Hello! I'm Robert Standefer. I created the Make Sense of Microsoft Agent Platforms comic.
I work for Microsoft in the Copilot Acceleration Team (CAT).
I created the "Make Sense of Microsoft Agent Platforms" comic for my talk at Power Platform Community Conference 2025 with the goal of introducing some of the concepts of the different Microsoft agent platforms, driving a bit of clarity, and getting a conversation started.
Important note! The comic is not intended to provide guidance but rather to provide an entertaining overview of the different Microsoft agent platforms in a presentation.
Nope, I did not use AI to create the comic. I actually created it using a vintage Microsoft program from the 1990s called Comic Chat!
Comic Chat was a chat program, created by DJ Kurlander in Microsoft Research and released in 1996, that visually represented conversations in chat as sequences of comic panels. Users could chat on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as comic characters, which was pretty groundbreaking in 1996. I wrote a script, logged into an IRC server and created a channel, then chatted with myself to create the comic panels.
The art in Comic Chat was originally created by Jim Woodring. He created different characters for the program, including expressions for each. When the user enters text, Comic Chat generates comic panels based on that text. The characters can express different emotions based on the text and Comic Chat chooses one of the prebuilt graphics that suits the message, and displays it. For example, if the user says, "I like that", the character will point at itself. If the user expresses anger, the character will frown or cross its arms.
A team in Microsoft Research called FUSE Labs worked on Comic Chat. FUSE Labs went on to create Bot Framework, which is part of the foundation of the Microsoft agent platforms today.
Comic Chat was discontinued in 2001 and the servers were shut down, but you can still use it on modern versions of Windows and connect to IRC servers.
Click here to view the comic.
Click here for Mermaid
Elizabeth's Microsoft Chat Resources Link Page to download Comic Chat.
Click here
to learn a lot more about Comic Chat at DJ Kurlander's Comic Chat
Resources site.
