How to Read Comics on iPad: Best CBR Reader

Ever since the first iPad was released, comic book fans have sought to use it to more and less success as a digital comics reader. We look at how to read comics on iPad and the best comics apps (like the best CBR reader) to take your collection with you.

Reading comics on the iPad has always been possible, but when the third generation model with Retina Display came out, the iPad really started to shine as a digital comic. Thanks to the backlit display, each page was filled with lush, saturated colors that made “real” comics look boring in comparison.

Which is the best iPad for reading comics?

While the 9.7-inch screen still seems a bit cramped, the high resolution made it easy to read comics without too much of a hassle. iPads with this screen size, such as the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and 10-inch iPad Pro, all do a good job of reading comics and magazines.

But it’s the 13-inch iPad Pro that takes the crown. Reading large-format periodicals (comics, magazines or other similar media) is an absolute pleasure on the large, high-definition display. While the full size of the 13-inch Pro might make this largest iPad a little awkward on the lap, it’s by far the best iPad for reading comics. If comics are an essential part of your digital presence, you should at least try them on a large iPad – so you can see what you’re missing.

Best iPad Comics Apps

When it comes to comics on the iPad, there are two main philosophies to consider. One is to support publishers by using publisher apps just to buy and read comics; you can also protect third-party stores like comiXology, which sell digital versions of some comics and pay most of the profits to the original owner of the content.

There’s so many good things about it – you can download comics directly to your iPad over cellular or Wi-Fi, wherever you are. And some publishers like Marvel offer an unlimited subscription service, which can come in handy if you want to catch and drive all the old issues of a particular title.

However, more popular are pirated copies. These days, it’s easy to go to a torrent site, type in the name of your favorite comic, and watch every issue of that comic appear onscreen, pre-formatted to a common format that almost every comic reading app supports. Publishers may not like it, but this is often a better experience than messing with a dedicated store – you can store as many as you want in Dropbox or similar and download or delete them whenever you want.

comic book (comiXology)

Comics, the newest app on Amazon’s comiXology store, is one of the longest running comic apps on the platform. The company has gone out and partnered with just about every big name in comics: DC, Image, Disney, Marvel, IDW, and others. Comics has one of the best features for reading comics on smaller iPads – a special frame by frame mode that takes every frame drawn and explodes it to fill the screen. Instead of reading your comic page by page, you read a small chapter at a time.

Since Apple requires 30% of all money from purchasing something in-app, comiXology has decided to eliminate the problem completely and now you have to buy all your comics outside of the app using a web browser (your to be able to save them on a wishlist first, then upload that wishlist to the web, thank goodness). Users aren’t happy and have lowered Comics’ rating as a result, but it’s as good as ever except for the in-app purchase issue.

Comics Plus

Comics Plus is the multi-publisher alternative to Comics. They’ve managed to pull together titles from DC and Vertigo, as well as Valiant and IDW (and others, especially smaller publishers). One big downside to Comics is that you can’t access Marvel’s rich library – having said that, being able to purchase your comics directly from the app goes a long way towards making changes.

A key differentiator for this app is the ability to rent graphic novels. Comics Plus lets you check them out for 1, 2, and 5-day rentals. Not every book is available on these rental plans, but if you only want to read something once, it can be a great way to save some money. Additionally, you can add your own “private collection” and keep it in one place, both free and paid.

Marvel Unlimited

If you don’t mind paying just to read Marvel comics, Unlimited is one of the best deals on comics. For as little as $10 a month or $69 a year, you can access what many call ‘Netflix of comics’. Basically, you can touch, download and read as many comics as possible for a single monthly fee. However, you are limited in how many offline issues you can have at the same time and you won’t find anything newer than a few months.

there is also one more traditional Marvel app It works like the Comics and Comics Plus apps above. In this regard, there is Applications for DC, Black Horse, IDW, pictureand dizzinessbut none of them offer Marvel Unlimited’s great subscription features and require multiple apps to be installed when Comics can do them all.

Best CBR Reader for iPad

If you’re making your own comic book collection, the chances are very, very high that the files are in one of two formats: .CBZ or .CBR. These days and a good comic app will open both without a hitch. Selected by an unspoken consensus years ago, CBZ comics are scans of each page stored as a separate JPEG and then compressed into a ZIP file. CBR comics, meanwhile, are scans of each page stored as a separate JPEG and then compressed in a RAR file.

When your reader app opens the comic, it uses some logic to display your pages in order; this way, you can navigate between pages as in a regular book. When you’re done, some apps even know what the next comic in the series is and automatically installs it for you, so you don’t have to go looking for it.

iComics – Comic Reader

One of our top two picks for the best CBR reader for iPad iComics. It offers one of the best experiences for reading comics on iPad right now, and it’s easy to manage even large comic collections once imported. The app uses the iPad’s big screen to great effect, but iComics has one annoying flaw: file uploading. Currently, you can get your comics to iComics in one of two ways: sync your iPad with the computer (you can do this both wired and wirelessly) and use iTunes’ cumbersome file transfer service to move things around.

You can also use Dropbox or other cloud storage apps by saving to the cloud, opening the cloud app on your iPad, and then downloading the file and opening it in iComics. It’s a bit convoluted, but native support for third-party apps like Dropbox is marked as coming in a future update.

Chunky Comic Reader

Chunky is the new kid on the block, but don’t hold that against him. It has a great new interface where your covers fill the iPad screen, and you can switch between them to find a new comic. Chunky supports almost every out-of-the-box cloud service – iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Transporter, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Box, Pogoplug, Mediafire, and Copy – so you don’t get stuck using iTunes to get comics on your iPad. If you upgrade to Pro, you can even download comics from your PC, Mac or NAS with the app’s built-in browser.

If you have more mature comics, you can use parental controls to protect them from prying eyes, and Chunky’s “smart upgrade” and yellowing removal features can make old and poorly scanned comics look better than ever before. One potential downside: If you’re used to quickly browsing huge collections, you might have trouble finding what you’re looking for on Chunky.