Simple Comic is focused on helping you focus. This light, straightforward reader foregoes complicated preference panes in favor of comprehensive but simple controls that have you scrolling through your comic books in seconds.<\/p>\n
Simple Comic is designed to deliver an immersive reading experience with minimal fuss, and it shows: You have a lot of say in how the program displays comic pages, but all these controls are packed neatly into a simple toolbar located at the top or bottom of your screen (depending on your preferences).<\/p>\n
Pages load without a hitch, and they can be scaled to fit, rotated, zoomed in or out at various levels, or blown up to full screen. In addition, you can choose to view files as single-page or two-page spreads, or even toggle page order so you can read right-to-left manga layouts without any trouble. Simple Comic’s signature feature, QuickLook, automatically generates thumbnails and previews that let you skim through the pages of your comic book before you settle down to read.<\/p>\n
Don’t be fooled by the program’s speed and minimalist controls, though. When it comes to file handling, Simple Comic can open almost any format available — whether that’s the usual .cbr\/.cbz files, or rarer archives like .lha or .7z. Despite its light touch in terms of system resource use, Simple Comic also packs enough juice to handle having multiple files open without a problem, even giving you the option to switch between open sessions with a couple of keystrokes.<\/p>\n
Aside from the usual display controls, Simple Comic can also automatically pull file information, metadata, and translation and release notes for each title. This means you don’t have to worry about manually hunting down any additional details you’d like to know about your collection. Despite this, though, Simple Comic falls short of actually offering any robust library management tools; in fact, while it reads files from various source locations just fine, you can\u2019t direct the program to build a library by consolidating all your comic book files in a central folder or archive.<\/p>\n
As a consequence, Simple Comic also lacks options for any meaningful organization of your comic book collection. You can\u2019t assign custom tags or categories, nor does Simple Comic let you generate and browse a list of whatever titles you might have on hand. This isn\u2019t a problem for those who only want a program that can open and display their comic book files, but potential users who are serious about maintaining their collections and would like an all-in-one solution should keep this limitation in mind.<\/p>\n
Simple Comic is available as freeware. It\u2019s also open-source, so any budding developers can pull up the source code on GitHub and modify the program to better suit their reading needs. However, the program is only available for Mac users, so those looking for a comic book reader to use on Windows or mobile systems will have to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The program homepage features a link to e-mail queries to developers, but bear in mind that the program is no longer in active development so there’s no guarantee of a response. You might fare better on the program’s GitHub page, where program documentation is still available and other members of the program\u2019s user community still respond to posts about issues or questions.<\/p>\n
Also of note: Simple Comic’s last major update was posted in 2014, so users on newer versions of the Mac OS should be on the lookout for compatibility issues. Since the program is no longer being developed or actively maintained, this is an issue that will only grow as time passes. Users who are looking for software that can suit their needs for years down the line might want to find more durable alternatives.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>