About BENJAMIN HIGGINS

Benjamin Higgins was quite nearly born in the small, repressed, and very Canadian province of New Brunswick. The eldest son of Mormon extremists, he was named after his father's second favorite uncle and his mother's Dodge Omni. Shortly after his first birthday the Higgins family quietly moved to the city of Toronto, in the province of Ontario, where Benjamin was enrolled in a mind-altering and frighteningly socialist French immersion educational program.

While in Toronto, Benjamin was simultaneously socially isolated and yet exposed to diverse cultures from around the world, as he was the only non-Asian, non-Indian, non-Jamaican in his school. He dealt with this solitary existence by doodling, and otherwise completely wasting his class time when he should have been studying like that nice Chinese girl next door. It wasn't long before Benjamin attracted the notice of his teachers, who wanted him arrested and committed to a psychiatric institution for drawing cartoons of students killing teachers with an array of firearms and explosives.

His schoolmates, too, began to take note of his artistic ability. They would trade him a variety of luncheon treats for his impromptu drawings, which is particularly amazing since he would stubbornly refuse to eat anything that his poor mother ever made for him. Around this time Benjamin decided that he was a vegetarian, which made it even more difficult to feed the little blighter. Regardless of his annoyingly poor diet, Benjamin's artistic talent continued to blossom as he was encouraged by his mother and lovingly ignored by his father.

Just as Benjamin was about enter high school, his family forced him to accompany them to live in southern California, leaving behind the only life he ever knew, and the one friend that he had ever managed to make. In his renewed isolation, Benjamin retreated to his computer, and began to apply his abilities to digital art. He was soon drawing chat room avatars for an array of foul-mouthed internet pen-pals.

The conservative California public school system proved to be incompatible with Benjamin's more liberal philosophies, so he decided to enter college at age 16. Here he faithfully exercised his constitutional right to neglect higher education in such advanced subjects as computer science and mathematics. Receiving an ominously adequate grade in Digital Art, his fate was sealed, and Benjamin Higgins, Cartoonist, made his public debut at the Comic-Con International, San Diego in July of 2004 with "DOMESTICATS", a full-color, web-based cartoon strip featuring his neighbors' tabbies.

The rest, as they say, whoever "they" are, is history.