Dana Simpson, a native of Gig Harbor, Washington, first caught the eyes of devoted comics readers with the internet strip Ozy and Millie. After winning the 2009 Comic Strip Superstar contest, she developed the strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn (originally known as Heavenly Nostrils), which is now syndicated in newspapers worldwide.

There are twenty-two Phoebe and Her Unicorn books, including the upcoming Galactic Unicorn, all from Andrews McMeel Publishing. Ozy and Millie have two books also. All told, Simpson has sold over four million books.

I had the opportunity to interview Dana, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourselves?

I’m Dana Claire Simpson, of Olympia, Washington. My pronouns are she/her. I draw comics. Most famously, I draw the comic Phoebe and Her Unicorn, more about which further down.

Before that, I used to do a fairly popular webcomic called Ozy and Millie, starting back when webcomics were still a pretty new thing. That started when I was still a teenager. So one way or another, I’ve been making comics my entire life. It’s all I ever really wanted to do!

I am also, incidentally, the first out transgender person to write/draw a syndicated comic strip. I am happy to report I am no longer the only one.

What can you tell us about your latest project, Phoebe and Her Unicorn? What was the inspiration for the series?

So a little bit of history: back in 2009, I won the Comic Strip Superstar contest, which was an online comic strip talent search. That gave me the opportunity to develop a strip for syndication, and what I came up with was Phoebe and Her Unicorn.

The original idea was, I wanted to base a main character on me as a child. That became Phoebe. During the development process, the unicorn was just…sort of there, one day. She walked in, like “I am here now, to be in your comic strip!”

She was the missing ingredient. I named her Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, which is a name I got from typing my own name into an online unicorn name generator. (So really, both of them are me.)

And that’s how the strip was born. A story, now in its 14th year of being told, about a little girl who ends up being best friends with a magical unicorn.

It’s not a story I’m surprised to find myself telling. I didn’t know I’d wind up writing about unicorns specifically, but I’ve always loved magical animals, and also I seem to write about childhood a lot. Maybe this comic was my destiny.

It started running on gocomics.com in 2012, and then went into newspaper syndication in 2015. It ran in daily syndication for ten years, and the Sunday comics are still syndicated.

It’s now on book 21, which is called Unicorn Book Club. Book 22, Galactic Unicorn, will be out in the fall.

Most of the books are collections of the strips. But a few have been graphic novels (book 6, The Magic Storm, and book 8, Unicorn Theater).

And I really want to write more of those. I have lots of ideas! And because the books do so well (I’ve sold almost five million of them), I decided that this year the daily strip would end. From here on I’m going to focus on writing more graphic novels.

It’s exciting! I feel like the best Phoebe and Her Unicorn adventures are still in front of me.

As a creative, what drew you to the art of storytelling, especially graphic novels/comics?

I’ve always loved comics. Ever since I was a little kid, reading my mom’s old Peanuts collections, something about the art form spoke to me.

I always drew. People ask me “when did you start drawing,” but I feel like we all draw as kids, and artists are the ones who never stop. I never stopped. But I wasn’t just interested in drawing pictures, I wanted to tell stories, and make jokes, and create something alive out of my art. I guess comics were always just a natural fit for me.

I knew pretty young. I drew my first comic strip at age five. By fifth grade I was trying to create my own comic strip. I like showing kids that stuff now, when I visit schools, because it isn’t very good. I’m sure a lot of them can and will do better.

How would you describe your creative process?

Writing happens first, and that requires focus. A lot of the time I leave my house and go to a coffee place or something. I take my iPad, and I write/sketch my rough ideas.

At this point, I know the characters really really well, so I can kind of just wind them up and let them talk. I get ideas from my own life—things from my childhood and from today. If I say something and my spouse laughs, or the other way around, I think “okay, well, is that a joke? Would it be funny if a unicorn said that?”

I also think a lot about what I’d like to draw. What would be fun to draw a unicorn doing?

Once I’ve got a bunch of ideas written, I can start drawing, and for me that’s the most fun part. It’s like my reward for having done the work of writing something. I sit at my computer, put on music or a movie, and just get lost in drawing. It’s still my favorite thing to do, same as when I was tiny.

What are some of your favorite elements of writing/illustrating? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or difficult? 

Very basically, I find writing frustrating and difficult, and drawing fun and relaxing. There are exceptions, but writing, especially if I’m writing about something I find emotional, is draining. And then drawing is renewing.

There are exceptions, of course. When the characters just sort of take control and start talking, and all I have to do is write it down, that’s satisfying, but in general writing is the part of my job that feels like a job.

There are things I don’t really enjoy drawing—crowd scenes make me tear my hair out—but the act of drawing my main characters is meditative for me.

As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general?

Some of my influences are obvious ones for a cartoonist my age. Calvin and Hobbes. Peanuts. Bone.

I was a huge Bloom County fan as a kid. And later I discovered Pogo, by Walt Kelly, at the library, and I fell in love with it. I still wish I could draw trees like that.

One I always bring up, because I love it and because it’s a bit less universally known, is Moomin, by Tove Jansson, both the comics and the novels. Ms. Jansson was Finnish, and Moomin is still huge there, and in Japan, but less so here, and it’s kind of my favorite thing in the world. So strange and cozy and sweet and magical.

Outside the realm of comics, I was pretty strongly influenced by my favorite children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and my whole idea of unicorns is directly descended from Peter S. Beagle’s novel The Last Unicorn (and its movie and graphic novel adaptations).

Aside from your work, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?

I generally want readers to know how boring I actually am. Or at least how ordinary. That’s better I think, because I don’t actually want to bore people.

But a lot of my readers are kids, and I want them to say, hey, she’s just some lady, and she gets to make comics, so maybe I could do it too.

I’ve repeatedly heard some version of “meeting you made my kid realize she could draw her own comics, and now she’s passionate about it.” It’s such a great feeling, knowing I made that

possibility seem real for a young artist.

Also, you know, I transitioned back in the mid-oughts, back when there really weren’t a lot of very visible trans people. It was strange to people then, but now I hear stuff like “you were the first out trans person I ever knew about, and you made it seem possible, and that started my journey,” or “knowing you were trans changed my views about trans people.”

And that’s another reason I want people to know I’m kind of ordinary. I’m a nice, now-middle-aged lady, and if you saw me out in public you’d barely notice me (my pink hair might catch your eye, but this is Olympia; it’s not that unusual). In this difficult era for trans people in America, that’s something I very much want people to see too: that I’m a regular nice person, and maybe you should be nice to people like me.

Maybe if you’re nice to me you’ll get more unicorns.

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

Um…well, you didn’t ask me about my cat! Her name is Sofia. She’s black and fluffy and really nice. If you came over to my house she would solicit pets. She lies on my drawing tablet, and has no idea how much she’s impeding my work.

What advice might you have to give for aspiring storytellers out there?

Just never stop. That’s been my experience. You just keep telling stories, and over time people will start listening.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

In addition to future Phoebe books, I have a number of things in the works.

For almost a decade I’ve been trying to write a graphic memoir, titled Only You’re Different, and I’m finally going to hand it in to my publisher in the very near future. I’m pretty excited by that!

Other things are further out, but I have a few non-unicorn things I’m excited to try.

Finally, what books/authors (LGBTQ+ or otherwise) would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

I’m gonna plug the work of my friend Dee Fish, who’s been writing slice-of-life stuff about herself, a lot of it about her experience transitioning during that time, for a while now. Her comic is called Finding Dee. It got a Reuben Award nomination last year. It’s great and she’s great.