Dinosaur Comics is a webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz" after the site's domain name qwantz.com. It has been online since February 1, 2003, though there were early prototypes.[1] Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in two collections and in a number of newspapers.[2]
Comics are posted on most weekdays. Each comic uses the same artwork, with only the dialogue changing from day to day. There are occasional deviations from this, such as several episodic comics.[3] It has been compared to David Lynch's "The Angriest Dog in the World" comic, and also made references to it.[4][5] The strips take on topics including ethical relativism,[6] the nature of happiness, the secret to being loved,[7] and so forth.
Cast
An early edition of Dinosaur Comics
Main cast
The character names are each dinosaur's genus (with the notable exception being "T-Rex", an abbreviation of the tyrannosaurus' full binomial name). Although other dinosaurs have been mentioned in the strip, they are rarely shown.
- T-Rex is the main character. He is 27[8] and is a large green Tyrannosaurus Rex. He considers himself knowledgeable on many subjects, but is frequently shown up as ignorant (although he does sometimes offer genuinely interesting insights) by the other main characters, primarily Utahraptor. He is good-hearted, but occasionally shows signs of being egotistical or selfish. In spite of this, his friends tolerate him. T-rex appears to be stomping a log cabin and a woman in frames three and four, respectively. He explains, via flashback, that this action is the result of being denied the opportunity to do so as a child.[9]
- Utahraptor, T-Rex's comedic foil, appears in the fourth and fifth panels of the comic. He is generally more intelligent and skeptical than T-Rex, and often refutes whatever point T-Rex made in the first half, though T-Rex rarely takes notice. While it is not often brought up in the comic, Utahraptor is gay, [10] [11] [12] as North confirmed in the title of the RSS feed for the December 13, 2007 comic:[13]
| “ |
i received several dozen emails about utahraptor either being a girl or being gay in yesterday's comic! he is gay, guys. only he doesn't talk about it all the time, on account of having interests outside of being gay? |
” |
- Dromiceiomimus appears in the third panel. Although she is generally friendly to T-Rex — answering either neutrally or with mild, friendly criticism, in contrast with the more adversarial and skeptical Utahraptor — her replies may also be parsed as mocking, perhaps highlighting T-Rex's general lack of understanding of and success with the opposite sex. She has been a romantic love interest to T-Rex[14] and is also a nautical engineer.[15]
Supporting cast
Seen characters
- Batman has been brought to life by T-Rex's imagination and appears as a tiny Batman head floating around T-Rex in the sixth panel.[16] He appears to T-Rex again, much to the scorn of Utahraptor, and thanks T-Rex for making him real, "if only for a little while."[17] His latest appearance is as an "imaginary Australian Batman," a spoof deviated from John Batman and Daniel Batman.[18]
- Spider-Man and Batman's butler Alfred appear in T-Rex's imagination as tiny floating heads arguing with each other in one comic.[19]
- Several comics take place in a mirror universe parodying that of the Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror. In this arc, the standard comic has been flipped horizontally, as if seen in a mirror. All of the dinosaurs, in addition to being literal mirror images, sport drawn-on goatees to demonstrate that they are the mirror-universe counterparts of the normal characters.[20]
Unseen characters
- God[21] and the Devil[22] make frequent appearances in the strip, speaking from off the tops and bottoms of the panels respectively, in bold and capitalized letters and with the Devil's font in red. They also speak with little or no punctuation and can be heard only by T-Rex. Topics of conversation between T-Rex and God vary, but the Devil and T-Rex mostly discuss video games and Dungeons & Dragons.
- T-Rex's neighbors: families of raccoons and cephalopods who talk to T-Rex in unsettling tones, with capitalized italics.[comics 1].
- Professor Science, has only been alluded to in the comics but is depicted as a mortarboard-wearing diplodocus on a merchandise t-shirt.[comics 2]
- Morris, is a friendly "tiny bug" who mostly appears on T-Rex's nose and characteristically doesn't speak with capital letters.[comics 3]
- 19th-century poet Edgar Allan Poe first appears relaxing on T-Rex's couch[23] and later as a needy, annoying friend of T-Rex's, following T-Rex around and only wanting to talk about their relationship with each other.[24]
- "Fictional Jimbo Wales" appears to support T-Rex's apparent vandalism from the Wikipedia page on evil to "Irish Evil."[25] He also supports T-Rex's idea to vandalize only the Wikipedia article about chickens, leaving all other articles unvandalized.[26]
- Actor Patrick Stewart, whose self-published newsletter appears in one comic,[27] appears himself when T-Rex directs a statement toward "everyone I've ever met and ever will meet!" When asked what he is doing, Stewart responds that he's bored, while (still unseen) checking his watch and sighing dramatically.[28]
- Playwright and poet William Shakespeare appears in "Literary Technique Comics." [comics 4]
- "Mr. Tusks" is a dwarf elephant affected by island dwarfism as a result of his race being isolated on an island with limited food supply. He speaks only in the sixth frame and makes puns on the word "short" and its variants every time he speaks. He is also the Vice-Mayor of Tiny Towne.[comics 5]
Scenery characters
These supporting characters never say much. Often, they are simply part of the scenery of the strip, and later strips very rarely even acknowledge them, despite their regular appearance. They all appear in the strip while T-Rex is about to stomp on them. These characters are:
- The tiny house (occupied in at least one strip)
- The tiny car (possibly occupied, and "slightly out of scale")
- The tiny woman.
Easter eggs
Every comic contains three hidden comments (easter eggs). One is contained in the alternate text, which can be accessed by holding the cursor over the strip and waiting for the title text tooltip to pop up, or through the image file's properties menu for browsers with a length limit. The second, which began appearing with the fifth comic, is found in the subject line of the "Comments" e-mail address. The third is found in the RSS feed of the comic and the archive page, being, essentially, the comic's title. Additional easter eggs have been left in some comics, such as the URL to God's ringtone (the Téléfrançais theme) hidden in the watermark of one comic[29] and an image steganographically hidden in a comic about steganography.[30][31]
Also, the image at the bottom of the webpage displaying the tiny woman and house changes according to the current season.
Awards
Dinosaur Comics was named one of the best webcomics of 2004[32] and 2005[33] by The Webcomics Examiner. In 2005, it won "Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic" in the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards.[34] Soon after, in August 2005, Dinosaur Comics was accepted into the Dayfree Press.
Japan English class
Dinosaur Comics has been used by an English teacher in Japan for creative writing exercises. The project is similar to Penny Arcade's "Remix Project." The teacher, Patrick, who was a friend of Ryan, the strip's author, used blank templates of the comic and had his students fill in dialogue. The results of this activity have been posted to the Dinosaur Comics fanart page, and two phrases from the students' comics ("Am I bad man?" and "People is sometimes kind") were used in DC merchandise.
April Fool's Joke
On April Fool's Day 2008, Dinosaur Comics was part of a three-webcomic prank involving Questionable Content and xkcd wherein each comic's URL displayed another comic's web page. www.questionablecontent.net displayed the Dinosaur Comics website, www.qwantz.com displayed xkcd, and www.xkcd.com displayed the Questionable Content website.
See also
References
- ^ The neighbors appear in comics: 492, 493, 494, 500, 524, 681, 788, 888, and 988
- ^ Professor Science appears in comics: 636, 918, 1030, and 1031
- ^ Morris appears in comics: 673, 674, 935, 942, and 1012
- ^ Shakespeare appears in comics: 958, 959, 960, 983, 1018, and 1066
- ^ Mr. Tusks appears in comics: 1078, 1079, 1080, 1099, 1149, 1181, 1222, 1250, and then again in 1277
External links
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