Growing The Beard / Webcomics

• 1/0 had no point save getting a girlfriend when it started, nor did Tailsteak have any art experience, and it shows. The reason there was No Fourth Wall was that Tailsteak never bothered to put one in, and found he couldn't do much in the way of jokes with one. Then he started taking real advantage of its absence, using it for creative character interactions. Then said characters started spiralling out of control in just the right ways.
• 8-Bit Theater started out kind of shaky and awkward, as none of the characters really settled into their grooves. This is the earliest comic where the writing started picking up, with more original character-based humour. The art improves massively over the Garland arc.
  • By the time the party gets to Elfland and the comic began to play up Elven sociopathy, it started to really find its tone of humour.
• Achewood began life as a hit-and-miss gag strip about a house full of "alive stuffed animals," but with The Party arc it began to develop into a complex, layered, plot-and-character-driven slacker epic.
• Though it took off quickly, the first few storylines of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja were rather different than the current blend of awesome and funny it is today. Chris Hastings himself advises new readers not to start with the first, Donald McBonald-centric story. The next two stories, while well-done and humorous, were essentially setting up the character and parodying the "pirates vs. ninjas" theme. The comic really hit its Cool Versus Awesome-plus-funny stride in the 4th story arc. Specifically on this page.
• Black Adventures really got its act together in the third chapter when the story became more tied in with the games and the writing got more consistent.
• The beginning of Bob and George is all but a mess. Random filler strips, jokes that don't quite take off, and the occasional hint that, at some point, there would be a drawn webcomic with Bob and George. Once the last part was completely eliminated and the "Just Another Day" arc started, it finally got into its true plot and humour.
• Boxer Hockey started off with sub-par to decent art, had a cast of generally cliche characters^note A dumb character, who shared a nickname with the author, the jerk, The Big Guy, the Only Sane Man, and their coach., and sometimes relied on Black Comedy and gay jokes. During the strip's four-year life, Tyson Hesse, the author, attended college. Over the years, it resulted in the cast having heavy development, well thought-out jokes, and absolutely beautiful art. Tyson Hesse is now considered a professional artist, and is doing freelance jobs for Reverge Labs and Dark Horse Comics.
• Brawl in the Family stars various Nintendo characters in wacky situations, such as King Dedede in a parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. It started out as one-trick pony sketches on GameFAQs about Kirby eating things.
• Bug Martini started off as a slightly funny gag-a-day webcomic. Then Part 2 of the 2010 previews set up the style of a joke on each panel, marking the point when it became truly hilarious.
• Collar 6 had this twice over.
  • The first time was when the characters sat down and discussed their relationship, as well as the later half of the spank-off, setting them on the path to developing into fuller characters.
  • The second time was the events on the pony ranch, finally finding a balance of character interaction, bondage play, and exposition that the previous arc was criticised for lacking.
• The first 73 strips of Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures were a heavily disjointed affair with arcs that pretty much involved whatever the author felt like spoofing at the moment. The comic then went on a break for a year and returned with improved art quality, more distinctions in the characters' personalities, improved world-building, and a start of what at least somewhat resembled an actual plot.
  • Another case of this trope happened around strip 676. at which point many of the earlier goofier elements of the comic was phased out and the plot started taking itself more seriously.
• Dead of Summer grew its beard around the halfway point of Book 1, as they focused less on the Ludicrous Gibs and more on Character Development. The Art Evolution happened around that time too, resulting in more detailed, clearer drawings. The beard was fully grown by the time Book 2 rolled around; things soon became very character-driven. And then The Protomen show up.
• The Dragon Doctors: The strip began as a one-shot for a group of TF fetishists fans, and the apparent hasty writing of the first half of the first chapter reflects this. As the author begins fleshing out the world, the comic gets much more interesting.
• Go Get a Roomie! begins as a lighthearted gag-strip with some cheap humour centering around a polyamorous protagonist. The series then gains a Deuteragonist as a direct personality counter and the series takes off from there.
• El Goonish Shive started to grow the beard with the Sister arc and finished at the end of Grace's Birthday Party. During this time, El Goonish Shive found the mix of character drama, SF/fantasy, and humour that would define later arcs. By the end of Grace's Birthday Party, the artwork had been tremendously improved as well.
• This happens in Homestuck. The start of the story deliberately had a slow pace, involving a boy trying to handle his Inventory Management Puzzle. And then suddenly there's reality-altering video games. And then there's meteors. And then things get weird. The definite beginning of the comic's "beard" is the end of Act 3, when "[S]: Enter" displays just how incredible the flash format could be.
• A Loonatic's Tale began in 2007 as a comic the artist/co-writer drew in her spare time at school, with poor art and writing and awkward layouts that culminated in a style switch (including dropping colour from the pages) halfway through the third storyline. Then the comic went on a several-month hiatus during which the artist entered a few Original Character Tournaments, started attending art college, and generally worked on improving her craft. Now the comic is back in full colour, and both writing and art have greatly improved in quality.
• Megatokyo starts off as a fairly standard four-panel comic with two video game guys getting into hi-jinks. It takes about fifty strips before it gets into the ridiculous multi-person romance and off-the-wall zombie-robot-Godzilla adventures at the same time.
• The Order of the Stick grew a beard over the course of the second arc, which saw it move away from its origins as a series of gags about D&D rules and add character development and a more complex plot, as well as improved art. Improvements continued through the third story arc, and it's been fantastic ever since then.
  • The trope is also lampshaded: upon his reunion with Haley, Elan demonstrates unusual (for him) wisdom regarding outer appearances, and Haley mentions that she half-expected him to "grow a beard". And he has, figuratively speaking.
• Our Little Adventure, about 80 or so pages in. The characters look less wonky and the story starts to seriously move.
• The exact moment Penny Arcade started being funny can be narrowed down somewhat definitively to "Claw Shrimp." It's definitely the oldest strip you'll hear referenced.
• While writing the first few comics of Princess Pi, Peter Paltridge seemed conflicted between his desire to give Princess Pi genuinely threatening villains, and his desire to make her adventures as random as possible. This resulted in comics that went too straightforward to allow randomness, and some where the randomness overpowered the conflict. He claimed to have eventually found a "groove" with "Princess Pi vs. The Alpha Bitch". Indeed, the story does an entertaining job of creating random threats without losing sight of the main conflict.
• Although Problem Sleuth was pretty funny when it started out, the gradual Art Shift, combined with the accumulation of parody Solve the Soup Cans puzzles (each more impenetrably complex than the last), strange characters, downright bizarre game mechanics, Lampshades, Chekhovs Guns and Crowning Moments eventually elevated the series to absurd levels of awesomeness by the time the Final Boss Battle rolled around.
• MS Paint Master Pieces began pretty much as a standard Mega Man sprite comic. Around the attack of Wily, it began to take itself seriously and became a full-blown story.
• The 500th strip of Questionable Content is universally recognized as a turning point, when the strip began focusing less on one-off gags and introduced some real character development and plot arcs. The art was also steadily improving throughout the series.
• Romantically Apocalyptic starts out as being absolutely hilarious and the artwork is absolutely amazing. However, the comic gets even better during the second and third arcs, where it becomes genuinely dramatic while also being hilarious, the plots get even more creative, the characters are given more depth, and the artwork getting even better.
• Some fans would state that Slightly Damned grew the beard when Rhea and Buwaro escape from the Ring of the Slightly Damned and meet Kieri. This is not only when the storyline really picks up, but when the improvement of the artwork starts becoming more noticeable.
• Schlock Mercenary, While funny from the get-go, was plagued by its mediocre artwork and short story arcs which did little to advance the overall plot. Then came book three, which introduced Ceeta, established General Xinchub as a popular recurring villain, saw a significant improvement in the artwork and character depth, and far longer and more developed story arcs.
• Sluggy Freelance grew a beard with the Vampires arc, the first truly serious one in the series, and while it still maintained the humour that was popular with fans, it also showed that it was able to sustain drama and tension.
• The Story of Anima starts with a nifty Action Prologue with lots of dynamic fight scenes, "The Executioner" arc marks a major improvement in art quality, more focused storytelling and an action sequence that tops anything that came before it.
• Twisted Kaiju Theater started as a small-time comic strip with endless toilet humour. It ended up becoming one of the longest-running webcomics ever and dealing with many dark, mature themes while never losing its comedic value.
• Two Evil Scientists started as a fairly decent Sonic and Mega Man crossover comic, with the first few arcs showing the heroes of the Sonic and Mega Man series battling the titular scientist's robots. The story took a unique turn following the Metal Devil arc, and the quality's been going up since then with no sign of stopping.
• When The Way of the Metagamer started, it was a shameless The Order of the Stick ripoff, with one-dimensional characters and lacking originality or humour. The creator realized this and put in a scheduled Series Hiatus while he improved his skills. After the hiatus, the plot (yes, there was one in the beginning) picked up, the readers get some idea of what is going on, there is an epic showdown between Jane and Captain Obvious, and the series steadily became more Troperiffic, to the point where Trope-tan herself appears and then the story goes Off the Rails. However, after the time travel arc, the series has shaved its beard off, as the story came to a screeching halt.
• The Hyeongshin arc in Weak Hero is where the webtoon really starts to come into its own. The artstyle and characterisations are solidified, Rowan is introduced and Teddy undergoes a well-received Heel–Face Turn, the Yeongdeungpo Union are expanded upon, and Gray starts undergoing his character development and becomes more than just a cold-hearted Bully Hunter.
• xkcd started out as a merely okay collection of sketches and comics the author made when he was bored. Then, with comic #70 it finally grew into the intelligent gag strip we all know and love.
• Zap! starts out as a classic Space Opera Amnesiac protagonist origin story and slowly becomes an epic tale of mind-control backstabbing and various alien factions.

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