The Oatmeal is a webcomic and humor website created in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman. It offers original comics, quizzes, and occasional articles. Inman has produced a series of Oatmeal books with content from the webcomic and previously unpublished material, related board games, and other merchandise. In 2010, Inman said The Oatmeal received more than four million unique visitors per month. In 2012, he said The Oatmeal's annual revenue was around US$500,000, of which three-quarters came from merchandising and the rest from advertising. The website won the Eisner Award for Best Digital/Webcomic in 2014. In 2019, Inman announced plans to step back from The Oatmeal for a while to concentrate on other work. Website Creation Inman created The Oatmeal website in 2009. Early comics regularly made the front page of Digg, driving traffic to the site. Inman said that when he started the comic, he felt that drawing was a chore. In a 2010 interview, he said that when thinking of a subject to write about, he simply picks something he is interested in. He usually worked at home, but as he finds it difficult to go long periods without social contact, he often goes to a coffee shop to work. Inman said that he found it is much easier to gain exposure for his work through the internet than it would have been two decades earlier. He added that he enjoys making people laugh, and although he can't actually see the reaction of others to his work, he still appreciates seeing the high number of page views that his website receives. Content The format of The Oatmeal has been described as "storytelling-meets-infographics" and as "a quirky and often crudely-drawn comic". The comics cover an eclectic range of topics: a 2010 article describes comics on being chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor, evil scheming kittens, people being sodomized by Bigfoot, and babies that taste like nachos. Other themes are zombies, horse care, English grammar, dolphin brutality, and sexual congress between koalas and goats. His first viral comic was "How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You", and other comics have titles such as "How to Use a Semicolon", "What it's Like to Own an Apple Product", "How the Male Angler Fish Gets Completely Screwed", "15-ish Things Worth Knowing About Coffee" and "How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell." One comic, "Why Nikola Tesla Was