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.
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.
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.
Having lived in the dial-up BBS era on DOS computers I can say the ANSI artists of the day were truly talented. It's amazing what they came up with using only small color pallet and what few characters were available. Also programs like "The Draw" were amazing tools.
Wow, what a cool article!! This post alone makes me want to read the rest of the blog.
One of the things that seems like it ought to be obvious, but nonetheless strikes me about this stuff is - you really do have to be a good artist, period, to make headway even in incredibly limited (by today’s standards) mediums like early ANSI. You have to be good at the composition aspect and the execution aspect, and aside from teaming up with someone who has a complementary speciality, there’s almost no way around that (so far.)
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 37.1 ms ] threadThe 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.
Wiki says the first one on the WWW was a year earlier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_webcomics#Timeli...
ANSI art web archive https://16colo.rs/
Also on instagram https://www.instagram.com/sixteen_colors/?hl=en
Some OGs are still producing really high quality, innovative art even today.
One of the things that seems like it ought to be obvious, but nonetheless strikes me about this stuff is - you really do have to be a good artist, period, to make headway even in incredibly limited (by today’s standards) mediums like early ANSI. You have to be good at the composition aspect and the execution aspect, and aside from teaming up with someone who has a complementary speciality, there’s almost no way around that (so far.)