South by Southwest just announced they’re bringing us Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal as a keynote speaker. Luckily, you don’t have to wait five months and spend hundreds of dollars in order see him. He’ll be signing his shiny new book How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You at BookPeople on October 24th at 7:00 p.m.
Before his signing, Inman talked to the Austin Post about his future career plans, Nikola Tesla and sea monkeys on Mars.
Austin Post: First off, congrats on becoming the keynote speaker for South By Southwest in 2013. You’ve been on TEDTalks before. Were you surprised when they invited you to kick off South By Southwest?
Matthew Inman: Yes. I was. I’ve been on a TEDx Salon. TEDTalks are the speech of a lifetime. TEDx is the watered down version of that. The Salon is an even crappier version where you’re crammed in a tiny room with a kid with a cellphone filming you.
So yeah, I was genuinely surprised. It’s funny, I spoke at South by Southwest the year before last, and the next year I didn’t even attend because I didn’t think I had anything new to say. I make comics that are funny and are relatable, but beyond that, I didn’t feel like I had anything new to say.
When it comes to writing and speaking, I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have anything to say, don’t talk. Then I was sued and turned this lawsuit on it’s head, and now I have something to say about crowdfunding, philanthropy and turning villainy on its head. So I submitted my pitch to do a panel. Midstream in the voting, the Tesla thing came cup. I think that’s why they chose me. I was really happy. I’m a bit nervous, too, it’s not the kind of speech where you can just wing it.
Austin Post: You’re a great 21st century indie success story. Twenty years ago, comics meant a newspaper’s profanity free funny pages. Now, you’ve made a career off wonderfully funny and offensive comics about pig orgasms, angler fish and murderous cats. Do you think this is what the guys at DARPA were dreaming of when they invented the Internet?
Matthew Inman: No. Definitely not jokes about bears shitting everywhere.
I don’t think this is what comics artists had in mind either when comics were born. I think it’s a good thing the way funnies have changed. In my opinion, the former three-panel format where you wrote that for all eternity, that’s not the funnies anymore, that’s just the sad trombones. Visually, we can write whatever we want now. Mine are usually 700 pixels wide and 10,000 to 20,000 pixels long. That’s a lot more more freedom creatively. I can write about whatever I want in any way that I want. I’m not limited by how offensive it is or how it fits into the paper.
Lastly , if I decided I wanted to be a cartoonist, these older syndicates aren’t going to give up their spots. Peanuts have been syndicated for half a century. With the Internet right now, comedy is democratically chosen and democratically rewarded, it’s like the playing field has been leveled for cartoonists. If you’re funny, you’re popular. It’s a great place to be if you have something funny to say.
Austin Post: I personally love how you dealt with Funny Junk’s attempt to steal your work for their profit. I think it was a valuable lesson about not giving in to Internet trolls and bullies. Did you ever expect it to get that crazy?
Matthew Inman: No. I was really nervous about that. I thought it would be embarrassing for me. When I posted the donation page I couldn’t stop hitting refresh. No one was donating. I thought I’d raise $8 and feel like an ass. The post I wrote was really long, and it takes about 20 minutes to get through, and then that’s when it started to go nuts. Once people read it, it started raising money right away. It was a shock and a surprise, but it was nice.
I get a lot of traffic from Facebook and Reddit, but I was getting things from Mashable and news sources, and it was awesome, but I found myself wishing it was for my comics. I mean, that’s not reproducible. Last year I got sued, so next year, what do I need? To get murdered or something?
Austin Post: Why do you think they believed they had a right to steal your work?
Matthew Inman: That’s not just them. That’s kind of the Internet now. It’s a tough place to be for someone like me. I’m a small operation, so when someone steals my entire content, it does hurt me. There’re those memes, like the ‘You don’t just walk into Mordor,’ and that’s obviously someone else’s intellectual property, but no one cares. I think people see that and they assume everyone's the same in that regard, so they can take my comic and post it everywhere and it won’t hurt me, but it does affect my business, especially when someone posts my entire website.
I’m not going to go on the Internet and start policing everyone's images. This guy, I was willing to leave well enough alone, but when I got that letter, my response was you just put your testicles in a hornet’s nest and that’s when the war began.
Austin Post: You asked for $20,000 - the amount demanded by Funny Junk’s crazy lawyers - and raised over $200,000. Were you surprised to see that much love from your readers?
Matthew Inman: Yeah, absolutely. My readers are very generous with comments and clicks and Facebook likes and other intangible Internet actions, but to see them become generous with their money was very very cool. When you say ‘can you donate?’ that’s when people say ‘Oh, no I have to buy a sandwich later,’ so to see all this money roll in was remarkable.
Austin Post: As your following has grown, you’ve recently started using your powers for good. First, raising over $200,000 in the Bear Love Good, Cancer Bad campaign. Now, you’ve raised over $1.3 million to build a Tesla museum. Can we have a Mars colony next?
Matthew Inman: I think the hard part would be to convince someone to go to Mars and die horribly there. We should put sea monkeys there next, because no one gives a shit about sea monkeys. We should put them on the Curiosity rover, though, so we would have a living creature there.
Because of the previous campaign I thought we could probably raise six figures, but it was so cool to see it get that high. I think over 200 countries donated. It struck a nerve around the globe.
Someone tweeted they fucking hate Oatmeal comics but they love Tesla so they’re donated. That was really cool for me to see.
Austin Post: Tesla is sort of like bacon. Most people in real life are familiar with both of them, but they’re practically enshrined as examples of beatific perfection on the Internet. Why do you think Tesla is so insanely popular online?
Matthew Inman: I think a lot of it has to do with his character, not just his achievements. The man was brilliant and worked very hard to change the world, but he was also very naive about money and marketing. There’s also a clear villain with Thomas Edison. So from a story perspective, you have a real hero, a real villain, and someone who lost. How often with the Internet do you have a story of a real inventor who fought and lost? It’s a rare opportunity for people to honor that legacy.
Austin Post: I agree, but Tesla’s been dead for nearly 70 years. He hasn’t come back as a zombie time traveller. Why do you think he’s suddenly so popular now?
Matthew Inman: I think it was just an intersection of Internet things about him. There was his appearing in The Prestige played by David Bowie. After that, I saw the Tesla Badass of the Week and my jaw was on the floor. This guy was crazy awesome and I had no idea he did all these things, and I guess it culminated in him becoming this icon.
Furthermore, in some ways I see his life paralleling a little bit of Steve Wozniak’s, who was this genius who worked at Apple in the '80s and was responsible for a lot of the major feats that put Apple on the map. He believed everything should be free and open source - he wasn’t naive, but he was a believer. Woz isn’t poor now, but he isn’t Steve Jobs.
Austin Post: Speaking of technology and the 80’s, is it true you actually draw everything with a mouse?
Matthew Inman: Yes. Inertia? I’ve been drawing that way for years now, and to try and change is tough. I have Adobe Illustrator and a very sensitive tablet and all the tools I need to draw like a normal person, but I keep drawing with Adobe Fireworks and a mouse because I’m comfortable with it. Plus, my comics have been great, why should I change? I feel like I’m getting stagnant, though, so every year I tell myself I’m going to practice more with different software and try to change what I do.
Adobe Fireworks, I’ve been using it for 15 years now. It’s an extension of my body. I have every single keyboard shortcut memorized. It’s very sad, and it unfortunately makes me feel like my work is very stagnant. Visually, it’s not really going anywhere. It’s all ovals. I’m tired of it, I want to change. There’s no real reward there for my business, it’s more of a personal thing.
I tell that to comic artists, too. They tell me they’ve taken all these classes and learned how to precisely draw an anatomically correct human form, and I say congrats, but in comedy that doesn’t matter. Visual realism isn’t as important as the punchline. In comedy, the less specific you are the better. Breaking the visual style down into simpler forms, like in South Park, make it easier for people to relate to.
I really like comics, but I’m also sensing I have a five-year run left in comics.
Austin Post: What are you interested in doing next?
Matthew Inman: Animation. I’ve been interested in it for awhile, but it seems like over the last 8 weeks, every studio in LA is interested. Maybe it’s the Tesla thing that put me on the map, but I’m interested in doing that.
Austin Post: Would you like to do your own voice work, like Matt Stone and Trey Parker with South Park?
Matthew Inman: No. I would prefer to keep my voice completely out of it, but it’s tough. It’s such a fine line. With a comic, when you read it, it’s in the voice you want to hear, and it’s the funniest voice possible. But when you see it animated, you have this jarring other voice that doesn’t sound right.
Austin Post: You’ll be at BookPeople on October 24th, and you have some good advice for people who come to book signings.
Matthew Inman: I really like BookPeople. In fact, I love that store. It was one of my favorite signings of the last tour.
With book signings, I hate standing and posing for photos. It clogs up the line, and it’s rude to everyone else in line. You can take a forty minute line and turn it into 3 hours. I’d rather draw a doodle with the signature.
Think about it. If you got to meet Matt Groening from The Simpsons, what would you prefer - for him to take out a piece of paper and draw you a picture or would you rather have a blurry Facebook photo?
Matthew Inman will be signing copies of his new book, How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You at BookPeople on October 24th at 7:00 p.m.