Dasien - Author Profile

About Me
There's not much to say about me. I keep to myself, watch a lot of geeky scifi programs, and play video games. I'm unmarried, but I have a loving family, great friends, and two kitties.

I also maintain the website DesolateSky.com, for my buddy Mike.

Anything else you need to know about me, including my artistic influences, favorite shows, favorite music, etc., can be found at my MySpace page.

Superhuman Powers: Ability to create entire worlds with the aid of a thin graphite rod.
Source of Powers: Exposure to radioactivity that makes the right side of my brain invent silly characters.
Name Meaning: Named after US Astronaut Neil Armstrong.

About the Comic
Originally, Dasien (pronounced dah-SEE-ahn) started out a side-story to a completely different concept called the Malice Warriors. The Malice Warriors were a covert action team that fought international crime. The conceptual drawings, scribbled messes that they were, featured early versions of characters that would later appear in Dasien, such as Marshall Brody and heroic versions of characters who would later comprise the Crimson Gestalt. Yes, Lord Crimson was once a hero. Most prominantly, it featured a very special character named Brett Knight, who served as the main protagonist, although not necessarily the leader.

There never was an actual Malice Warriors comic. It seemed that I could never figure out how to write villain characters. At best, I had a number of drawings of them taking on Hydra rip-offs.

I kept expanding the hero roster of Malice Warriors, despite having no villains. At one point, I think the number of heroes was up to twelve. One of them was a female character who would become Brett's sister. Her name was Michelle Knight (an obvious homage to Knight Rider). But instead of giving Michelle weapons and covert gear, I went another route and made her a superhero! In fact, I completely separated her from Malice Warriors and decided she should have her own storyline. For some time, I believed that I could finish the Malice Warriors and add Dasien later as a spin-off. But obviously, this isn't what happened.

The name Dasien itself is a nonsense word. I wanted her to be a dashing superhero, and somehow I got Dasien out of it.

For reasons that I can only attribute to puberty, I took a rather sharp interest in drawing Dasien. ...over and over and over. I began losing interest in all my other characters and concentrated heavily on Dasien. While the tone of Dasien was to be fairly serious, the actual character was always intended to have a fun side. She'd have to to wear a costume like that! She needed to be more social and personal than the superheroes that existed at the time. There would be no teeth-gnashing or corny dialogue here! I wanted Dasien to be a real person.

The revealing costume was there from the beginning. Obviously, I was playing off of similarly-dressed superheroines, such as Wonder Woman, Psylocke, and particularly Ms. Marvel. The costumes I was designing at the time, however, were more based on clothing I was picking out of Frederick's Of Hollywood catalogs.

The next step was to give Dasien a suitable sidekick. I ditched the typical ward companion (i.e., Bucky or Robin) in favor of a combined Jimmy Olson/Lois Lane, because I thought it would be more natural for Das to have normal friends. This would eventually become Parker Lynn Bailey. I've always had a soft spot for girls in glasses, so I designed Parker to resemble Jan Smithers, the actress who played the adorably shy and frumpy Bailey on WKRP In Cincinatti . (I'm not a fan of Loni!)

Parker became a tomboy almost by necessity, because she needed to provide balance to Michelle's more feminine charm. To contrast Dasien's bright and flashy appearance, I gave Parker a suit and tie in a much cooler color scheme. I didn't know where to go with Parker's personality, so I decided to make her a lesbian, believing I could play something off of that. After fleshing her character out a bit, however, I considered that I could probably just make her straight, but it seemed unfair to take her sexuality away from her. These days, Parker is my mouthpiece, and whenever I have something to say, Parker is the one who says it.

With Dasien, I had the same problem with creating villains. Any time I would sketch out a character design I liked, I would make that character a hero. Additionally, I didn't know much about the psychology of criminals, so every idea, no matter how hard I tried, ultimately proved unsatisfactory. The first villains I actually liked were two catburglars named Goldie and Rouge. Goldie was the bumbling boss villain with Rouge being the intellectual lackey. Eventually, they would both become underlings of the Gooch, who is admittedly not one of my more original characters.

When I started high school, I pretty much abandoned Dasien. I believed that I would never have the skill or the means to write and publish a full treatment of Dasien, so the project would be abandoned for nearly ten years. Over those ten years, however, the internet was born and webcomics became a possiblity. Suddenly, I had my outlet to do Dasien a decade's worth of inspiration to draw from. As I refamiliarized myself with my characters, though, I found it necessary to reconceptualize much of Dasien.

I started with Dasien's costume. I wanted something a bit more functional than the previous incarnations, so I simplified it. To resolve the origin of the suit, I decided that it should be a standardized costume that other heroes in Dasien's world also wear.

Her powers were tricky for me, because I had never clearly defined them. At different times, she could fly, shoot projectiles, and even form a force field, and I actually liked all of those ideas. However, I limited her to just strength and speed after realizing that the villains needed to be a threat. I also limited her powers so as to attribute them to virus vectors, which differentiates Dasien from most mythological or radiation-based superhero origins. However, I've never ruled out the possibility of expanded abilities.

To resolve the villain issue once and for all, I decided to stop playing favorites with my characters and just make some villains out of my previous hero characters. I picked three characters out of Malice Warriors and renamed them Lord Crimson, Maroon, and Scarlet. Scarlet was later merged with one of my catburglar characters and renamed Rouge, so as not to be confused with a character from a certain 80s cartoon show. Two new characters were then added to this group, and they became the Crimson Gestalt!

Eventually, Dasien's new world would be populated by characters returning from Malice Warriors, such as Marshall Brody, characters returning from the original Dasien, such as Parker, Gooch, and Goldie, and entirely new characters, such as Lionel Stag, Ally Bromsfeldt, and Dave. The world of Dasien continues to grow as I progress along at a dopey pace. The comic updates slowly, but there is a complete story in mind, and eventually this will all find its way into printed form.