Even if you aren't necessarily sure what The Oatmeal is, I can almost guarantee that it is a webcomic you've read. The sardonic humor and observations on life found inside have posts regularly blowing up on social media and news aggregation sites, quickly elevating the comic to web phenom since its inception in 2009. I caught up with creator Matthew Inman on the show floor at New York Comic Con and picked his brain to find out what's behind his webcomic success.

MTV Geek: Tell us a bit about what caused you to start The Oatmeal, your origin story if you will.

Matthew Inman: I actually used to build websites for a living, and I did that for a long time but got tired of working for people. I decided to build a website which was autonomous, which could make me a living without actually going to work. So I started a dating site, but I didn't know anything about marketing, so in order to get people to actually come to the website, I started making funny things: comics, quizzes, and  illustrated stories about dating just to draw people in.

Eventually, I felt that my comics were becoming nothing more than an advertising vehicle. The comics were more popular than the actual dating was, so I decided to built a site full of the humor stuff. That's when I decided to launch a career as a comedian rather than a marketer. I've only been doing the actual comic aspect for 2 1/2 or 3 years, so it's all still pretty new to me.

Geek: Was this just an "I'm quitting this job to make comics for a living" decision, or did you start slowly and then realize you could make a living doing this?

Inman: Actually, I quit the job and immediately said "I'm going to make comics for a living" and I told people that who would then say "Oh, that's cute. So like, Best Buy then? What's the backup plan. Radio Shack? Where are you going to make a living? And the first few months, they were right. The Oatmeal was breaking even at best. It wasn't until about four months after that I did a couple comics in a row that just took off. That's when I looked and saw that I could really do this for a living.

Geek: Now did your sense of humor just start to come out when you drew, or did you always have that slightly off-kilter look on life?

Inman: I think verbally I did, but not as a writer because I never really wrote in my jobs as a programmer or designer. It wasn't really until I started drawing comics that I realized I had this voice I could use.

Geek: Well, think back to your early influences. Where did the sense of humor come from? You can blame your parents or blame the TV, but in the end what do you feel made you the way you are?

Inman: You know, I don't really know, but my parents have always said I was just kinda pissed off from birth, this pissed off little monster baby. Every picture of me when I was three I was always just scowling, and that horrific cynicism just developed from there. That's kind of just how I've always been, and I just learned to turn that cynicism into something relatable.

Geek: How many of the ideas that you put into The Oatmeal would you say are based on some personal experience you had in life, or do you more often go looking for an interested topic to write on?

Inman: Any of the comics that strike on some kind of gripe--that's typically 100 percent how I feel about it. If I find something that I love, such as Sriracha, or something that I hate, such as getting my printer to work, I try to use that emotion to create something, so that is sincere.

Geek: Do you have a certain target audience you aim for when you sit down to write an Oatmeal comic? The way I see the site is that certain comics strike home with a core audience, and that's what causes them to be linked around so much. When you get an Oatmeal comic in your inbox, you know that the person who sent it decided it was perfect for you.

Inman: I don't really have that target audience, I just try to write things that I would like to read and I would find funny. My sense of humor just seems to coincide with a lot of other people's, although I do make mistakes sometimes, but so far so good.

Geek: I've got a copy of your book sitting here in front of me. When did you launch this, and what else do you have coming down the pipe?

Inman: This book came out back in March and I'm already working on my second one, which will be out in a year, and will be all about cats. In the short term, I've got an iPhone/iPad app coming out in January. It's going to be every Oatmeal comic ever done in an easy-to-read mobile format with exclusive bonus comics that aren't on the web or in any book.

Geek: Aside from your core work, do you ever get approached for custom content or commissioned projects?

Inman: Yeah, I get a lot of those but usually the only commission I'll ever take is something really cool like NASA, but typically it's something lame like social media. Even if it was a really cool project I don't really know if I'd want to tarnish the brand for a paycheck, you know, so for the time being probably no commissioned work.

Geek: Looking back, do you have a favorite Oatmeal or is that like choosing children?

Inman: I do, but it's not the one most people love. It's called Punchline Aliens. Other than that, lately I really enjoy writing Minor Differences and Bobcats. I love writing both of those strip.

Geek: If your personal favorite isn't the one most people love, which one is then?

Inman: Cats. Anything with cats, and your fans are like "more cats! more cats!"

Geek: I'm pretty sure the internet is at least 55 percent cats.

Inman: Pretty much. You could scientifically prove with beakers that the internet is made of cats.