The iPad makes a great comic-book reader. The 9.7-inch screen may not be quite as big a a standard paper page (around 12.2-inches), but the easy zooming actually makes the story easier to read.
Comics and Marvel, the two apps that got such great coverage when the iPad launched, are both gorgeous, but they only let you read comics that are downloaded from within (which also suffer from DRM). What about reading your own scans? Over the last few weeks, I have been trying out several apps which will variously read CBR, CBZ, PDF and other standard comic-book scan formats (most are essentially compressed folders of images). None of them is yet the real killer app, but one comes close, and the others are catching up fast.
ComicZeal4
This is the gold standard so far, in that it is the most feature packed and really gets out of your way when reading, although there are still quite a few problems. ComicZeal (pictured above) has existed for the iPhone for some time, and required a companion app to beam comics across. Now, with iTunes file-transfers for the iPad, getting your collection into ComicZeal4 is easy.
First, the gripes: The page turning animation is horrible. You need to drag the page a long way to the left (or right) before the animation kicks in, and then it whips across. It has improved in recent updates but still jars when you’re used to the standard Apple implementation.
The second big problem is the lack of a library. You pick your books from a popover, but there is no neat shelf like that found in iBooks, or in Comic Viewer (below). With large collections you’ll be doing lots of scrolling in an iPhone-sized panel.
On the plus side, ComicZeal4 is the only app tested that handles zooming and page turning properly. If you are zoomed in on a panel or are reading in landscape mode and then turn to the next page, the zoom level is respected, but you are popped to the top of the new page. Other apps either return you to full screen or force you to zoom out before turning pages, or dump you at the bottom of the new page, not the top.
Read more: WIRED
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