottley, who, at first, does a decent approximation of Walker's style, but as time went on, his style became a lot more dynamic and detailed.
- John Green's style changes from being semi-realistic to having a simple and cartoony style throughout volume 1 of Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden.
- The entire point of the "Mick McMahon Collection", a collection of Judge Dredd strips bagged with Meg 301, see to have been to illustrate just how much McMahon's art improved. "The Howler" is crude and blocky, and it's often difficult to tell what's supposed to be going on. "Voices Off", on the other hand, looks like it was done by a completely different artist; it's very detailed, infinitely more realistic, and also nicely fluid.
- Whilst Judge Dredd has had many artists over the years whose styles have evolved, the most noticeable example was Mick McMahon, who went from being forced to copy Carlos Ezquerra's style after the latter left Dredd, the emergence of his unique angular style would shape the art for years to come, particularly his now-iconic re-interpretation of Dredd's uniform.
- Ken Penders for Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), his earliest work resembled official artwork from SEGA, but later drifted towards a more personal style.
- When Knights of the Dinner Table debuted in SHADIS magazine, the artwork was, frankly, hideous. Even when it got it's own magazine it wasn't much better - the characters were usually just staring out into space, their mouths hanging wide open to disgorge their speech balloons. The positions of the characters were also extremely limited, due to it's nature as a Cut and Paste Comic. Now, the art has improved enormously. The basic character models are still the same, but the expressions look far more natural and varied, the environments and objects have more depth, and they have a far more flexible range of motion, from standing to driving to Flipping the Table.
- This also happened with Love and Capes, between the first appearance of Abby and Mark and just an issue later.
- Luther Arkwright: Especially notable between The Papist Affair and the later stories. Heart of Empire also used very different techniques than the earlier stories, besides being in full colour.
- The Mask, the original series' first album, illustrated by Dough Mahnke, goes through quite an evolution in its art and coloring style.
- Brazilian comic Monica's Gang has changed a lot in the decades, with the flatter heads with pointy cheeks◊ from the 60s eventually becoming the modern designs◊ with round heads and chubbier bodies in the 90s. Although many fans complain that in The New '10s, there seemed to be an inversion of the trope, as compared to hand-drawn◊, the current digital art seems made in an assembly line.
- Mortadelo y Filemón looked like this◊ in 1956. And this is the cover◊ for one of their latest books.
- Ibáñez art style evolved during the first 15 years of the series. At first, the strip was black and white, resembling the art style from the American cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s with some traits of French comic books. The character design was also different, with a Filemón that resembled Sherlock Holmes and a Mortadelo that had an umbrella and a hat from which he got his disguises. During this time, Ibáñez started to get more and more influenced by French and Belgium comic artists of the time, specially André Franquin. These influences got reflected in the series until the mid 1960's, when his own style got more or less defined.
- It's worth mentioning "El sulfato atómico", the series first 44-pages story released in 1969. The art style in this volume is the most detailed and elaborated Ibáñez has ever drawn, which is one of the main reasons why it is considered his masterpiece. However, putting that much effort in that art style turned out to be too time consuming, so Ibáñez decided to go back to his less-detailed style so he could focus on the humour gags and be able to release more volumes a year.
- Likewise fellow Anarctic series Ninja High School did so as well. Starting off from a look reminiscent of Golden Age comics to a more cartoony look giving the characters wider eyes and less thick outlines.
- Nodwick gradually got more stylised during its time in Dragon magazine. Most notably, in the early strips, Nodwick's nose and Piffany's glasses are both realistically sized. (One strip suggests Nodwick's nose has gained mass to balance out the stuff he's expected to carry on his back, and in an interview Aaron Williams says Piffany's eyes keep getting wider with shock at what her teammates get up to.)
- Parodied/Lampshaded in a Dork Tower strip celebrating Dragon's 30th anniversary. The strip purports to show how the three strips then running have evolved over the years. A genuine early Nodwick, crude stick figures that are supposed to be "early What's New?", and an "early Carson the Muskrat" ... who is actually Yamara.
- This can be semi-justified in Noob by the fact that it's set in a MMORPG and character designs imply that avatars gradually change their head to body ratio from "super-deformed" to almost normal-looking as they level up. Fantöm, however, is already at maximal level when the story starts and is first shown with a slightly muscular upper body. Later on, the upper muscles became much more impressive and his legs very thin. Ystos is noticeably subject to that too, but it may have been done one purpose as his player gets introduced in an unexpected real life scene and taking the opportunity to update his design was the best way to keep the reader from immediately realizing that it was him.
- Scott Pilgrim becomes much less scratchy and much more rounded, smooth and neat in later volumes. The characters also become a lot more comically expressive and chibi-esque.
- André Franquin's style evolved dramatically during his work with Spirou & Fantasio and Gaston Lagaffe.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage) has quite a gradually shift in art style going from issue to issue that by the time you reach the City at War arc, they look completely different from their first issue appearance
- This becomes a minor plot point in Teen Titans. In Raven's early issue appearances, she looked every bit like an average teenage girl. But George Perez gradually gave her sunken eyes, a gaunt face, and receded her hairline, giving her a darker and more sullen look. Cyborg notices this early in The Terror of Trigon saga when he looks through some old photos, and is the first to realize her demon father's influence is taking over. After Perez left the title for other works, his successor Eduardo Barretto drew Raven more like her earliest self (although after he left, other artists took her back to her gaunt appearance).
- Tintin improved enormously as Hergé developed his signature ligne claire style.
- The Walking Dead changed artists between volumes 1 and 2. And if you compare Charlie Adlard's art from Volume 2 to the art in the present day, that looks quite different as well.
- In the German comic Werner: Can be watched throughout Oder was? and over the course of the first eight books. The drawings got clearer and more detailed. Eiskalt! let a shade of gray enter. Some stories from Normal ja! on were inked, yet still remained grayscale. Ouhauerha! was the first book in color, and when its successor Wer bret hat Angst! was released, the art had evolved so much that people decided this wasn't the Werner they knew and loved anymore, also because hardly anything was actually drawn by Brösel hielf anymore rather than the staff of artists he had hired meanwhile.
- Zipi y Zape: Compare this and this.
