Signe Wilkinson was born in the depths of the baby boom and graduated from her suburban Philadelphia high school about the same year the SAT scores began their slide. In the newsroom, Wilkinson began drawing the people she was supposed to be reporting on. She realized cartooning combined her interests in art and politics without taxing her interest in spelling. After a year of remedial art school, including a stint at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she began freelancing at several Philadelphia and New York publications, finally landing a full-time job at the San Jose Mercury News in 1982. After 3 1/2 years on a steep learning curve, Wilkinson repaid her long-suffering Mercury News editor by taking a job at the Philadelphia Daily News, where she has been drawing contentedly ever since.