Eek & Meek

[nakak]

Eek & Meek is somewhat known for being a comic strip that changed their character's species from mice to humans. To give the idea how radical the changes were, here's the first week of the strip (well, strip #1 is not included, since I couldn't find that in the archive)

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/648/firsteekiz9.jpg


Here's the final two weeks of the strip, from March 2000 (two weeks because of the storyline)

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/4568/lasteeklu0.jpg

[Peter Paltridge]

For a strip I've never heard of, that seemed to last a while. The copyrights on the "mice" strips are from 1965.

How gradually did the transition take? Was there a point when they were humans in clothes with giant mouse ears and tails?

[nakak]

Eek & Meek ran from 1965 to 2000. It was distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Associations (a syndicate owned by United Media that distributes features to smaller newspapers for a low price)

It started as a mice with stick figure arms and legs.

The arms and legs were upgraded from stick to "thick" and thicker legs required Howie Schneider (the cartoonist) to give them pants. He started adding shirts to the characters, which made them essentially humans with mouse heads. Then, in 1982, he made the humans.

This is apparently not uncommon for Mr. Schneider. Uncle Bunty, seen in one of the "human" strip, was spun off into his own comic, The Sunshine Club (2003-present) and there was another species change. Uncle Bunty became a cat when he got his own strip.

So yeah, that's the rundown.

(PS, the characters never had tail)

[Dynamite XI]

I guess it makes somewhat more sense to change species when reusing certain characters in completlely different strips, but to do it in the same one is really sort of bizarre (nay, Kafkaesque).