Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your Whole Family is Made Out of Meat: The Best of Dinosaur Comics, 2003-2005 A.D. | 2005 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
| 2 | Dinosaur Comics, fig. d: Dudes already know about chickens. | 2010 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
| 3 | Dinosaur Comics, fig. e: Everybody knows failure is just success rounded down. | 2011 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
| 4 | Feelings are boring, kissing is awesome. | 2012 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
| 5 | Dinosaur Comics Presents: Aw frig! All comics from 2011! | 2013 | Randall Munroe | N/A |
Dinosaur Comics is a webcomic created by Ryan North, launched in 2003, in which the same six panels of dinosaur clip art appear in every strip with different dialogue each time. The comic stars T-Rex, who holds monologues on philosophy, science, language, relationships, and trivia, while the other dinosaurs respond. The constraint of fixed visuals means all the comic’s energy goes into the writing.
Five print collections were published between 2005 and 2013: Your Whole Family is Made Out of Meat (2005), plus four volumes with descriptive subtitles about failure, chickens, and feelings. The collections gather strips thematically or chronologically and include bonus material not available in the web archives.
Note that Dinosaur Comics is by Ryan North, not Randall Munroe – the two webcomics share an audience and cultural context, both being associated with the nerdy, science-and-language-interested webcomic readership of the mid-2000s, but they are separate works by different creators. The collections can be read in any order, as each strip is independent, but the earlier volumes have the advantage of the comic’s freshest material.