Assignment 5: Prewriting 2

In the short existence of the Internet, there have been many a web comic created, but certainly only a few have reached the sheer entertainment value that “The Oatmeal” by Matthew Inman has achieved. Ranging from topics such as Matthew’s opinions of your run-of-the-mill office printers to proposing how many ways your cat is possibly trying to kill you, “The Oatmeal” covers a wide variety of subjects whose humor is sure to leave even the most serious of people in stitches. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss why “The Oatmeal” is one of the best web comics around today through its use of conversation between characters, simplistic yet effective artwork, and original ideas.

“Sorry, I had the headset on,” says a thirty-year-old to his wife as he plays Xbox. “What’d you say?” “Oh, I was asking if you wanted to go jet-skiing and/or cave diving today. After that I thought we could get wasted on microbrews and have freaky weird sex that’s illegal in seven states.” The man promptly drops his controller and exits the scene with his wife. This is but one of the many scenarios written by Matthew Inman, creator of the web comic “The Oatmeal.” As I’m sure you can surmise from the example I showed, “The Oatmeal” is a humorous comic that is sure to keep you laughing longer than you would like to admit.

I had a bit of trouble in the first paragraph coming up with an appropriate thesis statement that I would be able to write four-five pages about. In the second paragraph, I felt that I wasn’t able to keep the interest level very high after the introductory sentence. However, I think that I did well in both introductions, and could probably find some way to combine the two into a fairly strong intro. Quotes are a good go-to, and giving such a wide spectrum of content examples like I did in the first paragraph has given me success at getting a reader’s attention in the past.


LIST OF TOOLS AND THINGS TO NOTICE
Target audience
Color scheme
Text font
Style of artwork
Writing style (formal/informal)
Grammar, for the Nazis among us
Catchy introduction
Continuity vs. come-and-go content
Subject matter
How often blog/comic is updated