Benita L. Epstein is a prolific gag cartoonist for magazines, greeting cards, websites and newspapers. She was a regular contributor to the

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

'' Six Chix'', distributed by

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product License, licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, columnist, newspape ...

. Before becoming a cartoonist, Epstein earned a Bachelors and a Masters in Entomology. In addition to her studies of autism, lung surfactant, photosynthesis, purine metabolism and yellow-fever mosquitoes, she assisted her husband in ecological field research at islands around the world.

Cartoons

As a cartoonist, she has focused on women, relationships, business, medicine, science, the travel industry, Jewish lifestyle, holidays, professors and education. Her cartoons have been published in hundreds of publications, including ''

Barron's ''Barron's'' (stylized in all caps) is an American weekly magazine and newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp, since 1921. Founded as ''Barron's National Financial Weekly'' in 1921 by Clarence W. Barron (1855–19 ...

'', '' Better Homes and Gardens'', ''

Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. ''HBR'' is published six times a year ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...

'', ''

USA Weekend ''USA Weekend'' was an American weekend newspaper magazine published from 1953 to 2014. Founded as ''Family Weekly,'' it was purchased in 1985 by the Gannett Company, which turned it into a sister publication to Gannett's flagship newspaper '' ...

'' and ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

''. For

Creators Syndicate Creators Syndicate (also known as Creators) is an American independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns to daily newspapers, websites, and other digital outlets. When founded in 1987, Creators Syndicate became one of the few suc ...

, she created the daily comics feature ''Drawing a Crowd'', which ran from January 2002 to June 2003. In 2006, she explained her working process: :I start out feeding my brain with newspapers, books, TV news, Internet news, listening to conversations. Then I write, usually in the morning. Gags comes out of nowhere. Even if it's silly or stupid or unusable, I write it down. I can edit it later. I let the writing simmer. After a day, a week, sometimes years, I go back, fix the writing and pick out some gags to draw. Occasionally I have brainstormed via email with other cartoonists. It works great, and I can't ever remember when either of us wanted the other one's ideas; so we never really stepped on each other's toes... I make a primitive, rough outline of the people, main characters, in a basic setting on crummy copy paper with a regular pencil. Then I put a nice piece of smooth HP laser paper over the sketch and ink over it on a light table. For crowd, bar, vegetation, beach and laboratory scenes, I draw directly on the finished paper with no sketches because I draw fast, and background scenes are loosely lined. I use Pigma pens and a brush, sometimes a Sharpie or a black calligraphy pen. Then I scan the drawings into Photoshop. If a company wants an original, I ink on good watercolor paper and add a gray wash or watercolor. But in Photoshop I shade/color the drawing using a Wacom tablet. If I'm on vacation, I can draw on tracing paper and save that to scan later, or photocopy the cartoons, send by mail to various companies, then scan them when I get home. I like to have every single cartoon scanned, so I can pull them up at a moment's notice and either print hard copies or send PDFs. I've been sending stuff via PDF for years worldwide, and I think it's given me an edge over a lot of cartoonists who concentrate on the regular major markets here in the U.S. In 2009, she told interviewer Scott Nickel, "I have the grapheme form of synesthesia where letters and numbers are perceived as colors. Others with this are the physicist

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

, Russian writer

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

."A Nickel's Worth
/ref> Epstein has given drawing demonstrations to adult developmentally disabled and other handicapped students. She lives in

Redding, California Redding is a city in and the county seat of Shasta County, California, and the economic and cultural capital of the Shasta Cascade region of Northern California. Redding lies along the Sacramento River, north of Sacramento, California, Sacrame ...

with her husband, stepson and their pug, Harley.

Awards

The

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

nominated Epstein four times for Best Magazine Gag Cartoonist and twice for Best Greeting Card Cartoonist.

Bibliography

*Epstein, Benita. ''Interlibrary Loan Sharks and Seedy Roms: Cartoons from Libraryland'' (McFarland, 1997) *Epstein, Benita. ''Suture Self: Cartoons for Doctors and Patients'' (McFarland, 1999) *Epstein, Benita. ''Science of Little Round Things: Cartoons about Scientists'' (McFarland, 2000) *Donnelly, Lisa. ''Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons'' (Prometheus, 2005)

References

External links

Official siteGreenGo's
{{DEFAULTSORT:Epstein, Benita American comic strip cartoonists American women comic strip cartoonists American female comics writers American female comics artists American illustrators American women illustrators Jewish American illustrators Jewish American comics writers Jewish American comics artists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American satirists American humorists American women satirists American women humorists American satirical comics writers American satirical comics artists