Ryan North (born October 20, 1980) 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.
Comics
Webcomics
North started the webcomic Dinosaur Comics in 2003, during the last year of his undergraduate degree. Dinosaur Comics is a fixed-art webcomic which uses the same base art for every strip. North has produced over 3,500 strips.
Dinosaur Comics 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.
As well as Dinosaur Comics, North also created Whispered Apologies, a site where users could submit comic art without text and others would write text to match the art.
Canada's The Globe and Mail described North as a "pioneering webcomic creator".
Printed comics and graphic novels
North was the writer of the Adventure Time comic book series from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 the series won an Eisner Award (Best Publication for Kids) 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.
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. 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).
On September 15, 2020, Archaia published a graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which was adapted by North and illustrated by Albert Monteys.
In July 2022, North announced two upcoming comics projects via his newsletter. The first is Star Trek: Lower Decks —a limited series based on the animated series of the same name—with artist Chris Fenoglio; the first issue is scheduled to be published in September 2022 by IDW Publishing. The second is a YA graphic novel, titled Danger and Other Unknown Risks, with artist Henderson; North and Henderson were co-creators on Squirrel Girl. This graphic novel is described as a "dystopian fantasy" and is scheduled to be published in April 2023 by Penguin Teen.
In November 2022, North launched a new volume of Fantastic Four with artist Iban Coello.
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. Only Oh No Robot remains.
Books and other writing
During his academic career, North co-authored three papers on computational linguistics.
Some of North's original comedy writing appears on the website Madhouse, including Robot Erotica, and prank emails such as attempts to stop other people named "Ryan North" from using his name.
In November 2006, Ryan North created the site Every Topic in the Universe Except Chickens, 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.