Unearthing the story behind the 1994 ANSI art comic "Inspector Dangerfuck"

Kirkman14 writes: In the first chapter of the 2006 book "A History of Webcomics," the author makes an eyebrow-raising claim: that an ANSI artist named "Eerie" had created the "first known comic on the internet," provocatively titled "Inspector Dangerfuck."

The book offered no dates, no details, and no sources, which should have raised red flags. But for 20 years, authors, bloggers, Wikipedia editors, and content creators have repeated versions of this statement, without adding anything new, except the date: 1994.

Clearly, the original assertion was wrong. There definitely were earlier online comics.

But so many questions remain! What is ANSI art? Who was Eerie? What was "Inspector Dangerfuck?" Was it even a comic? Were there other ANSI art comics?

Computer historian Josh Renaud (Break Into Chat) has interviewed Eerie and dug through BBS archives, ANSI art collections, and contemporaneous documentation in a new multi-part series that reconstructs this overlooked corner of digital culture.