[Bellardia]

How long do these images get? If they always stay on the same line you could easily use a php image library to generate the string. Use bb code to change
[ul]{something}[/ul]
to
<img src="generateimage.php?string=something" alt="something" />

And have a php script that takes the query string and separates the characters, sends back image headers and displays the images for each. Probably best to use GD library for php.

This way you could use built in vb features and an external script instead of having to worry about fetching the information with javascript after the page loads.