Dana Claire Simpson is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the

comic a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicat ...

'' Phoebe and her Unicorn'', as well as the long-running webcomic '' Ozy and Millie''. Other works created by Simpson include the political commentary cartoon ''I Drew This'' and the alternate reality drama comic ''Raine Dog''.

Biography

Simpson was born in

Pullman, Washington Pullman is the most populous city in Whitman County, located in southeastern Washington within the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. The population was 32,901 at the 2020 census, and estimated to be 32,508 in 2022. Originally founded as ...

, and then lived in the Seattle area for most of her life. She is a graduate of

The Evergreen State College The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a ...

. Simpson considered herself an artist from an early age, drawing comic strips as young as five years old as part of making her own homemade newspaper. As she grew up, she began drawing inspiration from ''

Peanuts ''Peanuts'' (briefly subtitled ''featuring Good ol' Charlie Brown'') is a print syndication, syndicated daily strip, daily and Sunday strip, Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run ext ...

'', ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...

'' and '' Pogo''. In her 20s, she came out as

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

. She currently lives in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...

Career

''Ozy and Millie''

The webcomic '' Ozy and Millie'', Simpson's first published comic strip (published under ''D.C. Simpson''), began running regularly in 1998 while she was attending Washington State University as a graduate student. The strip centered on Ozy (an Arctic fox) and Millie (a red fox) as they and their friends dealt with everyday

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

issues and more surreal situations. For her work on ''Ozy and Millie'', Simpson was a finalist for the 1998

Scripps-Howard The E. W. Scripps Company, also known as Scripps, is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by E. W. Scripps, Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a ...

Foundation Charles M. Schulz College Cartoonist Award. The comic went on to win the 1999 College Media Advisers award for Best Strip Cartoon and the 2002 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards for Best Anthropomorphic Comic. It also won the Ursa Major Award for both "Best Anthropomorphic Other Work" for 2002 and for "Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip" for 2006 and 2007. Simpson continued the strip for ten years while attempting to seek syndication for the title, but could not secure any deal. She cancelled the web comic in 2008 and the final strip was published on December 23, 2008.

''I Drew This''

Simpson's second published comic strip, ''I Drew This'', was concerned mainly about politics, from a liberal perspective. It is semi-autobiographical, in that one of the main characters is the author (the other is Joe, the Liberal Eagle) and its focus is often the author's own musings. ''I Drew This'' began life in the Washington State University ''Daily Evergreen'' in January 2004, while Simpson was attending graduate school. Like ''Ozy and Millie'', this comic is part of the webcomics portal

Keenspot Keenspot is a webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published i ...

, beginning November 2006. Material from ''I Drew This'' was included in '' Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists''. The May 16, 2005 edition, "Teaching Gravity", featured the first reference to the theory of intelligent falling. ''insert title here'' and ''I Drew This'' (a complete collection of the strips) are both available for purchase on

Lulu Lulu may refer to: Companies * LuLu, an early automobile manufacturer * Lulu.com, an online e-books and print self-publishing platform, distributor, and retailer * Lulu Hypermarket, a retail chain in Asia * Lululemon Athletica or simply Lulu, a C ...

''Phoebe and Her Unicorn''

Simpson's most popular work commenced in 2012 as a web comic and continues, as of March 2024, as a daily

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

Other work

On January 16, 2009, Simpson posted the first page of ''Raine Dog'', a

graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...

which follows an anthropomorphic dog living among humans with other recently liberated house dogs. The most recent update was in January 2010. Simpson abandoned the project "for the foreseeable future". Simpson announced that she is writing and illustrating a book about her transition, targeted for middle-school students, titled ''Only You're Different''. She also illustrated a picture book, ''I'm Not a Girl'', written by Maddox Lyons, a 12-year-old transgender boy.

Awards

Foundation Charles M. Schulz College Cartoonist Award, 1998: named finalist for '' Ozy and Millie'' * College Media Advisers, 1999: Best Strip Cartoon for '' Ozy and Millie'' * Washington State Book Award, Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award, 2015: Books for middle readers (ages 9 to 12) for ''Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle'' * Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for ''Unicorn on a Roll''

References

External links

danasimpson.com
*
Phoebe and Her Unicorn
' on

GoComics GoComics is a website launched in 2005 by the digital entertainment provider Uclick. It was originally created as a distribution portal for comic strips on mobile phones. However, in 2006, the site was redesigned and expanded to include online st ...

*
Ozy and Millie
'
also on GoComics

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Dana Claire American comic strip cartoonists American women comic strip cartoonists American female comics artists American webcomic creators American fantasy writers American fantasy artists Furry fandom people LGBTQ comics creators LGBTQ people from Washington (state) Living people 1977 births People from Pullman, Washington People from Auburn, Washington Evergreen State College alumni Transgender women artists Transgender women writers American transgender women American transgender artists American transgender writers Washington State University alumni 21st-century American LGBTQ people American humorists American women humorists