INTRODUCTION A lot of artists kind of wince when they look at their old work If you draw a lot you tend to improve a lot and one result is looking at things you drew in the past and seeing all the mistakes you wouldn't make now Because mistakes are how you learn Long before I ever imagined Phoebe or her unicorn Ozy and Millie was where I learned how to make comics I was nineteen years old when I decided I wanted to be a comic strip artist and plunged into it head first Webcomics were still a pretty new thing then and there weren't that many so mine got some attention I kept doing it I had dreams of getting the strip into newspapers making tons of money and hanging out with movie stars or whatever syndicated cartoonists get to do Usually not that it turns out It wasn't to be Ozy and Millie would run on the Internet for ten whole years before I made the difficult decision to move on to other things There's no easy elevator pitch for the strip Ozy and Millie are fifth graders and also foxes because everyone's an animal Millie is a troublemaker who enjoys trying to be unsettling Ozy is serene and centered to a fault and he also wears
a top hat for some reason They're best friends Ozy's adopted and his father is a dragon who is either wise or messing with everyone Their fair weather raccoon friend Avery is openly only hanging around until he can get someone cooler to hang out with him Ozy is bullied by a rabbit jock and Millie is tormented by a mean girl sheep These are the creatures who ran amok inside my head for ten years I look at Ozy and Millie now and see its flaws but I also see a thousand little lessons learned About writing and drawing and trying to say what's on your mind while also being funny and keeping your characters consistent I've often described Ozy and Millie as my graduate thesis in cartooning I also see the story of that part of my life It still means a lot to me and it seems not just me Even now years after I drew the last strip people often come up to me at conventions or send me e mails telling me they miss Ozy and Millie and hope to see them again These are vintage strips not new ones although they were never in color before now I tried to pick strips that represented what the comic was who the main characters were I'm sorry if I left out your favorite secondary character and what the strip was generally about I also went for strips that don't have a bunch of dated references in them that are a bit more ageless It's a bit late now for jokes about George W Bush late 90s boy bands or early 2000s reality TV
I picked strips from a few years in the middle because the art style evolved a lot over the years and I wanted to keep it semi consistent Most of all though I wanted to pick strips that make me laugh And a lot of these do That surprised me I had forgotten how funny a lot of this stuff is Well done younger me If you've met Ozy and Millie before welcome back If you haven't welcome I hope you have fun Dana Simpson March 2018
