Cartoonist's new strip is phictional but phamiliar

Signe Wilkinson can't help but sketch. She stands at her tilted drawing board, which is illuminated by a spotlight, and answers questions as her hand purposefully glides over the paper.

She's talking about her new comic strip, Penn's Place, which debuts Sunday in The Inquirer. It is set in Philadelphia, on a fictional city block, where main character Hannah Penn has recently moved.

"It's a block that no one actually knows, but everyone will have felt like they've passed it, in one way or another," Wilkinson says. "It's halfway between new Philadelphia and old Philadelphia."

Readers will meet Hannah's neighbors (the older and younger couples who live next door, the Korean grocer, the bar owner), and see some familiar faces, too.

"The mayor will have to walk down Penn's Place, a homeless person might come into contact with Sister Mary Scullion, and Jose Garces might be looking for a restaurant space. Who knows?" says Wilkinson, who already has made a name for herself as an award-winning cartoonist at the Philadelphia Daily News.

And readers will see some familiar spaces. Hannah used to live in the suburbs, so family and friends who come to visit will no doubt get stuck on the Schuylkill Expressway, drive by Boathouse Row, and run into the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

Penn's Place comes to life just as Wilkinson puts another strip to sleep. Family Tree, which was nationally syndicated, ended in August after a three-year run.

Wilkinson was sad to see the strip go, but is excited to focus on something local readers can relate to.

Comic strips offer a change of pace from what Wilkinson, a 30-year city resident, made her name with - crafting editorial cartoons. "Comic strips allow us to take a step back from politics, say that we live in a real world."

Wilkinson started as a reporter, working as a stringer for various Philadelphia-area papers. She says facts and spelling got in the way, so she began to study her love, art. In 1982, the San Jose Mercury News hired her full time as a cartoonist, and three years later she returned to Philadelphia to draw for the Daily News. She has been there ever since.

Her edgy editorial cartoons, which she continues to draw daily (and which also appear in about 100 other papers and on websites such as Slate.com), have brought her plenty of attention, including being the first female cartoonist to win a Pulitzer, in 1992.

In October, Moore College of Art & Design presented the artist with its Visionary Woman Award.

"We select women who have made major contributions to the visual arts and are role models to our students," says school president Happy Fernandez. "She used her creative talents and imagination to forge a very distinctive career."

Moore also set up an exhibition of Wilkinson's work, which ran for a few months, and did exactly what her print work does - spurred conversation. "People would look and laugh and get in disagreements," Fernandez says.

Wilkinson is well aware that she is one of few women cartoonists whose work is featured in newspapers, and believes it's important that there are women writing female characters. "We need to have some balance," she says She's encouraged that many female cartoonists are taking advantage of alternative outlets, such as the Web, to showcase their work.

Wilkinson creates her Inquirer comic strips in her home office, and her editorial ones in her tucked-away nook at the Daily News. "It's such an old-fashioned medium, I feel lucky that someone is willing to pay me for it."

Behind her drawing board is a large cork wall filled with clippings and photos. There's a young Ed Rendell, as a reference, because Wilkinson found him tricky to get right. And, unexpectedly, photos of guns. "I'm always drawing guns, and if it's not right, the NRA will be mad at the point of the cartoon and for the art," she says.

"Most people read the paper and throw it down, disgusted with what they see," Wilkinson says. "I get to draw about it. It's like art therapy."

But she also recognizes that what can be therapeutic for her can be maddening to her loyal group of naysaying e-mailers.

"Philadelphia Magazine once said I was one of the 12 or 13 people who should be run out of town, along with Charles Barkley and Camille Paglia," Wilkinson recalls. "I thought, 'That would be a fun road trip.' "