Point one : it seems to me that if there’s one thing that a cartoonist needs if they want to be successful in the short humor strip game, it’s cleverness. I mean, yeah, you’ve gotta be able to draw, and an inherent sense of comic timing helps considerably, but without the added spark that cleverness brings to the equation, more often than not your strips are either going to miss the mark by that small but crucial degree, or else fail to land altogether. And the surest sign that you’re going to be reading a clever strip is if, of course, it has a clever premise. Which brings us to —

Point two : nothing is more utilitarian than a brick, yet they never seen to get the credit they deserve. For instance, last summer we had to re-do the brick walls on our house, and while the whole…