Image Comics—the rebel publishing house that championed creator-owned comics in the early '90s—recently made another industry-altering move. It became the first major comic book publisher to release digital comics in DRM-free CBZ, CBR, ePub, and PDF formats. What does this mean? Comic book-reading apps, like the $7.99 ComicRack iPad app, that were previously almost exclusively for reading stolen content are now given an extra layer of legitimacy (besides being used to read truly independent offerings, of course).
ComicRack doesn't have an integrated digital marketplace like Comixology's popular (and free) Comics app (or its stellar Guided View), but it offers a compelling reading experience for those who want to escape other popular apps' walled gardens.
Pulling From the ComicRack
ComicRack's attractive interface is divided into two main sections: Library and Reader. Library is where your collection lives; Reader, naturally, is where you read books.
The Library itself is further divided into two parts: Listbar and Comics Browser. The Listbar is a vertically aligned, easily navigated column where you select a comic to read from a number of default Smart Lists such as New Comics or Recently Opened. Smart Lists automatically sort books into categories should they meet certain criteria; having my comics sorted by author or title made finding books (such as anything with the name "X-Men" in the title) incredibly simple. Unfortunately, you can't create new Smart Lists from within the ComicRack app; that's a feature reserved for the desktop ComicRack for Windows software. Still, I preferred ComicRack's Smart Lists over YACReader's folder system (which doesn't require a Mac or PC).
Similar Products
Comixology
Dark Horse Comics (for iPad)
Marvel Unlimited (for iPad)
ComicRack (for Android)
It should be noted that ComicRack for Windows is an important part of the ComicRack for iPad ecosystem. You don't need it to transfer comics (iTunes is a solid alternative), but you'll want to download it if you want to create Smart Lists or wirelessly sync books or Web comics. My two purchased Image Comics CBR files (Lazarus #1 and Scatterlands #1) transferred to my iPad with ease using Apple's connection cable.
Navigation and Reading
Tapping a Listbar entry displays issue thumbnails and your own star rating in the Comics Browser section. Bringing a digit to a thumbnail launches a comic.
Rucka and Lark's Lazarus #1 looked fabulous on the iPad's 9.7-inch display. Word bubbles and captions were legible so I didn't have to utilize the zoom feature (which is executed by double tapping the screen). Should you want to tinker with a comic's presentation, pinching, zooming, and dragging the image around the screen are available options. Left or right swipes, naturally, turn pages, but I noticed some lag when paging through Lazarus #1.
ComicRack's automatic scrolling isn't nearly as impressive as Comics' Guided View, so if you're a fan of that particular feature, you may want to stick with Comixology's apps. You can, however, flip the iPad into landscape so that ComicRack displays two pages at a time (much like Comics for iPad). This makes the text a hair harder to read, but lets you enjoy double-page spreads. Another neat feature: ComicRack remembers where you finished reading, so that when you return to a comic after exiting the app, you'll pick up where you left off. It's page scrubbing is superior to YACReader's as it lets you see which pages you're rifling through (YACReader only has a bar).
Overlay controls, activated by single-tapping the center of the display, let you quickly scan and access specific pages, activate the orientation lock, or open a window where you can assign a star rating or write a mini-review. Progress bars at the bottom of the page shows how far along you are in the reading process. There are numerous preferences to digest, so I suggest reading the included user manual.
Reading is Fundamental
The $7.99 ComicRack is relatively expensive when compared with the $1.99 YACReader, and occasionally lags, but it lets you deftly read and manage CBZ, CBR, CB7, CBT, DJVU, ePub, and PDF files (its page scrubbing is quite excellent, too). Now that a major publisher like Image Comics has cast off DRM, open digital comics readers will become even more valuable—and ComicRack is one of the category's standouts.
ComicRack for iPad lets you read and manage DRM-free comics with ease, but the occasional page-turning lag dulls the experience a bit.
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