There wasn't much comedy in her early portrayals, she was definitely shown to be a broken young woman who'd had a miserable life. Her initial portrayal was very stoic - any humour came from people trying to explain that, yes, just because you're 15 and have a three-figure killcount, it doesn't necessarily mean that every problem needs to be solved with a disemboweling. Crucially, it was never because she was a Sabertooth-like sociopath, 'kill whatever problem stands in your way' was literally how she'd been raised and her bluntness was simply her reacting 'normally' to any situation that caused her issues. Additionally, unlike the majority of those kind of archetypal characters, she wanted to learn how to be better. As messed up as her life was, she knew everything about it was wrong. Her early appearances were thematically similar to Wolverine's, unsurprisingly, the beast learning to be a man, but it was played for tragedy instead of badassitude, and for a long time, any time she had to kill, no matter how justified (and the vast majority of the time, it absolutely was), she was shown as having felt like she failed herself.