I have not used Colloquy myself, so I can't be sure why this is happening. However, based on your description: mIRC sends italics as control code 29, which Colloquy correctly interprets as italics. So far so good :-) However Colloquy appears to send italics as control code 22, which mIRC has always interpreted as reverse.
Is it possible that the Colloquy user is pressing the wrong key combination? Perhaps Control+I in Colloquy means "invert" as opposed to "italics"? Or perhaps Colloquy is unable to display reverse text and displays both control codes 22 and 29 as italics?
Update: I just noticed that when you sent Control+R to the user, the user saw italics :-) So it sounds like Colloquy cannot display reverse text and has chosen to interpret both control codes 22 and 29 as italics when receiving text, and to use control code 22 for italics instead of reverse when sending text.
Last edited by Khaled; 21/05/10 10:46 AM.