 Since my buy-pile was mysteriously low this week, I decided its time to look at some webcomics as part of my weekly reviews. Webcomics are an interesting challenge to the budding cartoonist, since they require both an engagement with the one-joke gag strip concept as well as re-assessing the transition from print to web (which among other things, requires an entirely different page layout from portrait to landscape).
Dinosaur Comics (mysteriously addressed at qwantz.com ) is the result of a formal experiment taken to its extreme, and yes, its actually funny without resorting to insider video-game humour. The concept is deceptively simple, repeating the same six ms-paint panels in every single comic since February 1st, 2003. For pretty much every day since, artist/writer Ryan North has changed only the dialogue and narration for each gag. The comic is recipient of numerous awards including one of the best web comics by the Webcomics Examiner in 2004 and 2005 and Outstanding Athropomorphic Comic in 2005 by the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards.
You'd expect the whole thing to be a spectacular failure, or at best, a repetitive and generally unfunny mess. But besides being almost always ridiculously amusing and witty, over the past five years the dinosaur characters have developed and evolved with their gags, as they discuss a range of topics ranging from the secret to dinosaur happiness, absolutism vs relativism, their favourite foods, love, ethics and philosophy and modern physics.
T-rex is the main character, and exudes his typical childish innocence and naivety as he ponders the difficult choices in life, the nature of his not-quite-platonic relationship with female dinosaur Dromiceimimus, his creepy neighbours, or whatever stupid and fundamentally flawed new emotion or psychological concept he decides to ‘invent'. There to offer advice or criticism is his supporting cast including the generally level-headed Dromiceimimus and the high-thinking and intelligent Utah Raptor. The car, the tiny woman, and the small house are stomped in every single comic but are almost exclusively just scenery on the otherwise white background. The limitations of the layout mean that new and other repeating characters have to be either off-panel (including God, the devil, his neighbours the Cephalopods and Racoons, playwright William Shakespeare, Mr. Tusks the dwarf elephant vice-mayor of Tiny-Towne, and actor Patrick Stewart among others) or simply too small to see (Morris the tiny bug). Besides the occasional guest-comic, only very rarely does North adjust or change the artwork, adding goatees to the characters for the mirror universe, or that instance with the floating temporary Batman head ("I have to go away for a while, T-rex. Thank you for making me real, if only for a little while. Always remember me.")
However he does it, Ryan North always manages to create something new and hilarious on a daily basis, re-contextualising the same artwork just through use of dialogue and carefully selected moments of comic silence to highlight the limited dinosaur expressions. The crude two-tone MS-Paint dinosaurs come to life with a never-ending supply of energy and imagination. Dinosaur Comics is thoroughly recommended stuff, and worthy of a daily visit.
(Ps, look for the three easter eggs hidden with every daily strip!)
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