By Lisa Benson - June 30, 2009

Lisa Benson came to editorial cartooning a little later than most, in the midst of raising her four children. In the early 1990s, Benson's husband's business was going through an industrywide recession, so she began looking at employment options to supplement the family income. "Cartooning seemed like a glamorous choice. It was either that or work in fast food. I shook some hands and some people were actually impressed with what I could do, or felt sorry for me," Benson quipped. In 1990, she started drawing cartoons for a local monthly publication, "The Senior Advocate," and doing paste-up and cutting rubylith for the color separations.