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.
Wiki says the first one on the WWW was a year earlier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_webcomics#Timeli...
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.)
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.
