A REAL job is a job you hate.

I hate to subject it to too much analysis, but one thing I have fun with is the rarity of things being shown from an adult's perspective. When Hobbes is a stuffed toy in one panel and alive in the next, I'm juxtaposing the "grown-up" version of reality with Calvin's version, and inviting the reader to decide which is truer. Most of the time, the strip is drawn simply from Calvin's perspective, and Hobbes is as real as anyone.

There's an inverse relationship between how good something is for you, and how much fun it is.

I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?

The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.

You should stick with what you enjoy, what you find funny -- that's the humor that will be the strongest, and that will transmit itself. Rather then trying to find out what the latest trend is, you should draw what is personally interesting.