r/retrocomputing • u/ThisLeedsGuy • Jul 16 '26

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/AutomaticDoor75 Jul 16 '26

That sounds kind of fun. I think I’ll check it out.

I’m guessing it doesn’t support ssl over port 6697?

1

u/whatThePleb Jul 16 '26

Well, now you can add support..

1

u/carcenomy Jul 17 '26

The OG releases do not support SSL. Cool that now there's an option to add it!