Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Your Whole Family is Made Out of Meat The Best of Dinosaur Comics 2003-2005 A.D. by Ryan North Dinosaur Comics. Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on February 1, 2003, [1] although there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in three collections and in a number of newspapers. [2] [3] The comic centers on three main characters, T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus. [4] Contents. Cast Creation Reception Collected editions See also References External links. Comics are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every strip uses the same artwork and panel layout; [5] only the dialogue changes from day to day. There are occasional deviations from this principle, including a number of episodic comics. [6] North created the comic because it was something he'd "long wanted to do but couldn’t figure out how to accomplish. [he doesn't] draw, so working in a visual medium like comics isn’t the easiest thing to stumble into." [7] T-Rex, the main character that appears in all six panels. Utahraptor, T-Rex's comic foil, appears in the fourth and fifth panels of the comic. Dromiceiomimus appears in the third panel. She is generally friendly to T-Rex, answering either neutrally or with mild, friendly criticism. The tiny woman in panel four and the house in panel three have contributed dialogue but are usually silent. Other unseen characters occasionally contribute dialogue. For example, "God" speaks from off panel in bold all-caps, "Satan" speaks from off panel in dark red all-caps, T-Rex's sinister neighbours (raccoons and cephalopods) speak in italicized all-caps from off panel. Creation. Ryan North started Dinosaur Comics during his last year of his undergraduate degree. In a 2016 interview, he said he "wanted to do something with comics [but] I couldn't draw — still can't draw. I didn't realize that there was such a thing as writers in comics. I thought it was all one person." At about the same time as he came up with the concept of a fixed-art comic, North received a school assignment to, as he described it "do something interesting with the Internet." He was assigned a group, and his group was given the URL qwantz.com. After some time, his group had done nothing and North decided to upload some comics to the site. The first Dinosaur Comics strip was posted on February 1, 2003 and was called "Today is a beautiful day." [8] All the comics are six-panel strips, using clip art that North found on a CD he had purchased. Every strip uses the same art, with occasional exceptions, such as the mirror universe comics which uses the art but reversed. [8] Reception. Dinosaur Comics has received several awards and recognitions. It was named one of the best webcomics of 2004 and 2005 by The Webcomics Examiner. [9] [10] Wired listed Dinosaur Comics as one of "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids" [11] and PC Magazine included the comic in its "10 Wicked Awesome Webcomics" list. [12] Cracked.com named Dinosaur Comics one of the 8 funniest webcomics on the internet. [5] Collected editions. The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003–2005 AD: Your Whole Family Is Made Of Meat (April 15, 2006, Quack!Media) ISBN 0-7560-0518-3 Dinosaur Comics fig. d: Dudes Already Know About Chickens (2010, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-0-9824862-6-9 Dinosaur Comics fig. e: Everybody knows failure is just success rounded down (2011, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-1-936561-90-2 Dinosaur Comics fig. f: Feelings are boring, kissing is awesome (2012, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-1-936561-86-5. See also. Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists (includes material from Dinosaur Comics ) Related Research Articles. Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in drawing cartoons or comics. Cartoonists include the artists who handle all aspects of the work and those who contribute only part of the production. Cartoonists may work in many formats, such as booklets, comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, manuals, gag cartoons, illustrations, storyboards, posters, shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers, and video game packaging. Fetus-X was a weekly romantic horror comic written and drawn by Eric Millikin and Casey Sorrow. Millikin is an American artist and former human anatomy lab embalmer and dissectionist. Sorrow is an internationally known American illustrator and printmaker. PartiallyClips is a webcomic, created by Rob Balder, which ran from 2002 to 2015. At the start of 2010, Balder handed authorship of the comic to Tim Crist, the comedy musician behind Worm Quartet. A Softer World is a webcomic by the writer Joey Comeau and artist Emily Horne, both Canadians. It was first published online on 7 February 2003 and was released three times a week until its end in June 2015. Before starting the website in 2003, the comics had been published in zine form. With the launch of the website, the comic gained wider recognition, most notably when Warren Ellis linked to the comic on his blog, and then began to feature it as a "Favored Puny Human". It appeared in The Guardian for a short time until a change of editors caused it to be removed. Between 2008 and 2010, science fiction-themed strips of A Softer World were also produced and published on Tor.com. The Perry Bible Fellowship ( PBF ) is a webcomic and newspaper comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. It originated in the Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange in 2001. A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible ( ALILBTDII ) is a webcomic drawn by David Hellman and written by Dale Beran. Ted Rall described the comic as "explor[ing] the limits of pessimism and fatal consequence in a universe that would be difficult to imagine on the printed page." David and Dale are the primary characters, although they do not appear in every episode, and there is a small cast of real-life supporting characters, including schoolfriend/mad scientist Paul, Dale's sister Sally, and David's mother, Debby Hellman. Ryan North is a Canadian writer and computer programmer. He is the creator and author of Dinosaur Comics , and has written for the comic series of Adventure Time and Marvel Comics' The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl . His works have won multiple Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards and made New York Times Bestseller lists. Jeffrey J. Rowland is the author and artist responsible for Wigu and Overcompensating , two popular webcomics. Originally from Locust Grove, Oklahoma, Rowland now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts where he continues to work on the two projects, while running TopatoCo, a company which sells merchandise based on his and other artists' comics. Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc. Wondermark is a webcomic created by David Malki which was syndicated to Flak Magazine and appeared in The Onion 's print edition through 2008. It features 19th-century illustrations that have been recontextualized to create humorous juxtapositions. It takes the horizontal four-panel shape of a newspaper strip, although the number of panels varies from one to six or more. It is updated on a strict twice-weekly schedule. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ( SMBC ) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life. SMBC has run since 2002 and is published daily. The Attitude series of books is a series of anthologies of alternative comics, photos and artists' interviews edited by Universal Press Syndicate editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. The books were designed by J. P. Trostle, news editor of EditorialCartoonists.com. Two sequels and three spin-off titles have been published to date. A group of cartoonists featured in the Attitude series formed the organization Cartoonists With Attitude in June 2006; the group hosts slideshow and panel events around the country to promote the series and alternative political cartooning. Ted Rall created the compilation with the intention of publishing artists who were hard-up for work or otherwise had difficulties relating to the public. Project Wonderful was an advertising service created by programmer and webcomic author Ryan North in late 2006. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the service supported up thousands of webcomics and blogs with auctioned online advertisements, until it was shut down in 2018. Comics has developed specialized terminology. Some several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is under dispute, so this page will list and describe the most common terms used in comics. The Topato Corporation is a widely recognized online retailer of webcomics and related merchandise. It was established around 2004 by artist Jeffrey Rowland. Abigail "Abby" Howard is a webcomic artist from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the creator of Junior Scientist Power Hour and The Last Halloween . Arnold Zwicky's Blog. I’m talking about Ryan North‘s webcomic Dinosaur Comics , on the occasion of the appearance of his second collection of strips — Dinosaur Comics: Dudes already know about chickens (TopatoCo Books, 2010) — with all the strips from 2006. [Previous book of strips: The best of Dinosaur Comics 2003-2005 A.D.: Your whole family is made out of meat (Quack!Media, 2006). An explanation for the title of the 2010 book is on North’s Wikipedia page.] Here’s the thing: North doesn’t actually draw (or paint or engrave or whatever) anything, since, he maintains, he can’t draw. So what he does is caption stuff, in particular clip-art, and even then he uses just one set of clip-art panels, the same six ones (with three dinosaurs in them) in every strip, year after year. (For the most recent of his strips to appear on Language Log, see here.) From the introduction by Randall Munroe, who draws the webcomic xkcd (another favorite on Language Log) — itself viewed askance by some people because it’s all done with stick figures: Ryan, perhaps thanks to his background in computational linguistics [he has a master’s degree from the University of Toronto], has proven himself a master of conveying a friendly, happy-go-lucky conversational tone in every part of his writing [some discussion of his vernacular writing here]. His skill shows in his deployment of punctuation, typefaces, caps lock, and odd phrase structures that appear to have been architected by a friendly surfer dude with a magnetic poetry set containing every word in the language. Every choice is made carefully and precisely — not to show off his skill, like some writers might, but to create that perfect congenial vibe that makes readers around the world feel that if they met him, they’d get along fabulously. I’m working on a separate posting on the creation of a persona through the use of features of spoken and written language. Munroe goes on: The format of Dinosaur Comics suggests some obvious questions: if the panels never change, does it really count as a comic? If so, is it just a variation on one comic, or many? Is it really art at all? I think the best thing about these questions is that I hardly ever hear them anymore. So North has persevered, and people’s enjoyment of his material has trumped the But Is It Art? question. I’m well acquainted with the question myself, in my capacity as a collagist. In fact, some of my work is nothing but the captioning of found images — for example the XXX-rated images linked to here. Some of it is captioning or recaptioning with modest additions to found images — for example the “postcard collages” here. Many of my collages are more complex than that — for instance the two academic collages here and the five XXX-rated collages described and linked to here. But I don’t draw (or paint or engrave or whatever) anything. One of the pleasures of doing this stuff is that other artists accept it as art and discuss it seriously with me. We’ve had about a century of getting used to eccentric approaches to artistic creation, from Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades” (found objects presented as pieces of art) through many kinds of conceptual art, including some that is primarily linguistic in its “content”, like Jenny Holzer’s aphorisms and Ed Ruscha’s “word paintings” (though Ruscha did actually paint those things). Maybe the way to think of Dinosaur Comics is as linguistically based conceptual cartooning. Share this: Like this: This entry was posted on December 5, 2010 at 10:48 am and is filed under Art/lit/music/film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 6 Responses to “But is it art?” Captioning: more is it art? « Arnold Zwicky's Blog Says: December 6, 2010 at 8:41 am | Reply. […] Arnold Zwicky's Blog A blog mostly about language « But is it art? […] […] another example of a webcomic by an artist who cannot draw but can caption (and take […] […] But is it art? (link): Dinosaur Comics, with references to captioning of found images, Duchamp, Holzer, and […] […] in that gray zone between cartooning and Art (see my posting “But is it art?”, here). From the webpage: A Softer World is a comic that was created by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau so […] […] the words-only end of the scale are, for instance, Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics, considered here, and Dante Shepherd’s Surviving the World, considered here: captioning as […] […] to the words-only end of the scale are, for instance, Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics, considered here, and Dante Shepherd’s Surviving the World, considered here: captioning as […] Ryan North. Ryan North (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian writer and computer programmer. Contents. Comics Webcomics Printed comics and graphic novels Webcomic tools Books and other writing Awards Personal life Bibliography References External links. He is the creator and author of Dinosaur Comics , and has written for the comic series of Adventure Time and Marvel Comics' The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl . His works have won multiple Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards and made New York Times Bestseller lists. [1] [2] [3] Comics. Webcomics. Dinosaur Comics was named one of the best webcomics of 2004 and 2005 by The Webcomics Examiner. [5] [6] Wired listed Dinosaur Comics as one of "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids" [7] and PC Magazine included the comic in its "10 Wicked Awesome Webcomics" list. [8] Cracked.com named Dinosaur Comics one of the 8 funniest webcomics on the internet. [9] In 2005, it won "Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic" in the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards. [10] Canada's The Globe and Mail described North as a "pioneering webcomic creator". [4] Printed comics and graphic novels. North was the writer of the Adventure Time comic book series from 2012 to 2014. [11] In 2013 the series won an Eisner Award (Best Publication for Kids) [12] and a Harvey Award (Best Original Graphic Publication For Younger Readers). North has written for several Marvel Comics series, including The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Power Pack , and Inhumans: Once and Future Kings . [13] On January 21, 2013, Shiftylook.com launched Galaga , a comic written by North and illustrated by Christopher Hastings and colored by Anthony Clark, the creators of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja . [14] The comic is based on the 1981 arcade shooter of the same name. On July 21, 2017, two of North's projects were awarded Eisner Awards: "Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17)" for The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (with Erica Henderson), and "Best Humor Publication" for Jughead (with Chip Zdarsky, Henderson, and Derek Charm). [15] [16] In 2021, Archaia published a graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which was adapted by North and illustrated by Albert Monteys. [17] Webcomic tools. North created three tools to aid webcomic authors: Oh No Robot, a webcomic transcription tool that creates searchable text databases for comics; RSSpect, a method of creating RSS feeds for websites; and Project Wonderful, a pay-per-day auction-based ad serving system. The first two were free, whereas the last took 25% of each sale. All three services are now defunct. Books and other writing. During his academic career, North co-authored three papers on computational linguistics, [18] and according to his website, his thesis was entitled "Computational Measures of the Acceptability of Light Verb Constructions". [19] [ non-primary source needed ] Some of North's original comedy writing appears on the website Madhouse, including Robot Erotica, [20] and prank emails such as attempts to stop other people named "Ryan North" from using his name. [21] [22] In November 2006, Ryan North created the site Every Topic in the Universe Except Chickens , [23] which purports to provide a solution to vandalism on Wikipedia, in that it encourages vandals to vandalize only the article on chickens: ". instead of vandalizing Wikipedia in general, we all just vandalize the chicken article." North reasoned that it was worth trading the reliability of the chicken article if it meant freeing the rest of the encyclopedia from the threat of vandalism because "Dudes already know about chickens." The site received media attention. [24] A collection of short stories titled Machine of Death was released October 2010 through Bearstache Books. [25] The book, featuring stories and illustrations by various authors and artists, was based on a Dinosaur Comics comic by North of December 5, 2005, with the premise of a machine that predicts the manner of a person's death accurately but in a difficult to understand manner. [26] North was one of its editors, and contributed one of the stories. Machine of Death reached #1 on Amazon.com, beating Glenn Beck and drawing criticism from him as exemplifying a "liberal culture of death". [27] In November 2012, North launched a Kickstarter project to fund a book entitled To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure , a retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet modelled on Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The project raised more than six times its $20,000 goal in less than a week, and closed on December 22, 2012 having raised $580,905, nearly thirty times their original goal, [28] and a record for a Kickstarter publishing project at that time. [29] The book allows readers to take the role of Hamlet, Ophelia or Hamlet's father and make their own choices throughout the story; the latter characters, as well as over 100 colour illustrations by a range of artists, were added to the book as funding increased. [30] The book made a New York Times Bestseller list. [1] In 2018, Riverhead Books published Ryan North's "How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller": a nonfiction guide to technology based around the fictional premise of a time machine stranding the reader in the past. It was named one of NPR's and BBC Science Focus's Best Books of 2018. [31] [32] Awards. Year Nominated work Category Result Notes 2017 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Eisner Award: Best Publication for Teens (ages 13–17) Won Illustrated by Erica Henderson [33] 2017 Jughead Eisner Award: Best Humor Publication Won Created by Chip Zdarsky, North, Erica Henderson, and Derek Charm [33] 2017 Romeo and/or Juliet: A Choosable-Path Adventure Alex Award Won [34] 2017 (multiple comics) Joe Shuster Award: Outstanding Writer Nominated [35] 2016 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Eisner Award: Best New Series Nominated Illustrated by Erica Henderson [36] [33] 2016 (multiple comics) Joe Shuster Award: Outstanding Writer Nominated [37] 2015 (multiple comics) Joe Shuster Award: Outstanding Writer Nominated [38] 2015 The Midas Flesh Joe Shuster Award: The Dragon Award (Comics for Kids) Nominated [38] 2014 Adventure Time Harvey Awards: Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers Won [39] 2014 Adventure Time Harvey Awards: Special Award for Humor Won [39] 2014 (multiple comics) Joe Shuster Award: Outstanding Writer Nominated [40] 2013 Adventure Time Eisner Award: Best Publication for Kids (ages 8–12) Won [33] 2013 Adventure Time Harvey Awards: Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers Won [39] 2013 Adventure Time Harvey Awards: Special Award for Humor Won [39] 2013 Adventure Time Eisner Award: Best New Series Nominated [41] 2013 Adventure Time Eisner Award: Best Humor Publication Nominated [41] 2013 Adventure Time Sushter Awards: Outstanding Writer Nominated [42] 2005 Dinosaur Comics Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards: Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic Won In the same year, Dinosaur Comics was also nominated for Outstanding Writing, Outstanding Comedic Comic, and Outstanding Short Form Comic. [43] Personal life. North was born in Osgoode, Ontario, in 1980. His parents are Anna and Randall North [44] [ non-primary source needed ] and said in an interview that he has a younger brother, Victor. [4] In an interview, North said that his family lived in rural Osgoode and there was not a lot to do, so spent much of his time on the computer. [4] After high school, he studied computer science at Carleton University in Ottawa, then did his master's degree in computer science at the University of Toronto in Toronto, specializing in computational linguistics. [4] North once hosted instructions on his website for building cardboard boxes designed to look like elements of Super Mario Brothers, designed by his friend Posterchild. In 2006, a group of teenage girls in Ravenna, Ohio were arrested after they created and distributed several of these blocks, over fears they were bombs. [45] [46] On August 18, 2015, North became stuck in a skate pit with only an umbrella, a leash, his phone, and his dog, Noam Chompsky, after rain made the surface too slick to easily climb with a dog in tow. He posted about his conundrum on Twitter, leading hundreds of Twitter users to reply with suggestions on how to combine the items in his "inventory" to escape, eventually leading to success. [47] [48] North is married to his wife Jenn Klug. [49] As of 2016, they were living in Leslieville, Toronto, Ontario. [4] Bibliography. Author, The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD (April 15, 2006, Quack!Media) ISBN 0-7560-0518-3 Author, Dinosaur Comics: Dudes Already Know About Chickens (2010, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-0-9824862-6-9 Editor and contributor, Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (October 13, 2010, Machines of Death) ISBN 0-9821671-2-1 Author, Everybody Knows Failure Is Just Success Rounded Down: Dinosaur Comics (2011, TopatoCo) ISBN 978-1-936561-90-2 Writer, Adventure Time Issues 1-35 (2012-15, KaBOOM!) Author, To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure (2013, Breadpig) ISBN 978-0-9828537-4-0 Editor, This Is How You Die; Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death (2013, Grand Central Publishing) ISBN 978- 1455529391 Writer, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Issues 1-50 (2014-19, Marvel) Author, The Midas Flesh Vol. 1 (2014, BOOM! Box) ISBN 978-1608864553 Author, The Midas Flesh Vol. 2 (2015, BOOM! Box) ISBN 978-1608867271 Author, Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable- Path Adventure (2016, Riverhead Books) ISBN 978-1101983300 Writer, Jughead Volume 3, Issues 9-14 (2016-17, Archie Comics) Author, How to Be a T.Rex (2018, Dial Books) ISBN 978-0399186240 Author, How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide For The Stranded Time Traveler (2018, Riverhead Books) ISBN 978-0735220140 Author, Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel (2020, Archaia) ISBN 978- 1684156252. Related Research Articles. Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. He is best known for his non-fiction books about comics: Understanding Comics (1993), Reinventing Comics (2000), and Making Comics (2006), all of which also use the medium of comics. Brian Clevinger is an American writer best known as the author of the webcomic 8-Bit Theater and the Eisner-nominated print comic Atomic Robo . He is also the author of the self-published novel Nuklear Age . Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on February 1, 2003, although there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in three collections and in a number of newspapers. The comic centers on three main characters, T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus. Tyrone Templeton is a Canadian comic book artist and writer who has drawn a number of mainstream titles, TV-associated titles, and his own series. Bryan Lee O'Malley is a Canadian cartoonist, best known for the Scott Pilgrim series. He also performs as a musician under the alias Kupek . Jeffrey J. Rowland is the author and artist responsible for Wigu and Overcompensating , two popular webcomics. Originally from Locust Grove, Oklahoma, Rowland now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts where he continues to work on the two projects, while running TopatoCo, a company which sells merchandise based on his and other artists' comics. Svetlana Chmakova is a Russian-Canadian comic book artist. She is best known for Dramacon , an original English-language (OEL) manga spanning three volumes and published in North America by Tokyopop. Her other original work includes Nightschool and Awkward for Yen Press. She has been nominated for an Eisner Award twice. Previously, she created The Adventures of CG for CosmoGIRL! magazine and the webcomic Chasing Rainbows for Girlamatic. Faith Erin Hicks is a Canadian cartoonist and animator living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cyanide & Happiness ( C&H ) is a webcomic created by Rob DenBleyker, Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick and Matt Melvin. The comic has been running since 2005 and is published on the website explosm.net along with animated shorts in the same style. Matt Melvin left C&H in 2014, and several other people have contributed to the comic and to the animated shorts. Karl Kerschl is a Canadian comic book artist, best known for his work on DC Comics books, including Adventures of Superman , Majestic , All- Flash , Teen Titans: Year One and Gotham Academy . Jellaby is a webcomic by Kean Soo, featuring a character of the same name. Jellaby has appeared in several volumes of the comics anthology Flight , as well as in its own self-titled webcomic. A full-length graphic novel, Jellaby , was published in 2008. The success of the first book led to a sequel, Jellaby: Monster in the City , which was published in 2009. Emily Carroll is a comics author from Ontario, Canada. Carroll started making comics in 2010, and her horror webcomic His Face All Red went viral around Halloween of 2010. Since then, Carroll has published two books of her own work, created comics for various comics anthologies, and provided illustrations for other works. Carroll has won several awards, including an Ignatz and two Eisners. Dinosaur Comics. Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the sites domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on February 1, 2003, although there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in three collections and in a number of newspapers. The comic centers on three main characters, T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus. Comics are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every strip uses the same artwork and panel layout; only the dialogue changes from day to day. There are occasional deviations from this principle, including a number of episodic comics. North created the comic because it was something hed "long wanted to do but couldn’t figure out how to accomplish. draw, so working in a visual medium like comics isn’t the easiest thing to stumble into." 1. Cast Utahraptor, T-Rexs comic foil, appears in the fourth and fifth panels of the comic. T-Rex, the main character that appears in all six panels. Dromiceiomimus appears in the third panel. She is generally friendly to T-Rex, answering either neutrally or with mild, friendly criticism. The tiny woman in panel four and the house in panel three have contributed dialogue but are usually silent. Other unseen characters occasionally contribute dialogue. For example, "God" speaks from off panel in bold all-caps, "Satan" speaks from off panel in dark red all-caps, T-Rexs sinister neighbours raccoons and cephalopods speak in italicized all-caps from off panel. 2. Reception Dinosaur Comics has received several awards and recognitions. It was named one of the best webcomics of 2004 and 2005 by The Webcomics Examiner. Wired listed Dinosaur Comics as one of "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids" and PC Magazine included the comic in its "10 Wicked Awesome Webcomics" list. Cracked.com named Dinosaur Comics one of the 8 funniest webcomics on the internet. In 2005, it won "Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic" in the Web Cartoonists Choice Awards. Soon after, in August 2005, Dinosaur Comics was accepted into the Dayfree Press. In 2006, the blook Dinosaur Comics: Huge Eyes, Beaks, Intelligence, and Ambition was a runner up for the Lulu Blooker Prize for comics. 3. Collected editions Dinosaur Comics fig. d: Dudes Already Know About Chickens 2010, TopatoCo ISBN 978-0-9824862-6-9 Dinosaur Comics fig. f: Feelings are boring, kissing is awesome 2012, TopatoCo ISBN 978-1-936561-86-5 Dinosaur Comics fig. e: Everybody knows failure is just success rounded down 2011, TopatoCo ISBN 978-1-936561-90-2 The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003–2005 AD: Your Whole Family Is Made Of Meat April 15, 2006, Quack!Media ISBN 0-7560-0518-3. MadInkBeard by DerikBadman. The Best of Dinosaur Comics 2003-2005 A.D.: Your whole family is made of meat by Ryan North. Quack!Media, 2006. $14.99, 250p. If there’s any webcomic that fits into a Oubapo mold, it is Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics. North decided to do a webcomic, but he couldn’t draw. Instead of following the Trondheim path of learning to draw while making a comic, North took some dinosaur clip art, put it into panels, and started writing dialogue. The strip follows what the Oubapo would call “iconographic repetition.” Each strip has the exact same images. And yes, look at that title, this book does collect a bit less than three years worth of daily strips. You may wonder how this strip can retain any interest for that long with the same damn pictures every day. Well, it’s a testament to North’s writing that it is interesting, funny, and often hilarious, on a regular basis. The strip veers from jokes and absurdities to insightful social commentary and back without batting an eye. North uses the main character, T-Rex, a large green tyrannosaurus rex, as a cipher for all kinds of opinions, questions, and strange ideas. The result is the kind of comic I find myself sending out links to friends. The basic set-up is: panel 1: T-Rex from a medium distance; panel 2: T-Rex head shot; panel 3: T-Rex about to stomp on a log cabin with a car parked next to it, while Dromiceiomimus (a female dinosaur) looks on; panel 4: T-Rex about to stomp on a human woman with Utah Raptor (T- Rex’s friend) looking on; panel 5: T-Rex looking back at Utah Raptor; panel 6: full figure shot of T-Rex. Each day North fills in different dialogue for T-Rex, Dromiceiomimus, and Utah Raptor, with occasionally off–panel words from God (in bold coming from the sky) or Satan (in red coming from the ground, who is obsessed with videogames). This collected volume starts off at the beginning of the strip. It’s interesting to see the characters referring to the house and woman that T-Rex is so indiscriminately stomping on, as if North felt the need to tie all the images in with the dialogue. But he soon gives this up and those parts of the images fall to the background, rarely mentioned at all. After a few strips one stops really seeing the images at all, they become familiar through repetition and through familiarity a reader no longer even needs to see them. I could probably hear someone read this strip and be able to fill in the images and panel breaks. It’s tempting to ask, why have the images at all? Like Trondheim’s Bleu, I think the answer lies in the way of reading a comic. The pacing of the strip and its dialogue are set within the comics panel framework. We read them in a certain way regardless of the images, including captions and “beat” panels. One might even be able to do this strip as word balloons shorn of an referring characters and get the same affect. But… Dinosaurs are funny. And, they do occassionally refer to their species in the strips. I highly suggest you go take a look at the Dinosaur Comics site. Read a few strips. If you enjoy them, this book is a great way to sit back and enjoy the strip without clicking through 250 web pages.