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Comic Code
Comic Code
Comic Code
Comic Code
Comic Code
Comic Code

Name: Comic Code, Comic Code Ligatures
Type: Retail typeface
Publisher: Tabular Type Foundry
Release year: 2019
Purchase links: I Love Typography (both)

Comic Code is a monospaced adaptation of the most infamous yet most popular casual font. Designed specifically for programming as the name suggests, which is a corner of typography that involves intensive typing that feels more akin to handwriting than typesetting, this typeface took inspirations from friendly characteristics and low-resolution legibility of Comic Sans. It is an unapologetic admittance of Comic Sans’s positives, and a literal manifestation of “code like nobody’s watching”.

Comic Sans is definitely not devoid of criticism; poor outline and spacing qualities stick out to me, which I addressed in Comic Code while respecting the same design intention. While others may have issues with the fundamental concept itself, I see it as a positive. Let’s face it; sometimes, professional appearance is exactly what you don’t want. Comic Sans resonates because it doesn’t talk down to you while making its message clearly heard with legible letters (not saying Comic Code is illegible tho). It is my wish to make codes look less intimidating to humans, including those with dyslexia. Speaking of which, while I didn’t necessarily intend while making it, Comic Code seems to perform just as effectively for dyslexic readers as Comic Sans, judging by the response.

The family is available in two families, the standard family and Comic Code Ligatures. The former also has ligatures as discretionary option. I believe coding ligatures can enhance programming experience especially in languages like Haskell, but there seem to be two major criticisms: ligatures do not show the original glyphs, and it can be hard to count letters. The former is largely dependent on experience and taste, but the latter can be addressed in the font. In Comic Code ligatures, the dashes are only semi-connected so that they look connected enough but still countable.

Comic Sans comes with artificially made bold that looks terrible, and no italic. On the other hand, Comic Code comes with manually and lovingly drawn variations. Of course you wouldn’t need more than Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic for coding purpose though (For that purpose, Coding Essentials pack that only contain those for discount price is available).

Comic Code only takes inspiration from Comic Sans and was drawn entirely from scratch and legally distinct, in case you are wondering.

And if you are not sure if you can commit yourself to a paid font like this, I have trial versions with limited character set, and there is a free font called Comic Mono that tackles the same basic idea.