Unicorn on a Roll

November 22, 2015 5:19 PM

Heavenly Nostrils by Dana Simpson. It all started when Phoebe skipped a rock across a pond and accidentally hit a unicorn in the face. Improbably, this led to Phoebe being granted one wish, and using it to make the unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, her obligational best friend.

(all ages safe - first link takes you to the start of 3 years of awesome)

posted by ladyriffraff (19 comments total)

I have this one on my office door. I like the strip pretty well and I even have the anthologies but it's never made me laugh as hard or with as much recognition as Ozy and Millie did.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:28 PM on November 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've been following this comic for a while now, and it's cute, and reasonably different from the other funny pages fodder.

I think Lord Splendid Humility is my favorite.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:36 PM on November 22, 2015

What an odd coincidence to find this on the first page today...I spent most of this afternoon reading the two anthologies. It's a great strip, and the two main characters are both so good that I keep going back and forth about which is funnier.
posted by Ipsifendus at 5:40 PM on November 22, 2015

This is soft, in a good way.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:47 PM on November 22, 2015

I love this comic strip and plan to give the books to a Phoebe I know for Hanukkah this year. :)
posted by leesh at 5:52 PM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dana's come a long way and it's really nice to see her succeed.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:53 PM on November 22, 2015

"Contains no galloping" may be my single favorite strip.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:53 PM on November 22, 2015

They just started running this in my local paper at the beginning of the month.

It's awful, like I haven't even smiled at a single strip awful. So bad, my wife stopped reading it after a week awful.
Every other joke is "Oh, look, unicorns think they are pretty"

But reading the 2012 ones, where the kid was apparently a lot more sarcastic...that's worth a chuckle in the morning.

What happened?
Run out of ideas? Get dumbed down for a wider audience?
Does the sarcastic kid come back?

My paper only give me a page and half of non-color, every strip counts!
posted by madajb at 6:08 PM on November 22, 2015

I've been with P&hU from day one... actually before day one, since I discovered Simpson's "Ozy & Millie" (an anthromorphic strip about two school-age foxes, one of whom had been adopted by a dragon... it worked) late in its 10 year run as a webcomic (it's now getting re-run wekdays at gocomics). She had won a 'comics talent hunt' staged by Amazon & GoComics in 2010 with the concept "Girl" in which Phoebe was able to communicate with various forest animals and mythical creatures. GoComics put it on hold (they claimed they had 'too many new animal comics') and while waiting, Simpson developed the character of Marigold Heavenly Nostrils the Unicorn, who pretty much took over. For me, it was a delight from day one (and still is), carefully working to avoid being too much a "female Calvin & Hobbes". The most genius trope is that of the "Shield of Boringness" that allows Marigold the Unicorn to interact with people other than Phoebe without them going "OMG! A UNICORN!!!". The original title when it started online was the 'huh?-prompting' "Heavenly Nostrils", which Universal Uclick required changing before they started selling it to newspapers. I'm not thrilled with "Phoebe and her Unicorn" myself; I'd prefer "Phoebe's Unicorn", but I'm not doing newspaper syndication. It seemed that UU/GoComics have had varying levels of enthusiasm toward the strip, but when the first book started selling and the syndication picked up over 100 newspapers on day one (which is A LOT these days), everybody loves this vain unicorn!
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:47 PM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I find P&hU to be good, but not as deeply appealing as Ozy and Millie was. Dunno why, maybe O&M had more of a Calvin and Hobbes flavor?

In any event, I'm glad Simpson is making it and doing well.
posted by sotonohito at 7:01 PM on November 22, 2015

Very cool to see an indie webcomic artist hit the big time.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 8:40 PM on November 22, 2015

I just discovered that my local daily, the Oregonian, is carrying this. I might have to subscribe again. I'd been reading Simpson for quite a while — I loved Ozzy & Millie — but this one took so long to come to fruition I didn't think it would ever actually start running in honest-to-goodness dead-trees print. I still miss O&M, but seeing this become successful takes some of the sting away.
posted by kikaider01 at 9:55 PM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's been really fun watching Dana's career take off. Also a bit frustrating when we share a table at a convention and she's swarmed with people who have a visceral response to OOH UNICORN! and I sit there twiddling my thumbs waiting for folks to respond to my weirder pitch.

I still call it "Heavenly Nostrils". And I am delighted to be friends with the creator of what might be the last great newspaper strip.
posted by egypturnash at 2:22 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

While it's always fantastic to see a comic artist make a solid living, my own opinion is that newspaper comics really don't represent that any more. And they certainly aren't "the big time". There's such a huge amount of really great stuff in the plain webcomics world, and tons of money to make.

Newspaper comics are a steady gig, but it's very constraining for the artist in terms of themes and joke subjects and even drawing style. And my understanding is that the money isn't great these days.

I expect I'm wrong about that last point, but maybe not too far off.

It's also very hard for me to see a comic about a pre-teen and an animal pet without thinking of C&H. I'm sure that's just because of my age...
posted by jefflowrey at 4:12 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Unicorn on a Roll. I prefer the roll toasted. And buttered. Unicorn sliced thinly, please.
posted by Splunge at 4:52 AM on November 23, 2015

I've liked this one for a long while but never read the origin story. Thanks.

Hey, even those of us with dark and bitter predilections can enjoy a taste of sweet now and then.

If it gets too cloying, I know how to recover.
posted by hank at 5:52 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been trying to get my 11 year old grand niece into this but no luck so far. She loves Cul de Sac though.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:59 AM on November 23, 2015

It's also very hard for me to see a comic about a pre-teen and an animal pet without thinking of C&H. I'm sure that's just because of my age...

It's not just you, it's got a lot of the same rhythms. You've got a snarky, but still somewhat credulous kid set against a wiser but someone self-absorbed animal. Both of them versus the world.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:00 AM on November 23, 2015

jefflowrey > And my understanding is that the money isn't great these days.

It's not what it was back in the days when Al Capp was a major cultural figure, but I can tell you right now that Dana is making a hell of a lot more money from Heavenly Nostrils than she ever was from Ozy and Millie. And I've seen a surprisingly wide demographic of people coming up to our shared table at cons and going "Ooh! This just started in our paper and I love it!". Evidently, people in their 30s still read newspapers?

It's really been an education to see how things are changing for her now that she doesn't have to do everything involved in publishing and promoting her work herself.
posted by egypturnash at 10:42 AM on November 23, 2015