| Ryan North | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 October 1980 Ottawa, Ontario |
| Occupation | Comic writer, computer programmer |
| Nationality | Canada |
| Period | 2000–present |
| Genres | Humour |
| Literary movement | Webcomic |
| Notable work(s) | Dinosaur Comics |
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www.qwantz.com |
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Ryan M. North (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian writer, computer programmer, and occasional songwriter who is the creator and author of Dinosaur Comics, and co-creator of Whispered Apologies and Happy Dog the Happy Dog.
North grew up in Ottawa, Ontario where he studied computer science (minor in film) at Carleton University before moving to Toronto for his Master's degree in Computer Science at the University of Toronto, specializing in computational linguistics; he graduated in 2005. He is a humorist, programmer and longboarding enthusiast[1] and also designs t-shirts as a day job. His parents are Anna and Randall North.[2] He has a younger brother, Victor North. He is married to Jennifer Klug.
Dinosaur Comics, a fixed-art webcomic, has run for more than 2,000 issues and has been published by Quack!Media as The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD: Your Whole Family Is Made Of Meat.[3] In addition to his comics, North has created three tools to aid webcomic authors: Oh No Robot, a webcomic transcription tool which 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 are free, while the latter takes 25% of each sale. Project Wonderful and Dinosaur Comics serve as a full-time source of income for North, making him one of a few professional webcomic artists.[4] Before Dinosaur Comics, North created Robot Erotica.[5]
The name Ryan North is held by many other individuals, and Ryan North the webcomic author sarcastically tried to stop these other people using his name in a series of satirical emails.[6] North once got himself in trouble with authorities by sending crank emails.[7] He was also connected to the arrest of a group of 15-year-old girls in Ravenna, Ohio when they created and distributed a number of cardboard boxes, inspired by a website he hosts for Poster Child.[8]
On November 8, 2006, Ryan North launched the site Every Topic in the Universe Except Chickens,[9] which provides a solution to vandalism on Wikipedia, in that it encourages vandals only to vandalize 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." His site has been covered by the mass media.[10] The chicken article remains protected to this day.
A collection of short stories titled Machine of Death was released October, 2010 through Bearstache Books (http://machineofdeath.net/a/about). It reached #1 on Amazon.com, beating Glenn Beck and drawing criticism from him as exemplifying a "liberal culture of death".[11] It is co-edited by Ryan North and inspired by his December 5, 2005 comic