Creator Breakdown/Newspaper Comics


 * For Better or For Worse manages to subvert this, though arguably not for the better. Author Lynn Johnston started going through a mess of personal problems late in the comic's run. Her reaction to this, oddly enough, was to start writing material considerably less inflammatory and dramatic than what had made her famous. Her marriage falling apart apparently greatly increased her desire to see two characters finally getting married without all the usual hang-ups weddings in troperville are generally known for.
 * Then we got the ReFOOB, which was mostly reprints of earlier strips, with art and dialogue changed to cast the alter ego of Lynn's ex-husband in a bad light, and making it look like (even moreso than the first-runs) Elly is living a bored, insufferable existence with an uncaring husband and bratty kids. This is especially distressing as it literally rewrites history with a joyless existence.
 * Funky Winkerbean appears to be in one since it's been in a long spiral of depression ever since the main character's wife died of cancer (critics just replace the dialog with "Cancercancercancercancer"), to the point where the title character (who apparently isn't the main character) also has cancer, the charity set up in the name of the seceded character gets stolen (it gets returned), and the high school drama class is performing the play Wit, which the PTA thinks is just too much (as do the critics). Oh, and a dead Iraq war vet isn't dead after all and returns just in time to learn that a loved one has died (probably of cancer).
 * The artist's other strip, Crankshaft, went through a week-long breakdown after his father died: Flash-forwards show Crankshaft as pretty much catatonic, confined to a wheelchair and living in a nursing home. At least his nurse was nice and took him out to see a ballgame (that was rained out). Since this is a strip where characters grow older, this has disturbing implications for Crankshaft. The next week featured Crankshaft being saved from a snake bite from his son-in-law's mother's yappy dog; it got better and so did the comic strip.
 * Another Batuik strip, John Darling featured a shock ending where the title character was gunned down by an unknown assailant in the next to last episode; the final strip is his stunned colleagues crying silently around his grave.
 * Spoofed in Jeff Kinney's novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid, in which the quest for a new cartoonist for the middle school newspaper was due to this. Wacky Dawg, according to the narrator, was originally a funny strip but the creator started using it to "handle his personal business" and was subsequently fired. The sample strip the reader sees has the eponymous dog, instead of saying something funny, asking the creator's girlfriend to forgive him for kissing one of her friends and reminding a guy who owes the creator money to pay up.
 * The Argentinian cartoonist Quino, after making Gallows Humor strips to cope with the repressive rule of the Military Junta in the 70s and 80s, suffered from this in the 90s and early 2000s after Argentina suffered the worst economic crisis it had faced in its history. This strip shows one of its lowest points: In it, government spokesmen proudly announce that the nation's infant mortality is among the highest of the world and that the viewers should feel proud of figuring in such notorious scale. The last caption says: "Note from the author: This strip which does not intend to be funny, was drawn with anger, impotence and a lot of sadness. Quino".