This article studies Julie Doucet’s trajectory as a revelation of the dynamics and issues related to the spheres of cultural production in which the artist is embedded. From her beginnings in the Montreal “underground” comic scene in the second half of the 1980s to her so-called “farewell” to the medium at the end of the following decade, Julie Doucet has journeyed through some of the most important venues in the world of North American and European comics, from Montreal to Berlin, via New York, Portland (Oregon) and Paris. Doucet’s work has been widely studied and is considered to embrace some of the characteristics of 1990s comics: body representation, sexuality and the abject; and a feminist inclination. To these themes, we propose adding the fragmentation of the medium in which she operates brought about by new forms and techniques. Particular attention will be given to the place that Doucet’s comics occupy in a larger set of practices, notably the close relationship that she maintains with the margins of cultural production. The relationship is most obvious in the production of Doucet’s zines - both before her professionalization at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and since her withdrawal at the turn of 1990-2000. Our article addresses, in a somewhat subversive manner, the following question: how is the relationship between the margin and the center negotiated for an artist like Doucet, particularly in light of the late integration of comics into the cultural field? Examining Doucet’s work from such an angle reveals a central operator: her play with the outsider position. This operator is perceptible both in the internal reading of the works (the choice of themes and of language, and the formal exploration at the heart of her approach), and in Doucet’s editorial and strategic choices (the relationship to comics over the long term and the return to the zine, her mobility, her personal comments on her career and her work). Finally, our article presents an exhaustive ground-breaking bibliography of Doucet’s publications, including all of her self-published works, from the second half of the 1980s to the present.