Those appear to be two contradictory sentences. Faye has grown and worked on her problems - I think that may well be the definition of "character development". The same can be said for Dora, Hannners, Raven has gone back to school, Steve has gone through a few transformative relationships, Wil grew up, Sven had an epiphany, .... damn, the only character that hasn't really changed is Marten's. And Pintsize's.
People don't maintain a consistent personality. Not in real life, and that's one of the things I love so much about this comic!
Not really. If someone "develops" into a character that has no connection to their previous incarnation, I feel fairly comfortable calling that disappointing. Real character development is supposed to take the character's past and build upon it, not toss it in the incinerator in favour of writing whatever new idea is in your head.
The problem here is that the characters often
didn't go through experiences which altered their character in most cases. They just woke up one morning after enough time was passed and decided to act like they were suddenly a changed person. The "development" happened by the wave of a magic wand, somewhere off screen. A notable exception would be Sven. He did develop based on events depicted in the comic, and I'd have to say that was done well.
Dora is one of the worst victims. She has a different personality every time she appears in the strip. Then there's the others like Marigold, Dale and Hannelore who have basically the same personality but expressed in vastly different ways without any visible development.
It's why I said I enjoy QC on the basis of whatever story arc is happening now, and pretend like the past didn't happen. That's what the strip
wants for me to do a lot of the time. I expect it's just natural when writing a bit of a story every day for like... 10 years?