Dana Simpson

Within the strip, Simpson drew inspiration from her real life. Phoebe herself is loosely based on Simpson's own personality. Phoebe's best friend, Max, is based on Simpson's husband David. Dakota, a fellow schoolmate of Phoebe who initially teases her until she learns about the unicorn, was an amalgamation of several students that had given Simpson trouble when she was younger, but also incorporates elements of her younger sister Nicole. Phoebe's parents are based on Simpson's friends who have become parents themselves but "they’re also still the same weird people they were before they had kids". Marigold is based partially on the unicorn character in the work The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Marigold's name was based the results of using Simpson's own name in an online unicorn name generator.

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.

Heavenly Nostrils, was scheduled to debut on GoComics April 23, 2012, but debuted a day early on April 22, 2012. The strip entered into print syndication across 100 papers starting on March 30, 2015; the title of the strip was changed to Phoebe and her Unicorn for print syndication.

Following the end of Ozy and Millie, Simpson provided illustrations for children's books. She also submitted a new comic idea to Amazon.com's "Comic Strip Superstar" contest in 2009, entitled Girl, which was selected the winner and received a publishing contract from Andrews McMeel Universal. Girl centered around an unnamed girl with a vivid imagination interacting with forest creatures. The strip's launch was somewhat delayed; according to Simpson, this was imposed by the syndicate due to its reluctance to launch two "talking animal" strips at the same time, as well as its request for further edits. Simpson also noted she only had a limited number of Girl strips ready and needed more time to draw out more.

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 abandoned the project "for the foreseeable future."

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 issues and more surreal situations. For her work on Ozy and Millie, Simpson was a finalist for the 1998 Scripps-Howard 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. 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. insert title here and I Drew This (a complete collection of the strips) are both available for purchase on Lulu.