The 2006 book "A History of Webcomics" asserted that "Inspector Dangerfuck" -- created by ANSI artist Eerie -- was "the first known comic on the Internet."
The book offered no dates, no details, and no sources. But these red flags didn't deter later editors, bloggers, and content creators from repeating versions of this statement.
To be clear, the assertion was wrong. Eerie drew "Inspector Dangerfuck" pieces in 1994, and there had been much earlier online comics.
Still, the assertion raises a lot of interesting questions: What is ANSI art? Who was Eerie? What was "Inspector Dangerfuck?" Was it even a comic? Were there other ANSI art comics?
I've written a multi-part series tackling these questions and diving deep into the history of an often-overlooked subculture.
Love to see retro ANSI art. I was in both the large ANSI artist groups, ACiD and iCE back in the day. These ANSI blocks were a next level step in online graphics, from ASCII art. This was the predecessor to Adobe Flash.
I remember diddling around in TheDraw and wishing I could make things as cool as what I saw in the ACiD and iCE packs. Looking at the raw ANSI codes and to see what they were actually doing was a lot like "View source..." when HTML hit the scene.
It would be fun to revive the “long form ANSI art” format for a personal website. And you wouldn’t have to worry about mobile vs desktop views, too!
This was fascinating. Love old BBS stuff, even though this was far from what I was experiencing at the time.
Same here. I was an active BBSer as a teen throughout the 1990s, but was never part of the underground artscene.
EE-LG01.IMP Is my favorite of the pieces included in the article.
It reminds me of the bitchx splash screen
The real question is what is an "online comic" or "webcomic" - especially as almost by definition a webcomic can't predate the web; though an online one could.
There's an extended quote from Eerie at the end of this story where he addresses this (in the context of where/if ANSI comics fit into the history of webcomics).