Which comic book app should I get?

[jodorowsky00]

OK sorry I got distracted last night, so didn't get the chance to play with it until now.

good things about Cloud Reader: fast and smooth page turning. can change reading direction with a simple button (the manga i'm reading goes from right to left). free and it supports zip.

bad things: i added a bunch of rar files in iTunes but Cloud Reader can't read them (more on this later), so i deleted them in iTunes, but the files remain in my bookshelf. so i have to delete them manually in Cloud Reader. Very annoying!

So the reason why the rar files won't read is because there is a folder inside the rar container (i.e. the person who did this put the jpeg into a folder, and rar the folder), and apparently Cloud Reader doesn't like it. I did a test and extract the rar file, and zip only the folder that contains the jpeg, and it reads fine. however i put the same "problematic" rar file under CRM and it handles it just fine, so CRM is more robust in that regard.

overall Cloud Reader has potential, but i hope the dev can fix the two bad things in the future release soon.

Yeah .rar was just supported so there might be bugs with it. did it just not read it or did it crash?
I still havent tried all my .rar's i will check on that.

 

[spammerhamster]

So the reason why the rar files won't read is because there is a folder inside the rar container (i.e. the person who did this put the jpeg into a folder, and rar the folder), and apparently Cloud Reader doesn't like it. I did a test and extract the rar file, and zip only the folder that contains the jpeg, and it reads fine. however i put the same "problematic" rar file under CRM and it handles it just fine, so CRM is more robust in that regard.

This is weird, as a lot of CBR/Z-files has a directory structure in it. Esp. manga-volumes.

(what's even worse would be a rar-file containing multiple rarfiles)

 

[1appleAday]

Yeah .rar was just supported so there might be bugs with it. did it just not read it or did it crash?
I still havent tried all my .rar's i will check on that.

It didn't crash. it just shows nothing.

For what it's worth...

I purchased Comic Zeal and Comic Reader Mobi on day one. After trying them both, I hated Comic Zeal. THe slow uploads, the compression... Didn't like it, and deleted it from my iPad. I loved Comic Reader Mobi. After reading today about CRM basically being banned for at least a year, and no upgrades and so on, I decided to give Comic Zeal another try. This time, I LOVED it. The updates make this fantastic. Actually, I like this much more then CRM. I did like the text window zoom feature, but I can live without it.

For those like me who were on the side of CRM, I HIGHLY recommend you try Comic Zeal now with the updates.

Does Comic Zeal support zip and rar formats??

 

[-iKris-]

Is there an easy way to organise comics into folders in Comic Zeal? You can't just upload a folder, so what is the way people are doing this?

 

[GraphicsGeek]

Is there an easy way to organise comics into folders in Comic Zeal? You can't just upload a folder, so what is the way people are doing this?

Comic Zeal automatically organizes them into "collections." So if they are labeled similarly, then they should organize themselves.

 

[spammerhamster]

Is there an easy way to organise comics into folders in Comic Zeal? You can't just upload a folder, so what is the way people are doing this?

When the auto sort doesn't work because the file doesn't end with a number, I'll just hit edit, select the files I want to be set into one collection, then just move the files. You can select an existing folder or you can scroll down, select other and create a new folder

 

[spammerhamster]

It didn't crash. it just shows nothing.




Does Comic Zeal support zip and rar formats??

Yes

 

[1appleAday]

Yes

cool! Do you know if it can handle a folder within a zip / rar? just want to make sure before i shell out the money again!

 

[Jarmel]

I have a bunch of mangas in jpeg and the like. Should I go for GoodReader or CZ?

 

[jodorowsky00]

I have a bunch of mangas in jpeg and the like. Should I go for GoodReader or CZ?

For comics there's,

CZ and Cloud Readers

CZ is 8 bucks and Cloud Readers is FREE

I recommend you try Cloud Readers first, if you need more options buy CZ

 

[Viper2005]

I've found a bug where the itunes transfer becomes very slow after you've transferred more than 10GB of files.

Yes the bug is very annoying, BUT there is a way to get around it.. The key is to drag and drop then navigate away from the app screen ( ie go to the music area or even the iTunes store).. Then the rest of the files transfers over like lightning.

 

[pooryou]

I have a bunch of mangas in jpeg and the like. Should I go for GoodReader or CZ?

No reason not to get Goodreader, it's only 99 cents and it is packed full of features, and has a great UI. You can try it and see how it works for you, and even if you decide to get another app for comics it will still be worth having.

 

[Dorv]

It's simple enough to convert one or two comics and compare them in a few apps, and there are plenty of free and extremely cheap options..

See, this is where I get lost. If you (we, anyone) are acquiring the material in one format, then you have to go through the effort of converting. I know you stated your reasons in the thread earlier, but I think I lost it in the shuffle.

I mean, I'm with you on the whole "to each his own" mentality, I'm just trying to understand yours better.

I love CZ ... Haven't tried anything else, but I don't really feel like I'm missing anything in the experience. I don't think I'd want to make it harder.

 

[Dorv]

Comic Zeal automatically organizes them into "collections." So if they are labeled similarly, then they should organize themselves.

Are there resources somewhere that clarify the scrapping process? I've got some collections (named similarly) that didn't sort right, and I'd like to fix that.

 

[jodorowsky00]

No reason not to get Goodreader, it's only 99 cents and it is packed full of features, and has a great UI. You can try it and see how it works for you, and even if you decide to get another app for comics it will still be worth having.

One thing that might make me go PDF is if goodreader can stream PDFs from the computer to the iPad is that possible?
Don't download them but stream.

 

[spammerhamster]

Yes the bug is very annoying, BUT there is a way to get around it.. The key is to drag and drop then navigate away from the app screen ( ie go to the music area or even the iTunes store).. Then the rest of the files transfers over like lightning.

Great tip!! It works!! Now I can redo my collection as I needed to reinstall my computer anyway

 

[aduteau]

anyone has an idea of when ComicBook lover app is coming out for the iPad ?

 

[Juventuz]

anyone has an idea of when ComicBook lover app is coming out for the iPad ?

I wish soon, I'm currently using their iPhone app (which is free) and have no problems reading the comics in full screen mode. When you transfer them over just make sure that the compress box is NOT checked. If you have it checked it's optimized for the iPhone screen so looks like crap when it's full screen on the iPad.

Once I'm done reading the comic I delete it from my iPad so for now the CBL app works just fine for me.

 

[jeffy777]

No reason not to get Goodreader, it's only 99 cents and it is packed full of features, and has a great UI. You can try it and see how it works for you, and even if you decide to get another app for comics it will still be worth having.

I'm also using GoodReader for my comics.

I tried Cloud Readers, but went back to GoodReader because I like being able to make my own folders and organize everything, plus I just like the UI of GoodReader.

I'm using Comic Rack to convert my comics to PDF. Works great and it's free.

 

[spammerhamster]

cool! Do you know if it can handle a folder within a zip / rar? just want to make sure before i shell out the money again!

It can, but it can't handle multiple folders well. If say you have a file witH ch01/01.Jpg and ch02/01.jpg then it gets confused. It'll sort by filename, neglecting the folder name.

 

[pooryou]

One thing that might make me go PDF is if goodreader can stream PDFs from the computer to the iPad is that possible?
Don't download them but stream.

As far as I know you have to download them. That's a great idea though.

That would be a good thing to request from the Goodreader dev, along with CBZ/CBR support, which I would imagine would be pretty easy to add.

EDIT: I wrote the Goodreader dev about CBZ/CBR and they replied right away:
"We're considering a possibility to support CBR/CBZ files."
I'll let someone else ask about streaming from a server, didn't want to push my luck

 

[pooryou]

See, this is where I get lost. If you (we, anyone) are acquiring the material in one format, then you have to go through the effort of converting. I know you stated your reasons in the thread earlier, but I think I lost it in the shuffle.

I mean, I'm with you on the whole "to each his own" mentality, I'm just trying to understand yours better.

I love CZ ... Haven't tried anything else, but I don't really feel like I'm missing anything in the experience. I don't think I'd want to make it harder.

Yeah, I totally hear that. If I hadn't found a process for converting that (for me) is very painless I wouldn't want to do it. In this app Jomic though, you can add a whole list of files all at once and just set it to convert and you don't have to do anything else, so it hasn't really been a problem for me. I can understand not wanting to do it though; I say if you are happy with CZ then no reason to change.

I already bought Comic Zeal on the iPhone, which I never really ended up using because I just didn't enjoy reading on such a small screen. That makes me kind of hesitant to buy it over again for the iPad, though I don't blame the dev for that. If the iPad version ever goes on sale I'm sure I will snap it up.

 

[jodorowsky00]

Updates

ComicRad is now out on the iTunes store.
Cloud Readers 1.4 update is out also.
From I can see from the update of Cloud Readers no more problems with large images and no more problems with .rar. Tested it on the comics I had problems with.


Update : Cloud Readers 1.4 now has brightness controls.

Also Cloud Readers 1.5 is done creator was waiting for 1.4 to be approved.

 

[timothevs]

Cool, would be neat to have a brightness control in the Cloud Reader app.

I really wish they'd implement collections/folders so that I can organize my collection better. I have hundreds of comics I'd like to copy over to the iPad, but the CR interface isn't conducive to maintaining the same.

Does anyone know whether Comic Zeal has any organization or collection sorting feature? A screenie would be great too.

 

[1appleAday]

ComicRad is now out on the iTunes store.
Cloud Readers 1.4 update is out also.
From I can see from the update of Cloud Readers no more problems with large images and no more problems with .rar. Tested it on the comics I had problems with.

that's good news. I will give it a try this evening and report back!