Career
A comic artist from an early age, Simpson's first published comic strip – early web comic Ozy and Millie – began running regularly in 1998. The strip centered on Ozy (an arctic fox) and Millie (a red fox) as they and their friends dealt with everyday elementary school issues and more surreal situations. Ozy and Millie won the 1999 College Media Advisers award for Best Strip Cartoon, the 2002 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards for Best Anthropomorphic Comic and the Ursa Major Award for both "Best Anthropomorphic Other Work" for 2002 and for "Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip" for 2006 and 2007. The final regular strip was published on December 23, 2008.
Simpson's second published comic strip, I Drew This, was primarily about politics and proudly admits to its liberal orientation. It is somewhat 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, 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.
After appearing at local open mike nights, Simpson went on to become a musician and songwriter, performing at local cafes and bars and selling works online – including the album Shiver, released in May 2005. Simpson cites as influences R.E.M. and Elliott Smith.
On January 16, 2009, Simpson posted the first page of Raine Dog, a graphic novel which follows an anthropomorphic dog living among humans with other recently-liberated house dogs. The most recent update was in January 2010.
Simpson's third comic strip, Girl, was the winner of Amazon.com's "Comic Strip Superstar" contest. The winner was to receive a publishing contract from Andrews McMeel Universal. Despite this, as of February 2011, the Andrews McMeel Universal website displays no evidence of having published Girl or any other work by Simpson. According to Simpson, the delay has been imposed by the syndicate, GoComics, due to its reluctance to launch two "talking animal" strips at the same time, as well as its request for further edits. The strip, now titled Heavenly Nostrils, was scheduled to debut on GoComics April 23, 2012,but debuted a day early on April 22, 2012.
Read more about this topic: I Drew This
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