Overview
- Microsoft published the Comic Chat source and related materials on GitHub on Thursday, July 16, 2026, making the 1990s project available for public study and reuse.
- Comic Chat was a research-built IRC client that turned text conversations into illustrated comic panels with characters, speech bubbles, poses, and expressions and helped popularize the font Comic Sans.
- The codebase traces to a Microsoft Research project begun by David “DJ” Kurlander in 1995 and released in 1996 with work documented at SIGGRAPH ’96 and art by Jim Woodring.
- Alongside original snapshots Microsoft included worked AI-powered modernization examples that show how to build the Visual C++/MFC code with current Visual Studio, connect to modern IRC servers, and render on high-resolution Windows systems, and Microsoft says these are demonstrations not polished releases.
- By open-sourcing Comic Chat Microsoft frames the move as software preservation and an invitation for developers, historians, and hobbyists to port, study, and experiment with its early approach to automated illustration and expressive avatars.