For decades, Margeaux Pepoy has left her mark on some of comics’ most beloved properties, inking X-Men, TMNT, Sonic the Hedgehog, and 18 years’ worth of Bongo Comics‘ The Simpsons and Futurama titles. However, 2026 marks the beginning of a new era. Earlier this year, the veteran cartoonist and inker publicly came out as trans, stepping into this year’s convention season as herself and debuting her first published credit as Margeaux in IDW‘s Street Sharks Annual.

Ollie sat down with Margeaux to talk about her storied career—from brushwork philosophies to a Carl Barks blessing that (may have led) to a change in the look of The Simpsons comics to what her dream projects are—plus what it means to finally step into the world, and onto the convention floor, as herself. (For reasons better explained in-depth elsewhere, this interview felt full circle for my gender journey, and I’m grateful Margeaux took the time to indulge me on this career-spanning interview.)

This interview has been edited ever so slightly for clarity.

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OLLIE KAPLAN: What can you tell us about your work on the upcoming Street Sharks Annual at IDW (Q based on your March 2026 post teasing shark soup 😉 and a new female character)?

MARGEAUX PEPOY: I met the editor of Street Sharks at San Diego last year at San Diego Comic-Con, and he thought I’d be a good fit for a story in the Annual, which I did pencils and inks on. It focuses on the Sharks’ pal, Bends, and the date he brings to the HQ, a girl named Dex. Dex is new, so I came up with a fun, rocker-girl look for her. Probably how I’d dress if I were 23 years old! 😉

KAPLAN: Will this be your first credit as Margeaux? If yes, what did it feel like to see your name in print for the first time?

PEPOY: Yes, my first published Margeaux credit! It was very cool to see! And my first cover, signed Margeaux, is for Jeff Messer’s Sex, Spies & Rock ‘n Roll, coming out in June. 

KAPLAN: What’s your history with the Street Sharks franchise—were you a fan of the ‘90s cartoon?

PEPOY: To be honest, I’d never heard of it until last summer. When it was on the air, I was glued to my drawing board, working 12 hours a day on X-books,TMNT, Sonic, and more.

KAPLAN: In the past, you’ve said that some of your favorite work is the work you did for The Simpsons comic. Out of the 18 years of work you did on those comics, what contribution are you particularly proud of and/or fond of? 

PEPOY: That would be a hard one, as I had so much fun working on so many comics there. Ones that stick out as favorites are the Carl Barks homage issue of The Simpsons and the steampunk Futurama issue.

KAPLAN: I looked at our personal collection. Confirming that these are the issues mentioned? (Readers see images immediately below.)

PEPOY: Yep!

KAPLAN: Any fun BTS stories you can share?

PEPOY: Well, speaking of the Barks issue… and I was told this after the fact, and it’s been a long time, so this may not be entirely accurate… Matt (Groening) liked the Bongo books to be inked in a pen style more like he inked his own work, but they were allowed to try other things on issues that were tributes to something else, like the Barks one. I’d already been doing some work for Bongo, in Matt’s style, when I got the call for this issue, possibly because I treasure the fact that Barks liked my Ducks (that’s another story). It was penciled by John Delaney, and I was allowed to use a brush to emulate Barks’ style (even though Barks inked with a pen). From what I heard, Matt came into the offices one day, saw my pages sitting there, and really liked them. The editors said: Then can we please use brush inking on the other books? Which is something they’d been wanting for a while, and this time Matt said YES. So, I was able to help change the look of the Simpsons comics. 

KAPLAN: Okay, I must follow up on the Ducks story. 

PEPOY: Around 2000, I was asked, via Kitchen Sink, to do a sample of the Ducks… Donald, Scrooge, the nephews… for Carl. He’d created something new, but, at 99, he couldn’t draw it, so the test was to draw the Ducks. Mine was approved! But Carl passed away soon after that, so whatever the project was never came to be. However, word got around that Carl had liked my Ducks, so I later got to ink a later-found, penciled cover by him, as well as drew the cover for IDW’s first issue of Uncle Scrooge.

KAPLAN: The Adventures of Simone & Ajax has been your personal project since 1990. What does that strip let you do that work-for-hire never could?

PEPOY: I get to tell fun, crazy stories, draw a cute girl (probably the one I wish I could have been in my 20’s) and an even-cuter dinosaur and pay tribute to all the genres I love. They can go anyplace and anywhere I want them to, and they have fun doing it… And so do I!

KAPLAN: You redesigned Little Orphan Annie for the newspaper strip in 2000. What’s the pressure like reimagining an iconic legacy character?

PEPOY: Again, to be honest, I didn’t think they were going to give me the job, so I didn’t feel the pressure at first. I was only trying out to try and later pitch them Simone & Ajax as a strip. The redesign was a quick sketch I did at a meeting with the TMS staff, and they liked it. That’s it. The real pressure was drawing the strip 7 days a week for almost no money while still trying to ink 3 or 4 comic books a month to pay the bills. That truly almost killed me at 31, and that’s how I got released from my Annie contract.

KAPLAN: I loved the image of the Simone cosplayer you shared recently.

PEPOY: That was one of S&A’s biggest fans. And, being the first Simone coplay I’ve seen that wasn’t my girlfriend, it was super exciting and flattering! I loved it!

KAPLAN: You were open to “kind questions” from your community. Was the response from comics fandom what you expected?

PEPOY: It went far beyond what I expected or hoped for! In a good way! I had been planning for a long time to come out shortly before C2E2, so I could start my 2026 cons out and as Margeaux. I figured on that day I’d update my social media, make posts on each platform, email a few people directly, and get back to the drawing board. Instead, it just exploded online! On Threads alone, my post got over 120,000 views! Of the thousands of comments I got on all the posts, I only got about 10 bad ones, and those were from people I didn’t know. Both the professional and fan communities have been overwhelmingly supportive. It’s been so nice!

KAPLAN: That’s great to hear how supportive the wider comics community has been… So, why now?

PEPOY: Long story short, I only just figured this out early last year. I had things going back to when I was a kid that I can now look back on and see, but in the late 1970’s in a small town in Michigan, I’d never even heard of trans. And over the years, I just normalized those occasional feelings, feelings that got more insistent as I got older. But in recent times, I had good people in my life who I felt safer talking to and who encouraged me to talk with my therapist about how I was feeling. And once I did put the pieces together, things made so much more sense. Maybe when I was younger, I might have taken longer to come out, but I’m 56, not 26, so I have less time to live as I truly feel is me, so I want to make good use of the time I have left to enjoy the freedom this has made me feel.

“For me, before I figured me out, I got to explore fashion and being a woman through my writing and drawing comics.”

– Margeaux Pepoy

KAPLAN: How has your inking philosophy evolved over the years?

PEPOY: Inking others? My philosophy hasn’t changed much, but hopefully my execution has improved. Rather than imposing my look on a penciller, I look at it as my job to make a penciller look as good as they can in a style that fits their work well. So, I adapt my approach differently for each penciller I work with. On my own work? It depends on what I’m going for. When doing something cartoony, like Simone & Ajax, I tend to think of the brushwork of Dan DeCarlo and his main inker, Rudy Lapick, when they were at their best in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. When doing something more realistic, I usually think of Dave Stevens. I’ll never reach those heights, but it’s what I aim for.

KAPLAN: Can you elaborate on how you adapt your inking process?

PEPOY: Am I going to go more brush or more pen? Smooth and slick or scratchy and gritty? Chunky or delicate? There are so many ways to adjust my inking to help bring out the best in a penciller.

KAPLAN: What’s next—in general?

PEPOY: In general, I’m excited to experience the world in a new way, being free to be myself. Yes, there are many things to be scared of as a trans woman at the moment, and it means thinking carefully about safety and such, but I’m not going to let the transphobes ruin my fun. 

KAPLAN: Has your experience coming out changed anything about how you work or what stories you want to tell?

PEPOY: As far as my own creations or those I want to work on elsewhere, I’ve always leaned towards strong women leads (Simone, Katy Keene, Monica Moon), and I don’t see that changing. It’s been suggested I tell my story of coming out trans as a comic, and maybe I will. I’ve long considered telling the story of my teenage years in the ‘80’s, which, when I tell the stories to people, they accuse me of stealing them from John Hughes movies. But it really was like that! However, I now have to figure out how to tell the story of teen Andrew now that I’ve finally embraced myself as Margeaux and view it with a new perspective.

KAPLAN: Do you think telling that story might be helpful for your journey? (I think it goes without saying that it may help others. When I volunteer with Prism at conventions, people are always telling me how important [X] comic/graphic novel was in their own journey.)

PEPOY: I don’t know. Would it help me? Unsure. But maybe it would help someone else to know they’re not alone? There are many stories out there of young trans people figuring it out, but I was 55 when I finally started to figure it out and 56 before I used the term trans to define myself. 

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KAPLAN: After decades of freelance work, what’s the project you still haven’t done that you most want to?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

PEPOY: Most of all, I want to do more with my own creations… Simone & Ajax, Monica Moon, and more. But I also look forward to working with writers I’ve connected with in recent times and bringing my visual take to them. As for working on company characters, there are definitely a few. At DC, I’d most like to write and draw Angel & the Ape. I’ve painted a pin-up for them (still unpublished) and written and drawn a 1-pager for a Holiday special, but I’d like to do a whole series. Almost happened a few years ago. For Marvel, I’d like to write and draw Howard the Duck. And at Archie, I’d like to do a Betty & Veronica graphic novel, or I have an idea for a Josie mini-series. 

KAPLAN: When can we expect to see that pin-up, if you can share? 

PEPOY: That pin-up was done nearly 20 years ago for a never-published DC Sketchbook project. I doubt it will ever be published, unfortunately. 

KAPLAN: I would love to see what you do with Josie. Plus, it’s the anniversary of the movie!

PEPOY: I did draw a Josie & The Pussycats cover a few years ago, and, in fact, it’s the piece I chose to use on my first Margeaux con banner.

KAPLAN: What drew you to a career in comics?

PEPOY: I don’t know if I was so much drawn as pulled in with the force of a tornado ever since I fell in love with comics when I was 10. From 4th grade on, there was nothing else I ever wanted to do. 

KAPLAN: What role does artistic expression have in trans joy? Do comics have anything unique to offer in this pursuit?

PEPOY: For me, before I figured me out, I got to explore fashion and being a woman through my writing and drawing comics. And in some ways, I get to continue to explore that and live the 20’s and 30’s I never got to live truly through my work. I can’t live it in reality, but I can be my characters on the page.

KAPLAN: Now, I have to ask about Katy Keene because, as you know, she’s a fashion icon. Did working on that series play a specific role in exploring that, even if that’s in retrospect?

PEPOY: Not consciously at the time, but in retrospect, yes. I had way too much fun going through all the fashion mags and figuring out how to dress Katy and the rest of the characters. I’ve been told by my cis women friends that my sense of style is very good and that they want my help finding clothes. Much of my wardrobe I owe to my friend, Lolly, and then to a local thrift store chain, Village Discount. If you have a good eye, you can find good stuff on a low budget!

KAPLAN: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

PEPOY: Prism Comics is a booth I was always sure to stop by every year in San Diego, so I’m happy to be asked do this interview with you. Though I wasn’t out publicly at last year’s con, I knew already, and appreciate my longtime friend, John Lustig, introducing me to the people who run it, so I could ask them for advice as I was starting to plan for the future… which is now! 

I’m excited for what the future holds, both personally and professionally, now that I’m out. I hope editors and publishers will still reach out. I hope the fans will still come by my table at various cons. And I just want to say thanks to my partners and friends, both in and out of the biz, who have helped me on my recent journey and have given me the courage to finally live my truth. 

You can keep up with Margeaux Pepoy at her personal website.