Emo Philips is what is known as a comic’s comic.

Regardless of his prominence in American pop culture at any given moment, Philips will always be admired by his fellow comedians.

In 2014, Patton Oswalt tweeted this about Philips: “I will NEVER, EVER, write funnier, darker, more disturbing, more inappropriate and 100 percent clean jokes than Emo Philips. Good God.”

Philips is the headliner at this year’s Let’s Fest, a four-day comedy festival happening at seven Fort Wayne venues.

It starts August 3.

Philips was cited on Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick’s list of the top ten living stand-up comedians and on the CineNation website as one of the top comics of all time.

In 2005, Philips was praised by Shipoffools.com for having the created the funniest religious joke of all time (It is a bit too long to be reproduced here).

Philips arrived on the national comedy scene in the mid-1980s with one of the stronger stage personas: a childlike man with a pageboy hairdo and a singsong voice who didn’t seem to be at all aware of how clever he was.

In a 2010 editorial in the British newspaper, The Guardian, Philips was described as a “pith artist.”

“He tells semi-surreal jokes so short and sharp that they make the audience jolt as well as laugh,” the publication opined. “(In the 1980s), Philips was often dubbed an alternative comedian, but his jokes are much cleverer, cleaner and funnier than that term suggests…His jokes are often informed by a sense of cosmic injustice that means all people are cursed with rotten luck. Rather than get angry about it, the Philips way is to coin cheery one-liners.”

Unlike other comics with strong stage personas (Bobcat Goldthwait, for example), Philips tries never to break character in public.

He agreed to an email interview because he likes to take some time crafting answers to questions.

Asked to cite the first joke he ever conceived, Philips responded: ‘I woke up this morning with a bloody nose. I thought, ‘How did this get into bed with me?’”

Philips, a Chicago native, said everyone found him funny as a kid. “It was quite upsetting,” he wrote.

Philips once described his stage character as “the default persona when one has no stage presence.”

He said his joke-crafting process was stubbornly old-fashioned for quite some time.

“Up till the 21st century, I wrote on a 1940’s cast-iron Royal typewriter,” he wrote. “It was not in good condition. If you examine my early gags, you’ll find that few contain the letter ‘j.’”

When on the hunt for new material, Philips said he basically tries to think of things that make him laugh. “Then, once that’s out of the way…” he added.

To young comics seeking advice, Philips recommends a 2009 posting on the Nerdist website by the aforementioned Hardwick about the late Bill Hicks’ Principles of Comedy.

“By referring them to it,” he wrote, “I teach them the most important lesson: to use their time wisely.”

A robust four-decade career in comedy means a lot of touring, of course. Philips compares touring to swimming.

“How fraught with worry and bother beforehand! How pleasurable once one is in!” he wrote.

If he has downtime in the cities he visits, Philips seeks out art museums.

“(I) try to guess what each painting or work of sculpture is about,” he wrote. “I then try to guess the title of the piece. I then look at the title, and read the description, if there is one, and see how close I came. I’m not great at it; I often guess before I have a right to, and miss a crucial detail, and then kick myself afterwards, as one kicks oneself for not correctly guessing the murderer in a whodunnit or the winner in an election.”

One thing Philips is not is a foodie.

“No offense to foodies, but I am the opposite of one,” he wrote. “For me, driving across town to dine at a special restaurant would be like driving across town to wash my hands in a special sink.”

When he’s not on tour, Philips does voiceover work (He has assayed such animated roles as Shannon the Bully on “Home Movies,” Dooper on “Slacker Cats,” Cuber on “Adventure Time,” and Dennis O’Bannon on “Welcome to the Wayne”).

He also pursues one hobby.

“My hobby – which, sadly, I get to indulge only when home in Los Angeles – is leading my own band, Emo & the Emo-Philiacs,” he wrote. “We specialize in tunes from the first half of the twentieth century. I play the recorder and sing, and am very happy to report that, as of our latest show two weeks ago, I have finally gotten the singing out of my system.”

Asked what he thought he’d be doing with his life if he wasn’t performing comedy, Philips responded: “That’d be like asking a butterfly what he’d be if he hadn’t become a butterfly. My childhood caterpillared me into it.”