The Story of TAODAN It all started with a joke. A long and drawn-out inside joke, but a joke nonetheless. Jonathan and I were working together at our high school over the summer of 2002, and we had plenty of time to hang out and talk. The one major theme that we discovered was that most of our conversations often involved our mutual good friend Dan in some way. The rumors are true. Dan really is crazy and probably borderline insane. Don't get me wrong. He's also a very good friend. He's just crazy. Anyway, during a breaks at work, either Jonathan or I would relate our latest Dan-based story. We'd usually get a good laugh out of it, and that was it. As the summer went on, such stories (both recent and older) were told on a near daily basis. We started a running list of all of the crazy things that came up over the summer. We soon started considering methods of sharing the hilarity with the rest of our friends. The inspiration for creating a comic came rather suddenly. A combination of my liking of IanComix and our co-worker's own comic based on her high school years planted the idea for a comic in my head. Towards the end of June, Jonathan and I began planning for "The Adventures of Dan." We had all of the comedic material we would ever need, but there was still a problem. What about the art? I personally have zero artistic talent, so I assumed that Jonathan would be taking on this task being the far superior artist. However, we finally agreed to split the work load in a different way. As it was planned, we would each write and draw storylines to their conclusion and then switch. Thus, we would both be drawing and writing. Several times we stayed at school late after our day job to work on the comic. The most memorable event was the several hours spent drawing on the chalkboard in the Physics room. This is where some of the basic character designs were established. The main reason this whole thing became a webcomic was simply due to convenience. We signed up for a free Keenspace account to make this available to the rest of our friends. It was decided that the first storyline would be mine. The beginning of TAODAN is a result of maybe a week of learning drawing by brute force. Obviously, the work was far from good, but not exactly bad. Most importantly, I enjoyed doing the comic. And so at the beginning of July 2002, The Adventures of Dan began. More Info Coming Soon... ----- TAODAN - The Adventures of Dan is © Copyright 2002-2003, Michael M. Arsers. All rights reserved.