It's hard to say where Ozy and Millie "began." They began in my sketchbooks. But they began in strip form exactly here.

This series of strips is from the first months of 1997. There are a few others I couldn't find, but if I do I'll put them here too.

These strips were drawn, for the most part, on typing paper, with pens that can be purchased in a grocery store. For the next round, I actually started using bristol board (thick drawing paper where the ink doesn't bleed) and inking with a brush. Mind, I don't claim I was any good at inking with a brush. It was more than a year before I could really do it with any proficiency.

Note also that the next round features a number of strips that are repeats. I suppose, given that I had no audience, I saw no problem with repeating myself in the name of honing my craft.

Some of these strips got redone again later. In the archives and in the first few pages of Book Collection One, you are at times looking at the third or fourth version of a strip.

Next came Ozy and Millie as comic book characters:

Tales of Planet Q

The phrase originated with my sister. Or so she claims. I'm not entirely sure I didn't have a hand in it--it's a relic from our childhood. Planet Q even has a national anthem, which (fortunately for you) I can't sing here in a text-based medium. But it's very repetitive and has a high falsetto in it.

I swiped that relic and used it as the title for some comics I drew in 1997. The original Tales of Planet Q was drawn in summer 1997, and shows just how much my drawing style's changed (improved) in a couple of years. The second is a bit longer, a bit more involved and a bit better drawn, though in some ways it has a similar plot. It's from November 1997. It appeared in issue 61 of the comic book "Furrlough" in January 1998. It's slicker than the original, though that's a loose and relative term.

Version 1, June 1997

Pages 1-2 Pages 3-4

Version 2, November 1997

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7

This is about where the strip archives kick in. Hope you're enlightened.

Ozy and Millie, and everything related, © 1997-2004 D.C. Simpson.