TIME magazine, which added Matthew Inman’s The Oatmeal to their best blogs of 2010, has posted an interview with him about his cartoons, blog and book 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth (And Other Useful Guides)
You’ve drawn everything from riding polar bears to navigating awkward phone conversations. How do you come up with the seemingly disjointed and random ideas for your comics?
I typically focus on something I want to write about, whether that’s polar bears or cheese or Japanese toilets, and I just iterate on my thoughts until I come up with something that makes me chuckle. Fortunately, my sense of humor seems to coincide with that of a lot of people. So I’ll get my notebook and scribble for hours and at the end I’ll have garbage – but then I’ll be showering or running or shopping for taquitos and be like ‘I got it!’ and have to go write it down. It’s like a two-day delay where the thoughts have to incubate before they can sprout.
“Fortunately, my sense of humor seems to coincide with that of a lot of people.”
So that’s how you do it!