5 ms·

The ANSI art "telecomics" of the 1992 election

77 points by Kirkman14 6mo ago

Kirkman14 6mo ago
At the height of the 1992 presidential election, Don Lokke Jr. began publishing ANSI art political cartoons. He called his digital comic strips "telecomics," and he used them to channel the skepticism and anger felt by everyday Americans about broken political promises and the looming economic recession. Lokke would draw nearly 300 telecomics by 1995 as part of his business syndicating and selling unique online content to the sysops of bulletin board systems. By then the great migration from BBSes to the World Wide Web was well underway. Lokke jumped ship, too, and moved his businesses to the web. His ANSI telecomics were soon forgotten, and many of them were lost. Decades later, I unearthed 145 of them. This is my in-depth profile of Lokke's work. It's a unique look back in time.
- NikolaNovak 6mo ago
  1. Awesome! 2. Thank you for collecting and providing context :) 3. How come examples are in PNG? Is that the only format you have available, or is there a technical limitation or risk in making them available in original ASCII format? (Seems pedantic, but I noticed because I'm at the airport -- The article loaded near instantly, but the actual art took a couple of minutes and still loading mid way through :)
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    They're not really ASCII art - they are more properly called ANSI.SYS art utilizing the IBM extended character set (which is more properly an extension of ASCII IIRC) - getting them to display correctly in a terminal or a website emulator is a bit of work.
  - Kirkman14 6mo ago
    Most ANSI art is displayed on the web as PNG because it's lossless and can be indexed to the correct 16 colors. Lossy formats like JPG introduce weird artifacts that screw up the look. So, for a blog post, PNG is the most robust way to display the art across browsers of all kind. But you definitely can get the original ANSI files. Lokke packaged every 20 or so of his telecomics into "ALLMACKx.ZIP" archives for distribution. These were very similar to the artpacks that the underground ANSI art scene would eventually use. I uploaded the seven ALLMACK files I recovered and uploaded them to the 16colors ANSI art archive: https://16colo.rs/artist/don+lokke+jr https://16colo.rs/artist/don+lokke+jr That's probably the best way (for now) to explore it as a collection or download the original files. I do have some more Lokke telecomics I located that were not in ALLMACK archives, and so are not submitted to 16c yet. I may just package them up as a "MISC" pack and upload them.
carra 6mo ago
It's weird to see this called "ANSI art". Is that an American thing? I don't think I've ever heard that in Europe, everybody calls it ASCII art.
- Sealington 5mo ago
  im not the best person to respond to this, but to my knowledge, ansi was basically just ascii art but with the ability to color stuff, and with extra characters like blocks, accents, etc. it was mainly used to make art on bbs boards, at least from what i have seen.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  It’s a technicality - they call it ASCII art in the US even though it includes both non-ASCII characters (IBM extensions) and ANSI.SY’s escape sequences to change colors.
- Kirkman14 6mo ago
  These are definitely ANSI art. They use the unique PC extended character set (pipes, shaded blocks, etc), the classic PC CGA/EGA 16-color palette, and ANSI escape codes. I don't think this term is exclusively American ... there were (and are) plenty of European and international ANSI artists. But I'm happy to be corrected. I got into the distinction a little bit in Part 2 of this series: https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/12/28/ansi-art-and-webcomics-bbses-and-the-artscene/ https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/12/28/ansi-art-and-webco...
- mmccaff 6mo ago
  American here, but I've always known these to be distinctly different. ANSI art uses the full 256 character set (and mostly the extended, block-like characters), and 16 colors, whereas ascii art doesn't have the extended characters and colors. There was a thriving ANSI art scene in the 90s in the era of BBSs. If you have not seen it, the definitive ansi (and ascii) art archive, 16colors, is great https://16colo.rs/ https://16colo.rs/ Or try your hand with this online ansi art editor https://ansidraw.com/ https://ansidraw.com/
- FearNotDaniel 6mo ago

77 points by Kirkman14 6mo ago

At the height of the 1992 presidential election, Don Lokke Jr. began publishing ANSI art political cartoons. He called his digital comic strips "telecomics," and he used them to channel the skepticism and anger felt by everyday Americans about broken political promises and the looming economic recession. Lokke would draw nearly 300 telecomics by 1995 as part of his business syndicating and selling unique online content to the sysops of bulletin board systems. By then the great migration from BBSes to the World Wide Web was well underway. Lokke jumped ship, too, and moved his businesses to the web. His ANSI telecomics were soon forgotten, and many of them were lost. Decades later, I unearthed 145 of them. This is my in-depth profile of Lokke's work. It's a unique look back in time.

NikolaNovak 6mo ago
1. Awesome! 2. Thank you for collecting and providing context :) 3. How come examples are in PNG? Is that the only format you have available, or is there a technical limitation or risk in making them available in original ASCII format? (Seems pedantic, but I noticed because I'm at the airport -- The article loaded near instantly, but the actual art took a couple of minutes and still loading mid way through :)
- bombcar 6mo ago
  They're not really ASCII art - they are more properly called ANSI.SYS art utilizing the IBM extended character set (which is more properly an extension of ASCII IIRC) - getting them to display correctly in a terminal or a website emulator is a bit of work.
- Kirkman14 6mo ago
  Most ANSI art is displayed on the web as PNG because it's lossless and can be indexed to the correct 16 colors. Lossy formats like JPG introduce weird artifacts that screw up the look. So, for a blog post, PNG is the most robust way to display the art across browsers of all kind. But you definitely can get the original ANSI files. Lokke packaged every 20 or so of his telecomics into "ALLMACKx.ZIP" archives for distribution. These were very similar to the artpacks that the underground ANSI art scene would eventually use. I uploaded the seven ALLMACK files I recovered and uploaded them to the 16colors ANSI art archive: https://16colo.rs/artist/don+lokke+jr https://16colo.rs/artist/don+lokke+jr That's probably the best way (for now) to explore it as a collection or download the original files. I do have some more Lokke telecomics I located that were not in ALLMACK archives, and so are not submitted to 16c yet. I may just package them up as a "MISC" pack and upload them.

carra 6mo ago

It's weird to see this called "ANSI art". Is that an American thing? I don't think I've ever heard that in Europe, everybody calls it ASCII art.

Sealington 5mo ago
im not the best person to respond to this, but to my knowledge, ansi was basically just ascii art but with the ability to color stuff, and with extra characters like blocks, accents, etc. it was mainly used to make art on bbs boards, at least from what i have seen.
bombcar 6mo ago
It’s a technicality - they call it ASCII art in the US even though it includes both non-ASCII characters (IBM extensions) and ANSI.SY’s escape sequences to change colors.
Kirkman14 6mo ago
These are definitely ANSI art. They use the unique PC extended character set (pipes, shaded blocks, etc), the classic PC CGA/EGA 16-color palette, and ANSI escape codes. I don't think this term is exclusively American ... there were (and are) plenty of European and international ANSI artists. But I'm happy to be corrected. I got into the distinction a little bit in Part 2 of this series: https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/12/28/ansi-art-and-webcomics-bbses-and-the-artscene/ https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/12/28/ansi-art-and-webco...
mmccaff 6mo ago
American here, but I've always known these to be distinctly different. ANSI art uses the full 256 character set (and mostly the extended, block-like characters), and 16 colors, whereas ascii art doesn't have the extended characters and colors. There was a thriving ANSI art scene in the 90s in the era of BBSs. If you have not seen it, the definitive ansi (and ascii) art archive, 16colors, is great https://16colo.rs/ https://16colo.rs/ Or try your hand with this online ansi art editor https://ansidraw.com/ https://ansidraw.com/
FearNotDaniel 6mo ago