I'll be frank, I still am a BIG fan of the cartoonseries Daria and I have produced many fan artwork and fanfiction story over the years.
A large portion of the Cast of Daria, Daria herself is the girl with the green jacket and the big round glasses
Daria in my anime influenced style
I brought my first erotic Daria comic forwards in 2003 making the transition from writing fics to drawing full comics in my own manga-influeced style where I combined sexy situations with humor and the typical deadpan of the real series. I figured it was time to take a look back at how I came into my own doing those comics.
The big question during those years was why I insisted on drawing the stories manga-style. This picture will answer that.
Because it enables me to give the characters facial expressions that the original style wouldn't let me do. And it also enables me to make the female characters look more attractive, not in the least Daria herself looks more like a young woman in my stories than she did in her own show.
2003: "All Natural Behavior"
Lawndale Lions Quarterback and village idiot, Kevin Thompson.Call that one a toe-in-the-water. By then I had nearly completed my trasition into a Manga artist and with stories like "The Passion card" and "Sisterly love and care" succesfully tried my hand at drawing erotic stories with the exaggurated facial expressions and humor from that genre. "ANB" was me returning to Daria fandom. I saw it a challenge to not only put the characters in erotic situations but also to see if people would accept my use of a Manga type of artwork instead of how the characters look in the show. I wasn't the first though, Shaun Nakasone and Katie Cook preceeded me in Drawing Daria the Japanese way. But I went further by drawing a complete 31 page comic which I guess only Kevin Karnstens did before. His "deep Daria" comic however showed me on how NOT to do it. One of the things I hated about his works is that they showed no depth, it was just clothes off and screw. That was my first challenge, making a plot behind it the reasons why the characters were to shed their clothes. Looking back at "All Natural behavior" I must say that it's one of my weakest stories although I loved some of the humor in it. such as quarterback and village idiot Kevin causing a traffic accident by having his indicators say he's about to turn right and then turning left crashing in the car riding next to him.
2004 "The invitation Revised"I was on a roll in 2004, and after "All natural behavior" I decided to try my hand at a Colored Daria story. Looking back I find that plot-wise it's by far my weakest effort but art-wise I made a couple of gems, most notably Page nine, where as I drew, it all came together. I got Jane's facial expression exactly how I wanted it and the pose was a really difficult one but I pulled it off.
2004 "A shower, how relaxing"
Daria's mother HelenThis was my trying out techniques I discovered in a "how to draw Manga" book. Daria grabbing and twisting the knob to make the shower run is an example but also the poses she strikes taking her jacket, shirt and panties off come from that book.
2005 "Triple cross club"
Daria Morgendorffer, brainy teenager who devides the world into two: herself and the rest.For this one I decided to re-watch my old tapes to get Daria right because up to that moment I made her act out of character and I figured that to do the show I love so much justice I needed to get its lead character right. My setting was Daria at Raft discovering sex, dressing up and actually having fun at it. One of my key points in my stories from that moment on was that Daria and Jane would never lez out with each other. Re-watching "Is it fall yet?" made that the number one rule from that story onwards but as a kick to the shin of the people who were demanding me to draw the two of them in a Lesbian situation I had Daria end the story by saying "Tell you what if you're up to it I will introduce you to her." (The president of the Triple cross club) Looking back at it I say that this one has a lot of my finest artwork but I failed at making a canonical Daria.
2005 "Party at Lindy's"
Quinn Morgendorffer, Daria's younger sister, the Morgendorffer sisters are frequently at odd because they differ so much from each other, but they also are each other's most trusted allies.By that time I had learned that every character I use as a lead for a story comes a whole company of others. By putting Quinn in the lead I could thus use: Lindy, the Fashion club and Joey, Jeffy and Jamie. Possibilities to put those characters in a funny scene was too much for me to resist. It also posed a challenge to put Quinn in a situation where she finds romance in an environment where she was a fish out of water. This is also the story where I succeeded into making the canonical Daria I wanted to have in "Triple cross club" The conversation between the Morgendorffer sisters on page 28 and 29 and Daria earning money by telling the three J's where Quinn and her new boyfriend went to are the best examples of me finally nailing Daria.
Daria: Yes I know where Quinn went to and I am willing to tell you guys but only if I'm properly motivated to do so.
Joey: NAME YOUR PRICE!
So in hindsight I'm pleased with how this one turned out because of me nailing Daria. There are some glitches in the dialogue though that I could've done better.
2006 "Growing pains"
Daria's best friend Jane. Snide and resentful and at the same time also artistic.This one was a tough one. Because I lost much of the original script and thus typed what came to mind. The result was that I had a story with some of my best humor and artwork with the worst dialogue. I always felt like it was a missed opportunity when I drew the final scene of this story. So to put my mind at ease I completely re-did the story, changing almost the entire dialogue making the statement I wanted to make with the story more valid than in the original version. Inspiration came from my then girlfriend who told me of her late growth spurt where she grew out of her clothes almost over night. Inspired by this I began to think of who I could put in such a situation and decided to use Jane. Jane is tomboy how would she cope with having the body of an adult woman and most of all how would the rest of the world cope with it? I nailed Jane's acidic sense of humor in this one.
Girl: So tell me does all that extra weight cause you backaches?
Jane: (Fake sweet voice filled with venom) Well if you REALLY want an answer to that question I will gladly demonstrate to show you...
Girl: (Suddenly extremely worried) D..."demonstrate" what are you up to?
Jane jumps and clamps on to the back of the girl, who buckles under Jane's full weight.Girl: NO! GET OFF! YOU'RE TOO HEAVY! LET GO OF ME!
Jane: So tell me, does all that extra weight cause YOU any backaches?
2006 "Big sister's great adventure"
Daria's other best friend, Jodie Landon. A straight A student with some very sharp wit.I love this one because it's a Daria story wihout Daria appearing in it. This was also by far the most challenging one I did because I used a character that wasn't even featured once in the show and only appeared in "the Daria database". I knew NOTHING about Rachel Landon except that she hated her little brother for stealing away her thunder of being the baby in the family. So with that in mind I started working on a script in which Rachel became a rebel and actially joined Forces with Evan. I also really wanted to do a story with cheerleaders because it enabled me to used the idea of couples going into the storage room of the school gym to make out. When I read the story now I really like how Rachel turned out, she's a brash and sassy girl who takes no message to Andrew and Michelle's high strung ways and I really loved the scene where Rachel shows Michelle her cheerleader outfit, I had so much fun drawing that one.
2007 "Through a webcam lens darkly"
Sandi Griffin, Quinn's "Best friend" and biggest enemy.This one was pure for the fun of it and it's the first story where the lead isn't one of the female characters. The inspiration came from something I saw on TV of guys sneaking in a webcam or a cellphone cam into a girl's room. But to make it a humerous story, I came up with the idea of using Sandi and Quinn's rivalry and Sandy's brothers who pay her to put the cam in Quinn's room and then twisting it again with Quinn finding the device and thinking that it's Daria's and thus puts it in her room. As for the boys, rather than portray them as sick perverts I wanted to have them grow affection for that girl with the glasses.
2007-2008 "The camp we used to fear"This is one of the most difficult ones I'm working on because I trying to find ways to combine Camp grizzly, Amelia and Link from "Is it fall yet?" into a coming of age story. I'm still busy with this one but I need to find the decisive element to pull off this story in a believable manner and with a lot of humor.
So keep your eyes open five years of drawing Daria comics and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
For those of you who want to read the stories, let me know and I'll provide the links.
