ComicZeal Review: the Best and Most Flexible iPhone Comic Book App
The iPhone comic book reader mystery has been solved!
There is finally an easy and enjoyable way to read (and convert) all your digital comic books on the iPhone and iPod Touch…and its name is ComicZeal.
I have been using ComicZeal since the first day it was released (thanks again to reader Maddux for the tip), and I have been thrilled with its performance. ComicZeal is fast and smooth and the most flexible solution yet for reading ANY comic book on the iPhone or iPod Touch. By the way, I have no affiliation with the developers, and I get no commissions or freebies for writing this review!
The most important features of ComicZeal are:
- Comics are downloaded to your iPhone so you can read them offline anytime.The comic images are big enough to see all the text and details, and they smoothly scroll –almost glide– across your iPhone screen.Comics can be resized quickly and easily using the standard pinch technique.
Comics can be read portrait or landscape mode…but landscape mode only works when the iPhone is tilted to the left (the top of the iPhone facing left). Not sure why, but it’s good to know.
You can turn pages easily by tapping a button on the bottom of the screen.
ComicZeal remembers your place! If your in the middle of reading a comic, and you turn the iPhone off, when you come back to the app it will resume where you left off.
For me, the most critical point is that ComicZeal has made a converter that will let me take ALL my old comic files and quickly convert them to ComicZeal’s format.
Why doesn’t ComicZeal just read .cbr and .cbz files? Well, they answer this one on their website:
“A [.cbr file] is way too large for the iPhone. Each page is roughly three times the size of the maximum image that the iPhone can easily display (1024×1024 pixels). If the large images are used on the iPhone, they must be broken into smaller pieces and shown to the user as they scroll through the page. This takes up a lot of processor time. Processor=battery so the battery life suffers.”
I have converted a couple of comics from my collection, and they look fantastic! The converter software is a separate (free) application that runs on your desktop. I will go into the details of using the ComicZeal Creator software in a future post, but there’s not much to it. Nice and simple!
How do you get the converted files to your iPhone? You can either use your own wireless network to download them from your own computer, or you can do what I did and upload them to your own webspace, and then download them off your own website to your iPhone. Anybody can do this, and it allows everybody to share their own iPhone comic downloads! Take a look at the simple and dinky website I just put up today for this very purpose: http://iPhoneComicBox.com
August 13, 2009 UPDATE! ComicZeal has lowered their price!
The ComicZeal reader app is available on the iTunes App Store for only $4.99
The ComicZeal Creator software is available for Mac and Windows. It is still in beta, but all I had to do to get the software was email the developer and ask for it. If you have any question or comments about ComicZeal or any other iPhone comic book apps, please leave a comment!
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Looks interesting but I still think that iComic is the best app (Jailbroken iPhone required). It supports .CBR or .CBZ with no compression required, it saves the pages you’re on so if someone calls it knows where you were, it’s smooth, flipping pages is easy, and it’s completely free.
Comic Reader Mobile destroys anything else that is currently available for iphone for reading CBR/CBZ.
@Ash A: That’s cool…if I had a jailbroken iPhone I’d try iComic, too. Anyway…the developer at ComicZeal just told me they are working on adding .cbr/.cbz capability in the next couple days, so I’ll try that out asap.
@Sherm That is great news! If ComicZeal adds .cbr/.cbz support it will be THE iPhone comicbook app.
There also needs to be an option to get rid of the status bar and that giant navigation bar - if there is not already. Perhaps I’ll write the developer.
I just take to the look of the “creator” and is a Python app with the code inside, so you can take a look how the CBI format is. CBI looks is the jpg images scaled packed with some data and tables in a SQL post.
I make a test and iComic witha CBZ formated JPG no bigger than 1024 pixels (with&height) and option “refresh screen” disabled is more fast than comic zeal and with the same quality.
I would like to see the navigation bar gone as well, status bar is no big deal though. I would love to see the ability to swipe to turn to the next page like you could in Icomic
What version of iComic do you have, I can’t swipe pages I don’t know why.
If you have a jailbroken device then go here for all your iComic needs: http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/f.....hp?t=23759
Also note that iComic will be released through the Appstore very soon. The site above will have all the updates on this.
Enjoy!
this may be a stupid question, but how do you download comics from your computer to ipod touch/iphone via wireless?
While not technically a reader, comiXology’s app for tracking new comic releases has a lot of previews every week, and you can enter your pull-list right on your iPhone or iPod touch. http://bit.ly/comix
just downloaded the new Comic Zeal from the appstore…this supports cbr/cbz format…well you have to convert them to the .cbi format which CZeal reads but still…it’s a cool app! and for a couple of dollars…it’s a steal!
I am using Comic Zeal right now and I have to say it is a very good app! one of the best on the app store imho…
I have just a problem. I use the creator to convert my cbr/cbz files into its native format and then I use SyncDocs to upload it, but if the cbr file is bigger than 10 MBs (more or less) i can’t upload the converted file to the iphone-
The solution i got is to split the cbr file before the conversion but it takes a lot of time… so I have a quesion: is there a better way? which is the fastest way to split a cbr/cbz file?
thanks
Max
I had some frustrations with ComicZeal and syncdocs, so I went looking for other apps… and i found “Pull Lists”.
I would suggest checking this out! The app on the phone is very stable and simple to use, plus the Mac desktop app it uses to get your comics onto the phone looks and behaves a lot like iTunes.
Its a full-blown digital comic book library which I can even use to read my comics on my MacBook!!
I tried out the windows app, and its functional but not as nice as the Mac app… but the developer said he’s working on getting the windows version up to par with the mac one, so I have high hopes for that too.
Seriously check this out! The developers blog is at http://www.pulllists.com
Thanks Mookey…that sounds like a great tip! I’ll check it out as soon as I can. Thanks again - Sherm
Hey there
Anychance you could tell me how to set up a page in which I can upload cbi files like you did?
pretty please
Hi David — I’d like to explain my process for making that little website, but that’s pretty hard to do without going in to a full-blown tutorial on HTML. Let me just say that what I did with that website was extremely basic, and if you spend a few hours with a good tutorial about HTML and making simple websites, you should be able to start experimenting on your own.
Any website building expertise I may have has come from learning tiny little chunks about HTML. while I was tinkering around on my blog. One resource that helped me get started is some free website building software and tutorials at: http://www.myfreewebsitebuilder.com/
Good luck! — Sherm
Hi. I’ve made a site with google to up load my comics. The problem is that when I down load them to my ipodtouch they don’t go to comicZeal lioke yours. I don’t know any thing about HTML. You say it is ‘extremely basic. Is it there any way to do it without learning HTML, and if not, could you be more expecific about how to do it. Thanks a lot from Spain.
Hi Des…if you have an “html view” in your Google website builder, you’ll need to view your html code to make the link open up in ComicZeal.
in my html code, instead of linking to the file with http:// with the prefix cbi:// which is what makes iPhone open the file with ComicZeal.
So in YOUR code. look for
href=”http://yourdomain.com/subfolder(if there is one)/filename.cbi”
and replace the http with cbi so it looks like:
href=”cbi://yourdomain.com/subfolder(if ther is one)/filename.cbi”
and make sure to replace all the italic words with your own information!
If that doesn’t make sense, I understand…but please remember that when I said it was extrememly basic, I also said, “if you spend a few hours with a good tutorial about HTML and making simple websites.”
Good luck! –sherm
I’ve been using ComcZeal for a few days, and find it a breeze to read. Love the usability of it. The fact it doesn’t support CBR/CBZ is redundant in my opinion, the ComcZeal software compresses any CBR/CBZ into it’s own format very quickly and is very efficient at doing so.
The only complaint i have about it, is deleting comics, (by swipping your finger across the comic), is way too easy to do, I accidentally deleted a comic i was in the middle of reading just by swiping across the screen twice when riding a bumpy train. Very annoying. A confirmation for deletion would be very handy.
Aside from the occasional random crash when syncing (I’ll leave long syncs and come back to find my iPhone back on the home screen), this app is fantastic! My comics look amazing on the iPhone screen and I can easily read up to an hour before eye strain forces me to put it down.
It’s faster and more responsive than any e-book app I’ve used, thus has become my #1 time-killer when stuck in line somewhere or on the john. Best app I’ve ever spent my hard earned money on, hands down!
Probably rather late, but I had a question about ComicZeal.
Anyone know how you can download a whole series, i.e. Wolverine, after you convert and put it up on the website? Its annoying, and sometimes impossible, to download all of them one by one.
This is the second time ive tried to get it to work, but for some reason it doesnt want to convert, the creator is pretty poor in my opinion, it would be so much easier if you could just pick a file to convert, and it does it, instead you have to put files in a folder, and it doesnt even do anything for me…
Its kinda frustrating because i bought this app for a reason, and it doesnt work.
The linbk to the two comics (Captain Tootsie & Son of Sinbad)is dead. I had to reset my iPhone and I’d like to get the comics I used to have. Anyone know of a link to them?
Grand-Pianos.org…
Megacool Blog indeed!… if anyone else has anything it would be much appreciated. Great website Enjoy!…
PianoFan…
Hello
Thanks heaps for this indeed!… if anyone else has anything, it would be much appreciated. Great website Super Piano Links http://www.en.Grand-Pianos.org Enjoy!…
Hi there…
Please help me with tutorial on how adding pdf to comiczeal.
I already install ghost script gs864w32.exe, but i dont know how to use it.
Please give me step by step on how to use it.
Thanks