"Independent, grounded, reality-based, healthy-attitude female," is the way cartoonist Cathy Guisewite described herself in an interview with a moderator for the online chat room Thrive Online. She might also have added working woman, devoted daughter, fashion victim, insecure and vulnerable, a knack for hooking up with the wrong man, a tendency toward depression to get her humor ratcheted up, and a dread of swimsuits and bad-hair days. Which, in fact, may also be the description of her eponymous cartoon heroine, Cathy, in her two-dimensional comic strip life. The fictional Cathy is a single, angst-ridden, career woman driven by four heavy guilt trips: food, love, mother, and career. She is a constant fretter, fighting with her weight, doing battle with an overly demanding boss, and coping with a boyfriend and a delicately balanced checkbook--the hallmarks of a liberated woman.

Utterer of such classic lines as "I never met a...