Simple Comic: Mac’s Most Manageable Comic Archive Reader

Slowly but surely, comic books and graphic novels have been working their way into a respected position in the literary world, owing to their attractive blend of visual and narrative story-telling ability. Once upon a time, comic enthusiasts (commies?) used to be restricted to flipping through the pages of their favourite chronicles alone in their basements under the soothing light of a lava lamp. Nowadays, with modern technology releasing us from such archaic conditions, these enthusiasts are now able to flip through the pages of their favourite chronicles alone in their basements - on a computer!

Enter Simple Comic; a robust yet streamlined reader for digitized comic books saved as archive files of the type .CBR, .CBZ, .RAR, and others. Produced by Dancing Tortoise Software, this compact piece of open-source wonder provides all the functionality of its older cousin Comical, without the added feature of intermittent crashing.

In fact, besides stability, it also trumps the competition by providing a few extra tools. My favourite was the “Image Loupe,” a clever little magnifying glass that lets you take a closer peek at a specific section of the page without having to zoom the entire screen in (which you can also do, by the way). Coupled with page scaling, rotating, ordering (left-to-right or vice-versa for fans of manga), and full-screen viewing capabilities, Simple Comic gives you all the options you need to experience your comics your way.

In addition, the ability to open multiple different comics at one time can make comparisons and research a breeze. Not only that, but the full-screen thumbnail view allows you to quickly browse through all the pages in an archive and zip straight to the one you need, without the hassle of flipping through everything page by page to search. And when you’re done and decide to close the program, it automatically bookmarks your last position and re-opens directly to it on the next launch. Convenient.

Simple Comic is completely free and is fully compatible with Leopard. You can download it from Dancing Tortoise’s Website (lava lamp not included).