Vince Connare has some experience in that department.

Touché

Seriously.
I don’t know him, but I do know he has suffered a lot of unwarranted disdain for a wildly popular work that I suspect he receives no royalties for, as he designed it while working at Microsoft.

You have to feel for the guy.

We all have work from early on in our careers that we'd rather forget. Imagine if that work was was still being paraded around the world twenty years later?

I have absolutely no ill will toward Vincent. The response to comicneue.com has been almost all positive, although it has caused some ill-willed @ replies towards him on Twitter, which is a shame.

Perhaps I'm a little over-ambitious, but I would like to see Comic Neue become a redeemed version of Comic Sans. It needs a little more work, but the world (the online one at least) has shown overwhelmingly over the last two days that the interest is there. I just need a professional typographer to help turn it into a viable option for libraries and foundries like Typekit to take onboard.

Who is going to help me? It's paid work!

This project strikes me as a bit dubious.
Sure, Apple knocked off CS, but at least they changed the name.
Your derivative work is piggy-backing on the Comic Sans design and its name, which AFAIK is a registered trademark. Aren’t you concerned at the prospect of legal action?

Neue Helvetica, not Helvetica Neue …

Ah, but it's Sabon Next, not Sabon Neue. (AKA "just another Garamond.) QED:

Neue Comic Next

While I don't know the intricacies of law, I'd imagine that the person hired solely to work on the spacing and letterfit does not open themselves up to legal action

Vincent Connare is at least aware of the project. It is still wise to cover all your bases. Btw: Type designer and/or font technician, not typographer :)

> I'd imagine that the person hired solely to work on the spacing
> and letterfit does not open themselves up to legal action

You're probably right, but anyone can be sued for any reason. And even if the judge tosses out the case, it's a giant hassle and you'd probably have to hire a lawyer.

Nick, I wonder if changing the name is more honorable or less so!

hhp

"Perhaps I'm a little over-ambitious, but I would like to see Comic Neue become a redeemed version of Comic Sans."

Its hilarious.... the world is getting over chicken pox, it hardly needs chicken pox condensed or chicken pox light, much less chicken pox light condensed. I like the original strength chickenpox myself. This looks dull and watered down.

WAPOS!