Dana Simpson Interviewed On Her New Cartooning Paths
Skip to comments
After webcomics (Ozy and Millie, Raine Dog) and syndicated comic strips (Phoebe and Her Unicorn) cartoonist Dana Simpson mostly moves on to graphic novels and new challenges.
“I believe that there are unicorns” – Wm Shakespeare
March 29th saw the end of an era as Phoebe and Her Unicorn ceased daily publication in newspapers- although the light fantasy daily comic will live on in middle grade graphic novels. The close of this ten year publication is but one arc in the career of Dana Simpson, though. Dana Simpson got her start in 1998 with the first generation webcomic Ozy and Millie, which distinguished itself from peers through its relative normalcy…
For The Comics Journal William Schwatz interviews comic strip creator Dana Simpson about Ozy and Millie, Raine Dog, Heavenly Nostrils, and other things. Oh yes – and Phoebe and Her Unicorn.
Just very frankly speaking, why graphic novels? Are your motivations creative, financial, a mix of both?
A mix of both, really.
I’ve known for years that this was where I was going to end up. The fact is, as much as it pains me to say this, newspaper comics are in decline, because newspapers are, whereas graphic novels for younger readers have exploded and are showing no signs of slowing down.
And, relatedly, I’m a moderately successful syndicated cartoonist, but a very successful graphic novelist, with (mostly) the same material. My audience is mostly pretty young, so they don’t really read newspapers, they read graphic novels. Way more people read me in book form than in newspaper form.
The vast majority of my income is book royalties…
feature image of Dana Simpson photographed by Donavan Freberg
Comments 2
Comments are closed.