"I believe good writing can save bad art," says Ryan North about his Dinosaur Comics -- a crudely illustrated Web series that has become an international sensation.

The Toronto-based North began his unusual strip in 2003. It differs from most comics in that it uses the same set of images for every strip -- which just so happens to centre on dinosaurs -- though the musings and worldly insights of the main character, "T-Rex," vary from strip to strip.

The end result is a comic that reads like a conversation between different aspects of North's brain, highlighting the lives of numerous dinosaurs and off-panel characters (some too small to be seen, though they can be heard). The series attracts a readership of more than 100,000 people a day.

North's approach allows him to experiment with a wide array of techniques and topics, ranging from philosophy to computer science, biology and Shakespeare.

"I read a lot and do a fair bit of research," North says.

"It's funny because people will say, 'What did you study? You must have a degree in philosophy.' Sometimes I feel like I must be hinting at this deep well of knowledge when really I just skim off the surface."

North grew up in Ottawa, attending Carleton University as a computer science student. In 2003, he moved to Toronto to pursue a Master's degree in computational linguistics at the University of Toronto.

"I feel like that degree almost gave me a licence to break the rules in English," he says. "It's like jazz: You learn the rules to break them -- as long as you can break them in a meaningful way."

In 2003, North began his comic strip, employing a cheap, royalty-free computer clip-art CD he had originally bought circa 1995.

After deciding that the interchangeable pictures of dinosaurs were by far the funniest (and simplest) way to shape his comic, he created the strip, not realizing that he would wind up staring at the same images every day for the next six years.

"When I graduated, I sort of went from school to being a cartoonist, and I couldn't draw," he says. "I think the luckiest thing I've ever done in my life was laying out the comic as I did."

Dinosaur Comics has made North one of the few self-sufficient Web-comic artists in the world, with 90% of his income coming directly from merchandise he designs and 10% from advertising.

"When I started full-time after I graduated, I basically determined that if I sold three shirts a day I could sustain my fabulous student lifestyle, with Kraft Dinner for lunch," North says.

"I remember trying to imagine three separate individuals who were topless, but then bought a shirt because of me -- and it has to happen every day. It's kind of nuts."

North releases a new strip five days per week at his website, qwantz.com,working hard to keep the material fresh. The cartoonist says he's still surprised that his quirky sense of humour is enjoyed by anyone but himself. "It impacts people in ways you wouldn't expect, and the nice thing is when it impacts somebody in a positive way they tend to write in, but if I've somehow ruined someone's life with the comic they haven't told me yet."

amiller@nationalpost.com