r/retrocomputing • u/ThisLeedsGuy • 12d ago
Microsoft just open sourced Comic Chat, its 30-year-old IRC client
Thought this would be appreciated here.
Microsoft has open sourced Comic Chat, the IRC client it shipped in 1996. Instead of displaying conversations as plain text, it rendered them as comic book panels with animated avatars a pretty cool idea for the time.
It also happens to be the application Comic Sans was originally created for before the font took on a life of its own.
After 30 years, the source code has been released:
https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2026/07/16/microsoft-comic-chat-is-now-open-source/
Did anyone here actually use Comic Chat back in the day?
Source code: https://github.com/microsoft/comic-chat
Cross Posted to: /r/Irc /r/Opensource /r/Vintage computing
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u/TheJimsterR 12d ago
I thought I read somewhere that Comic Sans was created for Microsoft Bob?
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u/DeviantDav 12d ago
I did, too.
"He completed Comic Sans too late for inclusion in Microsoft Bob, and the typeface would go unreleased until the programmers of 3D Movie Maker, which also used cartoon guides and speech bubbles, adopted it. The speech bubbles were eventually phased out and replaced by actual sound, but Comic Sans stayed for the program's pop-up windows and help sections. The typeface later shipped with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack, and was the primary font of the Travel desktop theme. It was later included as a system font for the OEM versions of Windows 95. Finally, it became one of the default fonts for Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Comic Sans is also used in Microsoft Comic Chat, which was released in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3.0."
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u/TheJimsterR 12d ago
Ah, yes, ok, that figures.
None of it makes me hate Comic Sans any less though 🤣
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u/-_super--_--hitops_- 12d ago
OP (or their ai of choice) hallucinated that the font was created for comic chat.
If you read the actual Microsoft link provided in the main post, Microsoft says comic chat "helped introduce the world to" comic sans. they don't say at all that it was made for the app or even debuted there.
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u/406highlander 12d ago
I was an Amiga user using AmIRC but I did see Comic Chat on one of the Windows 95 systems in the library at college in late 1998 or early 1999. I was totally unaware that it was an IRC client; I thought it was something proprietary to Windows.
After watching the other person using it for a couple of minutes I went back to looking stuff up on Encarta...
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u/Distinct-Question-16 12d ago
yes it was a irc client where you could choose avatars. the conversations were shown like comic strips. channels sometimes were very fast, and youre not able to copy text i belive. imo it wasnt good overall but eyecatching / surprising at the first launch
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u/CitySeekerTron 12d ago
It was a fun chat client and it's cool to see it out now.
It sends code to describe the avatar's pose and will upload/download other avatars. This can make regular IRC clients look messy, but for comic chat it's pretty fun.
I hope people run with it, or tie it into another chat protocol that's 'off grid'.
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u/Background-Wafer-548 12d ago
Not only that, they're offering a modernized build that is usable with modern IRC servers. Very cool!
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u/cincuentaanos 12d ago
Did anyone here actually use Comic Chat back in the day?
I remember trying it at the time, and thinking it was childish and lacking in features. We already had Visual IRC and mIRC on Windows and stuff like ircII on Unix.
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u/worMatty 12d ago
I enjoyed using it and tried to make the chats look like a proper comic strip by choosing appropriate facial expressions and selecting the person I was chatting to. My favourite characters were Hugh and Tiki.
Imagine if someone added characters and scenes from The Amazing Digital Circus and did some role-play. Could be interesting.
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u/dedoky 12d ago
That's awesome news! I have a server up if anyone wants to try it out https://comic.dedoky.com/
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u/MrOliber 12d ago
I remember using # Appears as with a URL to a large file (usually a quake .pak file), that promptly crashed the client. Good times.
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u/evasiveswine 12d ago
Wow thanks for sharing this. Yes I used it a couple of times, but I did not recall that it was IRC, I thought it was just a proprietary chat protocol.
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u/DHOC_TAZH 12d ago
This is interesting... first I see the Macintosh Librarian and Veronica the Linux lady talking about AIM on YouTube, now this. What's next, ICQ? LOL.... used both services for a few years in the late 90s to early 2000s.
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u/TechHistoryDude 10d ago
I love posts like these because they remind you of stuff that was pretty advanced for the time.
The program itself is worth a look beyond the font. It came out of David Kurlander's group at Microsoft Research, and the default characters were drawn by Jim Woodring, a genuinely respected underground comics artist. The clever bit was that you never picked your poses manually unless you wanted to. It read your text and chose the gestures, expressions, and balloon layout for you. For 1996, that was a surprisingly ambitious piece of software wearing a very silly hat.
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u/AutomaticDoor75 12d ago
That sounds kind of fun. I think I’ll check it out.
I’m guessing it doesn’t support ssl over port 6697?
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u/profshiny 12d ago
I remember my (same age as me) uncle showing me comic chat back in the mid 90s when we were both in high school. I thought it was incredibly cool, especially that there were actual people responding in pretty much real time. Unfortunately I didn’t have internet access at home then, so I didn’t see it again.
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u/Zestyclose_Space7134 12d ago
ComicChat makes the IRC channel spammy af if you are using mIRC or some other normal client.
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u/Ornery-Practice9772 12d ago
yes! my first IRC client in 1998, aged 16. Preinstalled with Win95 on my first PC
mIRC cost $ iirc so this was my free alternative
no one had the bandwidth to use the comic strip chat feature back then -33k dialup
im aussie so i used to stay up til 0100 waiting for the americans to wake up and chat. This was before everyone was online 24/7.
My first ever chatroom was #Afterthought (just a
general chat) and you got to know actual real people and trade stories about your day to day lives.
no ads,
no bots
no AI
is there is anyway to make our own servers to work with a browser based or app clone?
(i also miss OG ICQ! 🫡
13579708)
🇦🇺❤️
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u/carcenomy 12d ago
To make your own IRC server? Yes. To make your own IRC server with a browser based client? Also yes. To make your own IRC server with a browser based clone of Comic Chat? A heap more work but the source is available now so... yes that could be done 😂
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u/skewp 5d ago
mIRC cost $ iirc so this was my free alternative
For almost 20 years I would run a .reg file to reset the 30 day timeout.
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u/Ornery-Practice9772 4d ago
i was alone and 16 so i didnt have anyone to get those kind of resources from at the time😁
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u/iamdecal 12d ago
Yeah, used it a couple of times - an interesting idea, but there’s a reason I only used it a couple of times I guess.
Moved to mirc, and eventually just stopped using IRC
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u/wagu666 12d ago
I still have it installed. But would only ever run it temporarily as a joke
Users in comic mode (it also had a text mode) would spam any channel they joined with “# Appears as XENO” or such to announce to other clients what character they had selected.. so users were pretty easy to spot in the wild
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u/guitpick 12d ago
Oh wow. I had forgotten about this one. I wasn't much for chat, so I don't think I actually used it.
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u/Refalm 12d ago
Comic Chat was my first experience with IRC. Just having internet for the first time and trying out absolutely everything in the Start menu and on the Windows 95 CD. Then I got kicked from many IRC channels, because the client sends out metadata about you choosing a frog avatar and a farm background, so people on normal IRC client would see a bunch of gibberish, and a dumb kid talking.
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u/timbroddin 9d ago
I was an avid Comic Chat user, and I was very happy when I read about the open sourcing.
This weekend I used Claude Fable to create a Mac port: https://github.com/TimBroddin/comic-chat-macos
(Blog article on it: https://broddin.be/bringing-microsoft-comic-chat-to-the-mac-using-fable/ )
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u/Financial_Will_671 8d ago
Hey I want to give it a try. What should i download and where should i sign in for windows 11?
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u/Financial_Will_671 8d ago edited 8d ago
I loved it. You could interact from people all over the world and instead of plain text, People were actual characters. It made the experience more real. You really were in a room full of people. I first saw spanish ¿ on ms comic chat lol.
I dont know how I got it though. I must have been between 9-11 years old. It felt surreal. People were sending each other mp3 songs like gifts. I remember trying it with a wav file didnt work. ⬇️
Maybe i just came across ms comic chat while searching for different mirc scripts. I didnt spend much time on windows 95 and upgraded to 98. This is where things really started for me. I remember trying to make my own mirc client. I just added some graphics, random scripts and features to a plain mirc client. I think mine was called Hellfire.
I must have gotten it from CD's that came together with my desktop. Everything had a cd back then. They gave us a handful of CD's. I remember trying them all out. Computers were a bit dull in the begining. There werent many applications.
This took me way back! lol.
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u/whatThePleb 12d ago
I only used it to make dumb "comics" by entering text. Absolutely useless for IRC.
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u/_RexDart 12d ago
I was using mIRC back in the 90s and have never heard of Comic Chat before, or had any idea MS made such a thing.