Comicology

Hey folks,

Here is a link to Comicology #71: “where / how to get digital comics.” hope that you enjoy it.

On this show I talk about how to get some digital comics. HOWEVER I need to put up a bit of a disclaimer here…

I think that it is wrong for people to just download comics if they have no intention of supporting the comic book industry by buying the comics that they download.

IE: you should only downlaod books that you all ready have, or books that you want to try out, but you think you will buy if you like them.

On top of that if you download copyrighted stuff yiou run the risk of having someone sue you… which will suck.

HOWEVER, (listen up comic book publishers) if the comic book industry does not start to come up with some sort of plan to allow people to buy digital copies of comic books online than it will not be much of a susprise when people just download what they can find for free.

Ok, having said that.

–.cbr and .cbz files –

Q: What does .cbz stand for?

A: CBZ files are zipped file archives that have had their extention renamed from .zip to .cbz

Q: What does .cbr stand for?

A: CBR files are rarred file archives with their ectention changed from .rar to .cbr

Q: What is a .cbr / .cbz file?

A: Compressed set of JPEG, PNG, or static GIF images; pages are automatically ordered and can be presented one or two at a time

–How to get a .cbr .cbz file–

The best way that I have found to do this is via BittTorrent.

I’m not going to explain what BittTorrent is here, but I will link to a good explantion. (Thank you wikipedia!)

Here are a list of several small sites that you can use to find the files to use

Here is a link to a program calledAzureus, which is the program that I use to download stuff via BitTorrent. I use it because it has all sorts of cool plugins that you can add to it. It also works on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Next, here is a list of places on the web where you can go to find .torrent files, that you can use to download stuff.

1. Mininova
2. Iso Hunt
3. The Pirate Bay

–How to read a .cbr .cbz reader—

If you are on a PC the most used program for reading .cbr and .cbz files is called CDisplay. It is a program that you can download for free, but it does not have lots of cool features.

On the mac side of things I have found a few different things that can be used.

FFview was the first reader that I tried out. it worked out rather well for me, and it was free which was great.

Then I found a program called ComicBookLover which has a REALLY nice iTunes-ish interface. This program is different than all the other viewers that I talk about on this show because it is MORE than just a viewer. This program lets you view the digital comic books, but also helps you store and organize them. It was by far the best program out of the bunch, but it was not free.

There is a demo version of the program that you can download for free, which is what I did. Now that I have been workign with ComicBookLover for a few days I can say for sure that I LOVE this program! I have been talking to Simon (the developer of the program) and have a bit of an agrngment with him.

If you listen to this show you can get ComicBookLover for less money.

The program costs $25.00, but because it is still in Beta now you will get a discount, and it will only cost you $19.00. Then if you use the promo code “comicology” when you register it you will save about anothe $5.00. This means that you will not get just one, but two discounts! You will also get a free upgrade when the program is out of Beta and version 1.0 comes out.

If you running linux you can use a program called comical (which also works on PC and mac for those who care.)

Technorati Tags: digital, comics, download, comicology, neilgorman, bittorrent

-N