[3] Comic Chat started out as a research project, and a paper describing the technology was published at SIGGRAPH '96.

Character placement, the choice of gestures and expressions, and word balloon construction and layout, were all chosen automatically.

[2] In December 1996, The Microsoft Network introduced a show-based format, in which high quality multimedia content was produced around several themes.

[5] Created and produced at MSN by Mike Klozar, the "Chat Show," as it was called, was an innovative combination of on-demand streaming audio, text (as cartoon bubbles) and comic strip characters all synchronized to display an animated cartoon comic strip created dynamically from the text input.

[5] Each episode depicted a caller (as a black and white default character) and color caricatures of Tom & Ray interacting in a unique closed visual chat.

The visuals were generated dynamically by the Comic Chat client (already residing on the PC), given a timed, textual transcript of the show.