Gag writing should be called gag thinking.

Single panel cartoons have to deal with a single often complex

thought in a single shot.

You have to deal with action in a static moment, the past and the

future in a short couple of seconds of the present,

and the cultural references of all of history in a bite-sized

sentence or paragraph that everybody should be able to under-

stand with just a little research or asking a buddy.


You can't really learn to think funny.

People reel off bon mots all the time, but there are usually

situation and audience specific.

Gag thinking requires a set of mental muscles that

are usually atrophied in the adult because

the child-like ability to notice and comment on silly or

odd things is bludgeoned into insensibility by

parents and teachers who tell you not to point

and that it is impolite to make comments about other people

or things.


Thus, a gag thinker has to see things with a child's eyes

and a post-adolt sensibility.

I say post-adult because a gag thinker has to out-think and

in some ways be more mature than your average adolt.

It is the perverted childishness of most adolts that makes

them label essential things "childish" and beneath their notice,

despite the fact that most childish things are designed,

manufactured and distributed by adults.


A gag thinker has to be aware of everything.

The smallest thing can make a difference.

Art school cannot teach a person to look, nor can it

teach a person to pervert.