Her first single-panel comic was accepted by New Woman , with a second accepted soon after by a legal trade magazine. Then Barstow hit a six-month drought, with none of her cartoons finding a market. Now you just need to keep doing it. Things picked up, and she soon became a regular contributor to magazines like Family Circle , Brandweek and United Airlines magazine. As a female cartoonist, Barstow is something of a rarity.
Most cartoonists are men who sketched as kids.
The women tend to be people who weren't expecting to do cartooning. Today, Barstow's work appears in magazines nationwide, and her cartoons are regularly printed in the L.A. Times , Barron's , the New Yorker , USA Weekend , the British magazine Spectator , and the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. She was also syndicated by TV Data for three years, but she found that working freelance was more lucrative. Barstow says it's her main motivation as a professional.