Combine the uncluttered look of Material Design with similarly streamlined features, and you have yourself a comic book reading app that’s lightweight, elegant, and easy to use. If you’re searching for the best on-the-go comic book reading experience, Astonishing Comic Reader might be the app for you.

Comic Reader Features

Astonishing Comic Reader uses a beautiful Material Design-inspired design that fits in well with the rest of the Android environment. What cements the app’s claim to sleekness, though, are its smooth, easy-to-use controls.

The app automatically scans and imports comic book files stored on your device; if you’re using the web, Chrome, or Windows versions, there’s also the option to add files just by dragging and dropping them into the app itself. Astonishing Comic Reader only reads the .CBZ and .CBR file formats, though PDF file support can be unlocked for a minimal fee.

Display controls like page navigation and zoom are simple. You can set how you’d like to deploy these options: whether through the use of your phone’s volume buttons, on-screen icons, or screen swipes and other gestures. The app also comes with Night Mode, which switches to a darker theme to cut glare and make reading in low-light settings more comfortable.

Collection Management

While Astonishing Comic Reader doesn’t focus heavily on library consolidation and management, it does offer some rudimentary tools so you don’t have to wade through a mass of titles just to start reading. In keeping with its design themes, the app uses an elegant thumbnail view for easier library browsing. Advanced search options help you filter your library however you like, and you can also choose to place comics in custom collections. Marking favorite issues or titles is as easy as a quick button-tap, and a feature called Snapshots makes it just as easy to save and share snippets of comic pages that you like.

Most users will also appreciate the smart features baked into Astonishing Comic Reader’s system: Intelligent suggestions can automatically group related comics, alert you about newly added or unread titles, or bring you to the next issue of a recently-read series. For a fee, cloud storage service synchronization gives you access to your collection from anywhere. Android users can take this a step further by signing up for an Astonishing account that allows for collection-syncing and even the tracking of reading statistics.

Additional Features

There are also some handy app synergies: Astonishing Comic Reader works with the Google Now app, for example, so you can use a Google Now command to search your comics library; meanwhile, users who also have the Muzei app can combine that with Astonishing Comic Reader to generate custom wallpapers from their comic pages. The recent addition of Chromecast support is another example, giving users the option to display their comic books on various screens.

Availability and Pricing

Astonishing Comic Reader is available as a free app for Windows 8, Android, Chrome, and most web browsers. These free apps are fully functional, but users who want PDF file support or syncing with cloud services like Google Drive will have to shell out an extra $0.99 – $1.60 for those added features. There’s no word from the developers so far on an iOS version, so for now, Astonishing Comic Reader stays off the table for Apple product users who are searching for a comic book reader.

Customer Support

There’s an active community of users on the app’s Google+ page, and posted questions are often met with a ready and detailed response. The developers themselves often visit the page to answer specific user inquiries, troubleshoot reported issues, and gather feedback for use in future versions of the app. Users who’d like a preview of upcoming features would also do well to keep an eye out for beta releases, which are also posted on the Google+ page.

What's the Verdict on Astonishing Comic?

A Must Have

Astonishing Comic Reader Review 2020 – Conclusion

Astonishing Comic Reader is as light as they come, but don’t mistake that for a lack of heft in terms of value. This reader handles the more common comic book file formats, using both a control system and an interface that are beautifully designed and fit in well with the rest of the Android Material Design environment. While handy features like PDF  file support and cloud syncing need to be unlocked via in-app purchases, the free versions of the app still offer good functionality without any clutter.