Comic Viewer NoAd review

We review the ad-free version of Comic Viewer, which makes it incredibly easy to put your digital comic book collection on your iPhone

Generally speaking, the writing in comic books isn't all that good. There, we said it. But comics aren't just about plot. Much of their enjoyment comes from the art and the character designs, so much like games, a comic can live a long and fruitful life if it looks great and offers engaging characters, even if the story is as thin as the paper it's printed on.

Of course, comics don't have to be printed anymore, right iPhoners? Comic Viewer NoAd is further proof of that, if we needed any. But it's probably as well that comic lovers are used to jumbled, rambling words, since this app is not the easiest to follow. Not by a long shot.

What it does get right is loading your digital comic book collection onto the iPhone, so that's where we'll begin. The iTunes files sharing system is okay for sending files to specific apps, but you still have to contend with iTunes itself, which is the PC equivalent of chewing tin foil.

Fortunately Comic Viewer NoAd (the 'NoAd' part stumblingly suggesting this isn't the free, ad-supported version of the same app) has a built in web server that allows you to send your files from computer to application via your web browser.

You initiate the web server on the app, which opens up a port so you can select a file from the computer and upload it. Very simple - no wires and no messing about. And no iTunes. This also goes one step further with an FTP server, offering the same basic functionality, only you access it through your FTP client (FileZilla, or what not). The benefit here is that you can queue multiple comics and send them to your iPhone or iPod touch one at a time.

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Once loaded, these comics are viewed in rather a peculiar manner that, quite honestly, doesn't work at all. By default, Comic Viewer NoAd uses a two-page view perspective, which splits your comic's pages down the middle and switches between the two halves with a screen tap. It makes your comics utterly impossible to read, and leaves you wondering what on earth the developer was thinking.

However, shut this option off in the settings and the app immediately behaves itself. You're given a full view of the comic page in the portrait orientation, and can zoom, pan and scroll using the standard iPhone gestures. And that's all you really need, besides a left and right tap to flip the page in that direction. Sadly there's no zoom option when viewing in landscape orientation, although it does automatically fill the screen horizontally, so you still get an improved view.

Comic Viewer NoAd allows you to create folders, to keep your virtual comic book shelves nicely organized, and is compatible with the best method of digital comic book files: Zips. These compressed Zip and CBZ files - which are just Zip files renamed - put sequentially-titled images together into a single, compressed container file and even if it's a Zip within a Zip (full collections in one container) Comic Viewer NoAd has no trouble opening them.

Fast and efficient, the few design flaws of Comic Viewer NoAd don't break the deal or interfere with your comic reading experience, so long as you turn of the strange two-page view straight away), making this a good choice if you're not looking for fancy features and want to keep things cheap.

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