Comic Sans, the near-universally reviled font inspired by the lettering of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, has received a facelift, courtesy of designer Craig Rozynski.

"Comic Sans wasn’t designed to be the world’s most ubiquitous casual typeface," he explains in his introduction of the updated version. "Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy. The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular."

The font of choice for office co-workers, dormitory resident advisers and owners of lost pets across the globe, Comic Sans was developed in 1994 by Vincent Connare at Microsoft as an alternative to the Times New Roman that was used in a beta version of Microsoft Bob. He never intended the font to be utilized beyond that, and certainly never imagined it would become so widely used and abused.

With Comic Neue, Rozynski set out to rescue the battered font. "A few years ago, seeing Comic Sans yet again getting a good bashing online I wondered, could it be saved?" he told Creative Review. "Could Comic Sans be given a make-over? The first ever sympathy font? A joke at first (maybe it still is), but one that I began taking seriously enough to have a go at."

Rozynski has released Comic Neue into the public domain; you can download it for free here.