Comic artist celebrates whimsy in story of girl, unicorn

Another day, another inquiring reporter.

Comic strip rock star Dana Claire Simpson was unfazed.

“I’m in my bathrobe, drinking coffee,” the Auburn artist said casually in a phone interview. “I take advantage of all the perks of being employed the way I am.”

She’s in big demand for interviews lately. Her new strip, “Phoebe and Her Unicorn,” began syndication last week in 110 newspapers, including The Herald. It’s one of the largest comic launches in the history of syndicate Universal Uclick.

The strip centers around the friendship between a narcissistic unicorn named Marigold and an eccentric 9-year-old girl.

Its success has catapulted the Washington native into funny-page fame.

Just who is this artist whose work has bumped the likes of “The Born Loser” and “The Wizard of Id” from comic pages nationwide?

Simpson, 37, works from home, under the watchful eye of her cat.

With her husband tucked away at work in Seattle, the cat keeps her company and a shelf of unicorns offers inspiration. “People buy me unicorn things now. I’ve become the unicorn lady,” she said.

A daily newspaper comic strip, though a solitary feat, is Simpson’s lifelong ambition.

“You have to be a little bit obsessive to even want to do that,” she said. “I don’t even care that it’s a lot of work because really, what else would I be doing with my time? “Drawing unicorns seems like a pretty good deal. I like comic strips as an art form. I’m enough of a control freak that comic strips appeal to me because I get to do everything myself.”

Her characters don’t just stand around bubbling one-liners.

“Dana is really great with expressions,” Universal Uclick senior editor Shena Wolf said by phone from the Kansas City, Missouri, syndicate. “The characters relate to each other when speaking.”

For girls, and everyone else

The strip is geared for girls, but resonates with all ages and genders, she said.

“The humor is deceptively sophisticated, so it works on a number of levels,” Wolf said. “Children connect with it immediately. Phoebe is a little wounded and sarcastic and Marigold is self-centered. They make each other better. Phoebe is easy to root for. Everybody can identify with that stage of life when you’re not sure where you fit in.”

Upon meeting, when Phoebe says, “I didn’t think unicorns are real,” Marigold tells her, “We keep a low profile. Our magic allows us to pass largely undetected.” “I do that at school,” says Phoebe.

The freckled, brown-haired Phoebe resembles her creator.

“That is sort of how comics work,” Simpson said. “If you’re reading ‘Peanuts,’ you’re reading Charles Schulz. If you’re reading ‘Calvin and Hobbes,’ you’re reading Bill Watterson. My two protagonists are both of the sides of my personality talking to each other.”

She got the name Phoebe from Holden Caulfield’s little sister in “The Catcher in the Rye.”

A different approach was used for the vane unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. Marigold for short.

“I got that from typing my own name into an online unicorn name generator,” she said. “Everybody deserves their own unicorn name.”

Other characters include Phoebe’s laid-back parents, a geeky pal named Max, and Dakota, the mean popular girl at school.

What was Simpson like at age 9? “Quiet. Insecure. Creative. Precocious. Phoebe shares some of those characteristics and not others. She’s a cross between me then and me now, with a sprinkling of stuff that’s all her own.”

Simpson grew up in Gig Harbor with a dentist dad and foreign-language teacher mom. “I have my mother’s imagination and my father’s hand-eye coordination,” she said.

“I drew my first original comic strip when I was 5. It was called ‘Boo’ and it was about ghosts. Then, when I was 11, I drew a comic strip for my middle school’s monthly Xeroxed newspaper thing. I got in trouble more than once for drawing all over my desk.”

While at The Evergreen State College, she was a finalist for the Scripps-Howard Charles M. Schulz College Cartoonist Award. She did a web comic strip called “Ozy and Millie.”

“It was my first attempt to get syndicated,” she said. “I did that strip for about 10 years. I have a bunch of rejection letters. I kept them all. Some of them are from people I know now.”

In her spare time, she also did political cartoons, recorded an album and worked as a newspaper reporter.

At one point Simpson considered giving up on comics and getting into illustrating children’s books. That all changed in 2009, when she won the Amazon/Universal Uclick Comic Strip Superstar Contest.

“It was a talent search and the prize was a syndication development contract and a book contract and I was like, ‘I am as qualified as any person alive to win this,’” Simpson said.

“I won with a strip that at the time was called ‘Girl.’ It featured a kid who was basically Phoebe but she didn’t have that name yet. Originally, the concept was a kid who runs around the woods and talks to animals.”

Then, out of the blue, along came this exotic unicorn. “As soon as I had drawn that, it just made sense that she was there. She sort of just walked into the strip and announced herself. After that, everything came together,” Simpson said.

The strip began running online in 2012. Simpson’s first book, “Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle,” was released last year. A second book comes out in May.

She envisions a “Phoebe” TV show or movie. “I think my characters would look good animated,” she said.

Another goal is to have a unicorn cocktail namesake at AFK Tavern, a geek and gaming bar in Everett. “It would be a milestone in my career if they named a drink Marigold Heavenly Nostrils,” she said. “I love that place.”

Simpson’s husband is a University of Washington systems administrator. “I think every artist should have a patron, and it is convenient to have a spouse who makes enough money. He always said, ‘I can make us comfortable, but if you want to be rich it’s up to you.’ ”

His name is David, which happens to be her own given name.

Dana Claire Simpson was born David Craig Simpson.

“I’m actually a transgender woman,” she said. “I transitioned in the early 2000s. I don’t consider it a very interesting fact. It’s sort of boring. What is very gratifying about the work I’m doing now and the way it is received is that if people know they don’t care. My favorite reaction is when people go, ‘Oh, really? Well, that’s interesting. Anyway, what are you going to order?’”

Have your say on comics

One comic strip will get the boot to make room for “Phoebe and Her Unicorn.”

Vote to help us decide which strip will be leaving the page. To vote, go to www.heraldnet.com/comicsvote. Readers also get the chance to vote for their favorite comic strip.

“Read more about Phoebe and Her Unicorn”

“Phoebe and Her Unicorn” by Washington resident Dana Claire Simpson runs daily in The Herald and in the Sunday funnies.

For more information about the strip, visit universaluclick.com/comics/phoebe-and-her-unicorn or read the comic strip online at gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn.

To read more about Simpson, go to www.danasimpson.com.

Simpson’s book, “Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle,” is available at bookstores and Amazon.

Follow her on Twitter/mizdanaclaire.

Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown.