Comic Zeal Comic Book Reader App Reviews

Big improvement, but there is a second when you turn the page and its blurry. It really takes away from the comic when youre reading it and are really into it.

Im a long standing and loyal supporter of this app. Its always been the best one out there. Im also very appreciative and understanding of the one man dev team making such a (usually) great product. However, Ive got to write this review to bring up some major problems. More major than anything Ive encountered in years of using the app. For info I have an ipad air 1 running iOS 9. The biggest showstopping bug Im having is all of the graphics/ images/ icons for my collection disappearing and taking minutes to return. This then also turns into the comics themselves disappearing. I have to close the app and re open to get the images back. I also get the new pages blurring issue mentioned elsewhere. Neither of these major issues have ever happened before. The issue seems to often be triggered by me reading large PDF format comics, but it can also happen at any point when looking through my standard CBRs. I dont have a large collection so I dont think its a caching issue or memory. Please fix these problems and Ill return the review to a 5 star! I would honestly rather the app not evolve so that these basics stay stable then risk instability through continued polishing. Thanks.

As others have noted, the update to version 9.0 introduced some major bugs. I am on an iPhone 5 with iOS 9, and this app is now almost too much of a pain to read comics on. Besides the annoying blur when paging, the zoom level seems reduced (I can no longer zoom enough to easily read small print) and the page-transition zone is now so large that I find myself constantly going back-and-forth between pages when I merely try to move the frame(s) to read them. Please fix these annoying issues...

Is a great app, but the update got rid of the one feature I relied on - assisted panning. I zoom in to get the comic to fit perfectly, but now I just get a page turn instead of moving down the comic page. This is the second review Ive written for this app over the years and its always the updates getting rid of or breaking my favorite features. Such a bummer too.

Ive been using it for years, and surprised I havent reviewed it up until now. I really like this app, its a little weird to used to the slider, but once you use it a few times, its fine, and make one wonder why other applications dont have such a neat way of organizing long lists of items.

Recent major update has made this unusable. Crashes within a minute or two. Used to great. Now just a buggy mess. So disappointing.

The app just got a new update that blurs each page for 5-10 seconds before focusing. It heavily detracts from the reading experience, and the creator of the app doesnt appear interested in fixing the issue. Its with a heavy heart that I recommend that you spend your money elsewhere on a more stable comic reading app.

I finally decided to spend the five bucks on this app hoping it would blow me away. It did the exact opposite. Ive been using it now for almost a week. Many of the comics that I had in my collection dont show up now or dont show up properly. Unacceptable. Every comic page is displayed just slightly too large so youre literally not seeing the whole picture without moving or resizing it. Sure, theres a resize lock but its a pain and if you zoom in on any writing you lose it and have to do it again. I dont want to hear all the excuses about why its not displaying properly. For five dollars I want each and every page displayed as a whole each and every time. Its completely unacceptable. And the interface and overall look is just completely outdated. It really needs a complete overhaul. It appears that the themes that you now have to pay for at two dollars just change the color. COMPLETE RIP OFF! I get its just one guy working this app but Im not impressed. Youre charging five dollars for a comic book reader at least make it look up to date and display pages correctly!!! And where is half my collection that just disappears in your app!? Why are some of my comics losing their covers!? COMPLETE RIP OFF AT FIVE DOLLARS!!! The only thing Ill say is for everyone complaining about the arrow thingy read the info about it first. It works just fine. Yeah its a little weird and pop up menus would be way better but it does what it says it does... Unlike actually being a quality comic book reader which it says it is. When Im CONSTANTLY moving stuff around and fixing and resizing the picture, its more like a puzzle game than a comic book reader. UNACCEPTABLE!!!

One of the best

While downloading files from google drive, I cant do anything but wait. You should enable downloading multiple files and background download.

This new update REQUIRES that you put in your itunes login and password upon opening the app. There is no indication why or what this info is used for - and the requirement is there even if you have never (and never intend) to perform in-app purchases. If you dont put your ID and password in, you cannot run the app - and even if you hit CANCEL, it goes into an infinite loop preventing you from exiting at all. The only way to do this is turning off the device itself! Avoid until this feature is removed.....

This was easy to make go once I used a pc to move the files instead of a MacBook Pro. This looks pretty good. Smooth page turning.

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic - this app is amazing!!!! I’m so glad that I didn’t go cheap and try and find a free app. The $4.99 is SOOOOO worth it. I have 15k digital comics, I’ve not been able to read as much in the last few years. I stated a “Silver Age Reading Project”, reading DC and Marvel from the start of the Silver Age (Showcase #4 for DC, and Fantastic 4 #1 for Marvel). This app has worked flawlessly. I created folders for each series, but then another folder for my reading list that is just a copy so I don’t take up space. I LOVE the fixed page size feature, so I pinch or expand the page to lose the borders, and then it locks into place for all the other pages - VERY COOL!!!! I can’t say enough nice things about this app…thank you to the developer!!!! Well Done!!!!!

Sadly, I can no longer in good faith endorse this app. It was great before but the nag prompt to sign into iTunes puts my iPad into a loop when I try to cancel and freezes up when I try to log in. Either way, it is now useless and I always have to do a hard reset. I appreciate that the developer is in a one-man situation but customer support is nonexistent so its time to look for another way to read comics.

This used to be the best app, but they decided to screw existing customers with a half baked update to sell in app purchases. The app performs poorly and crashes regularly now. The latest update left it completely unusable on a recent trip, it just spammed itune store login prompts so fast I had to reset my iPad to get rid of them.

The app has good features, a decent interface, and pretty high usability. It does, however, get a pretty significant ding for being completely unable to deal with something that should be a simple issue. If you attempt to open a file that has a problem, it just crashes the app. These things happen. However, after the crash, the app just reverts to trying to open the same file that crashed it and I can find no workarounds other than uninstalling the app. It makes sense for it to pick up where it left off under normal circumstances, but after any restart the app should just go to the home screen so that a faulty file can be taken care of rather than having to uninstall the app and redo your whole library. Other than that, pretty decent.

This reader would easily be 5 stars if you could easily keep the books in sync between your devices. I know there is certain functionality with iCloud but it isnt perfect. Id love for a setting that when I import into my iPhone it moves the book to my iPad as well. And keeps progress in sync between devices!

I like this app. I liked it more before the latest update. If you havent updated yet, dont. While this update made it mildly easier to organize your comics from within Comic Zeal (a feature I didnt really need or want, since I bulk rename) it also made the app significantly slower, more likely to freeze, and got rid of the library/oak theme, which I rather liked. Its still pretty much the only serious comic reading option, but dont upgrade until they fix the update.

I bought this app years ago and have been pretty happy with it, but after not using it for about a year it is now forcing me to sign in with an Apple ID for some reason. I cannot cancel, switch apps, or return to the home screen. And I dont understand why Im being forced to sign in when Im using the app offline.

An extremely frustrating app to review, because it has features that could make it the industry standard comic reader, except it fails on some fundamental levels. First, the Great: this app allows you to automatically sort your collections into folders or longboxes. Have a complete run of Action Comics? In other apps, you would have to individually select 800+ files and then move them. Here, it has a preference that will do this on import. Such a no-brainer feature, yet most other apps dont do this. It also has other advanced sorting features I havent explored, but look promising. If your digital collection is large, this app has built in features to organize quickly. And, if you add comics on a regular basis, it will automatically sort those books into existing folders on import. Also, cover view shows covers at an adequate size (other apps will show them at such a small resolution that makes the feature useless). And in list view, it wont automatically return you to the top of the list every time (like Comic Viewer). I was pretty much ready to make this my default cbr app - until I actually used it. The biggest issue is that it fails on something so fundamental, like turning pages. Most comic reader apps turn effortlessly with a touch of your thumb. This one seems to require a concentrated effort that is difficult and obnoxious. Its not like swiping a page on a tablet or phone; it seems like you have to press down and swipe hard, otherwise the page just bounces around stupidly in the frame. It seems like a minor criticism, but when you move through pages and books quickly, it becomes tedious and unusable. To the dev team: guys, youve got a potential industry standard app here: please look at how pages turn on electronic devices! It has a page animation option, but I cant really tell how it works because it doesnt seem to function smoothly as page turn animation in apps do. I think the team may be aware there is a problem, because another option allows you to tap on either side of the page to turn the page in that direction: fine, if youre holding your tablet robotically with both hands, but not really practical. Another issue is that performance in general seems poor: the app struggles when scrolling though the cover view, it is jittery and clumsy, where other apps do this effortlessly. And the more covers it displays and longer it has to scroll, the more sluggish it becomes. Plus, issues that other users have mentioned in previous reviews with blurring, etc. I will keep my eyes on this one, because one of two things are going to happen: they will improve performance to the level of other comic reader apps and this one will become king, or other apps will get on the ball and appropriate the forward thinking features of this app and leave it in the dust. Two stars - for now. But if they get this one working solid, it will be the one to beat.