Managing digital comics on a Mac

July 30, 2020 9:14 AM

I have scads of digital comics purchased from various bundle-type sites. I am looking for an app that can help me organise them, and give me some cues as to what order in which they should be read. On Windows there's ComicRack (dormant?) and CDisplayEx. On the Mac, I've found YACReaderLibrary, but it doesn't seem to be very featureful, and requires a Comic Vine sign up, which isn't currently working. Is there something better?

Some additional information: I read on an old Amazon Fire tablet as well as an iPad. If I had to prioritise one platform over the other, it'd be the tablet. Everyone wants to use the iPad. No one wants to use the old Fire.

posted by sincarne to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

One option would be to install Ubooquity on the Mac, then you could read your comics in the browser on either tablet or ipad.

Caveat 1: if you want to have access to your comics from outside your home network some knowledge of port forwarding (and its implications) would be required.

Caveat 2: Does not address the "what order to read them" request, which as far as I can tell is a non-starter. My only backup advice would be to check on comicvine.
posted by tiamat at 10:35 AM on July 30, 2020

I'm not aware of any apps that will give cues for the order they should be read in, but Calibre can handle CBR/CBZs as well as other ebook formats. That should help you with organizing them and reading them on the computer and/or transferring them to the Kindle Fire.
posted by jzb at 10:35 AM on July 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

IIRC, Calibre now has comic book capability. I use it to manage my epubs and PDF's.
I think that Calibre to manage the comics, Dropbox to hold everything, connected to a comparable all in reader for the Fire tablet would be perfect.
I use Marvin for my own iPad, and would recommend searching for something similar.
posted by Bill Watches Movies Podcast at 10:36 AM on July 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, all! I have used Calibre in the past. I don't recall why I stopped, but it was a long time ago. The situation may be different now.

I'd never heard of Ubooquity; thank you for that recommendation!
posted by sincarne at 11:16 AM on July 30, 2020

I also use Calibre, for all my books and book-like objects. It's been able to support the CB* formats for a while now.
posted by confluency at 12:22 PM on July 30, 2020

I’ve been pretty happy with reading on Chunky for my iPad, after trying a bunch of others. I don’t think I’ve done better than YAC for my Fire, but I don’t love it and definitely want to check out Calibre’s options, I totally missed it can do comics now.
posted by jameaterblues at 4:26 PM on July 30, 2020

Response by poster: I've been using Chunky for a few years now, it's great for reading on the iPad.

YACReader Library is an additional application for organising the comics, and it syncs with YACReader.

Thanks for the recommendations, everyone. Looks like I should try Calibre again!
posted by sincarne at 6:29 AM on July 31, 2020

Best answer: Haven't used it myself, but I just read about Komga that might work for you.
posted by soelo at 8:41 AM on July 31, 2020

I hope folks don't mind a sidebar question.
I have a lot of Comixology digital comics, and I LOVE their Guided View that takes me from panel to panel, in correct order, sizing each one correctly as we go.
Is there any independent reader for the iPad that does this?
I will be bringing my own CBR/CBZ files.

Thank you!
posted by Bill Watches Movies Podcast at 6:33 AM on August 1, 2020

Response by poster: Bill, the recommendations seem to be A Perfect Viewer or Comic Trim for Android. On iOS, there are recommendations for ComicRack and ComicFlow. I have not used any of these apps except ComicRack, and I don't remember that feature, but YMMV!
posted by sincarne at 9:27 AM on August 7, 2020

Response by poster: Thank you, everyone! I am going to give Komga a shot. If that fails, then I'm going back to Calibre.

Metabaroque: you can use the app without a ComicVine sign up, but if you want to try and do automatic tagging of your content (key for me), then you need an API key from ComicVine.
posted by sincarne at 9:29 AM on August 7, 2020

Response by poster: One more for Bill! Just watched a video showing features in Panels. It seems to show a best-guess guided view as well. Everyone goes to great pains, though, to point out that the guided view in publisher apps (and Comixology) relies on data created by artists whose job it is to create that data.
posted by sincarne at 9:37 AM on August 7, 2020