Ryan North

Who is Ryan North?

Ryan M. North 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 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 and also designs t-shirts as a day job. His parents are Anna and Randall North. 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, among other compilations. In addition to his comics, North has 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 are free, whereas the last 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. Before Dinosaur Comics, North created Robot Erotica.