Are newspaper comic strip characters three-dimensional?

[TheBryceKrispy]

Are newspaper comic strip characters three-dimensional?

Update: I mean three-dimensional characters as in writing.

[qwerty]

Well technically all comic characters are 2-dimensional, but I'm going to assume you mean "are they drawn as if 3-dimensional / does the comic artist think of them in a 3-dimensional way when drawing them".

I'd say both yes and no, and it depends on the strip.

Even if you're drawing a super simplified character, you can't really draw a human without having some level of understanding of its 3-dimensional form and how to translate it to the 2-d paper.

On the other hand, a lot of newspaper strip styles are based more off of abstract (and 2-dimensional) shapes rather than actual human anatomy. The medium kind of lends itself better to simplistic art styles without a lot of shading and depth (due to the lack of space on the page), which is probably the reason for this tendency towards abstraction.

[baasinsimple]

I think it'd be more suffice to say that if your talking about character writing, depends on the strip. If it was garfield's middling years then yes. Jon becomes a 3-dimensional character but that's usually a result of the cartoonist getting bored. Most of the time they're actually 1-dimensional sense they also have little depth and emotional range.

[andrew17]

Depends on the comic strip. The cast of Doonesbury have 50 years of backstory behind them and have become fully fleshed out characters - though they do have that problem common to long running soap operas that there is no way to easily jump on board and instantly know who everyone is. On the other hand, Mallard Fillmore is still struggling to reach his first dimension.

[TheBryceKrispy]

I should have been more clear. 3-dimensional as in writing.
a one-dimensional character is a character that lacks depth and who never seems to learn or grow.
A two-dimensional character lack depth and has few identifying features and not much of a personality.
A Three-Dimensional Character is one that has depth, learns/grows, and has a personality.

[qwerty]

Ah, I had totally forgotten about the writing sense X).

I think generally newspaper strip characters tend to be rather flat - again, I think the medium lends itself towards this somewhat, since the personalities need only be developed far enough to create humor on a daily/weekly basis. I imagine it's somewhat more difficult to develop complex characters with that restriction of having to have a punch line in every strip, but some people do manage.

I think the comedy genre itself might have a tendency towards flatter characters, with the humor revolving around exaggerated one-dimensional personalities.

For example, Dilbert has: a depressive guy (Dilbert), a lazy guy (Wally), an angry woman (Alice), a stupid / angry guy (Boss), a megalomaniac dog (Dogbert), a cruel/sadistic cat (Catbert), a naive intern (Asok). The fact that their personalities are all very straightforward helps accentuate the humor, so developing them into 3-dimensional characters would probably be counterproductive.

[bear1]

I think you can't generalize that since there are different types of Newspaper strips.

The Gag-a-day strips tend to be rather one dimensional, maybe two dimensional at best.
They are just meant to deliver a joke or, like with 'Mallard Fillmore', a political point. Therefore character depth or development is not needed.
However, the drama strips tend to offer more complex characters. (I think a good example is 'Dick Tracy')

There are also nice in between strips which offer character driven humor. 'Breaking Cat News' comes to mind, which is a gag-a-day strip, but yet it offers nice character development (as much as the format allows it, that is) and their character cast offers more than just 'cookie cut out' characters while still making use of such elements here and there.
I think it's fair to say that strips like this have three dimensional characters or at least two dimensional characters, which are on their way to become three dimensional.

[crayon_witch]

Most of them, no, because the format is usually used for jokes, like gag-a-day on Tapas. With such little space available and the disadvantage of readers not being able to look at previous strips, it’s harder to execute more in-depth storytelling than that. Calvin and Hobbes got pretty deep sometimes, though!

[OttoGruenwald]

Well generally no because they're usually short episodic gags.

[mrtoontastic]

Usually it depends on the strip in question. It's not a bad thing, no no no, but it's sometimes easy to point out (especially if you're one of those serious writers....)

Two-dimensional/One-Dimensional comic strips usually include funny ones like: Garfield (That's the major one), Peanuts (some of the cast), Marmaduke, B.C. (sometimes)

Three Dimensional ones include ones like those of Peanuts (some of the cast), Marmaduke, Family Circus, some of the classic Disney Comic strips, Blondie, Calvin and Hobbes, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Astrix and Obelix, B.C. (sometimes), Dick Tracy.

All of which are wonderful newspaper comics I can think of, but each with their own moments of two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters.