Nicole Goux

Nicole Goux has spent her life immersed in art. From early childhood painting classes to life drawing in high school, she pursued a formal education in illustration at a state university rather than accumulate debt at art school. After graduation, like many artists, she struggled to find her footing—working short-lived design jobs and even a contract position at Mattel—until she discovered the vibrant world of zine shows and self-publishing.

That discovery changed everything. In comics, Goux found the perfect marriage of visual storytelling and narrative control she craved. “There’s a lot of expression that happens in the way you tell a story on the page that doesn’t happen in other mediums,” she explained in a Fanbase Press interview. Her breakthrough came through self-publishing mini-comics with her partner Dave Baker, including the home-invasion thriller Suicide Forest—work that proved she could execute fully realized comics independently.

Her first industry break arrived through Sarah Gaydos at IDW, who hired her to write and draw a 10-page story for Jem and the Holograms: Dimensions. From there, Goux’s career expanded rapidly. She illustrated DC Comics’ Shadow of the Batgirl, brought the punk rock chaos of Fuck Off Squad to Silver Sprocket Bicycle Club, and co-created Forest Hills Bootleg Society with Baker at Simon & Schuster’s Atheneum imprint—a story about conservative academy girls selling bootleg anime to their classmates.

Her art style is immediately recognizable: simplified features, dots for eyes, and a Saturday-morning-cartoon sensibility that masks surprisingly sophisticated storytelling. Reviewers consistently praise her visual inventiveness—the way she manipulates panel sizes to compress or expand space, uses color palettes that shift chapter by chapter to capture emotional states, and transforms static pages into electric spreads when her characters finally break free.

This sophisticated simplicity shines in Pet Peeves (Avery Hill Publishing), Goux’s first solo longer-form work. The graphic novel follows a post-college music major struggling to find direction who adopts a stray dog that may be more than he seems. Described as “an evocative allegory of aimlessness, self-sabotage and the creative struggle,” the book draws heavily from Goux’s own post-graduation floundering. “I was always good at school,” she told Broken Frontier. “But when you graduate from art school, you have all the skills of the trade, but very little skills in business or networking or making a living with this thing you’ve spent so long developing.”

Her 2026 collaboration with Baker, Punk’N Heads (IDW Publishing / Top Shelf), continues exploring the messy terrain of young adulthood. The graphic novel follows Hannah Lipsky as she abandons her broken life for an uncertain future, surrounded by a minor punk band that feels more like family than her actual relationships. The Beat’s Sean Dillon praised Goux’s artwork for its ability to visually capture “generational angst”—compressing characters within tight panels during their everyday struggles, then exploding into dynamic spreads when they perform.

Beyond her published work, Goux has explored her illustration skills through artzines like Rituals (Silver Sprocket), which examines the quiet personal routines people use to armor themselves before facing the world. She’s been published by major houses including DC, Dark Horse, IDW, and Oni, while maintaining her independent roots through self-publishing and small press collaborations.

Goux currently lives in Los Angeles, where she continues working on multiple long-form projects. She’s represented in DC’s Talent Directory and maintains an active presence across social platforms where she shares her creative process, from traditional gouache work to digital illustration.

Perfect for fans of indie comics exploring the transition to adulthood, creators like Jillian Tamaki, or anyone who remembers their twenties as simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating.