Simple Comic - 1.7b233

With the recent update and the revision note of the fix to error with filename encoding, I had hoped that this meant the problem with some pages being displayed out-of-order was resolved (see prior review). Alas... it has not. This is really disappointing since there are a few other comic book readers that don't have this problem. Comic Reader Pro and Comical both do it correctly, though both are flawed in other ways that make them less desirable than this app would be. Heck, even RadicalCodex gets it right, and the guy who wrote that is a complete jerk.

Simple Comic is largely a GREAT reader. I particularly like how I can read comics 2-on-1 page, yet the software is smart enough to know to show page one by itself... as if I was reading the real deal. In general, it's very fast with all the options one would expect from any graphics viewing software, which is what any comic reader is at heart.

It does have one HUGE flaw that keeps it from being even usable for many comics. In many cases, comics that have a scene that cover two side-by-side pages are often scanned or presented as one page. Unfortunately, Simple Comic doesn't read the numbering scheme used for such pages properly. As a result, these pages wind up as being shown as the last page(s) of the book, when in reality they could be anywhere. For example, let's say a comic book's pages are labeled as "Super Hero 001-01" for volume 1, page 1, "Superhero 001-02" for page 2, etc. BUT... pages 12-13 have been scanned/saved as a single page because it's intended to be viewed as one scene covering two pages. So that page is numbered "Superhero 001-1213" for volume 1, pages 12-13. Many readers see that page as being page 1213, NOT pages 12-13 as they should.

In the example I'm providing above, the only readers I know of that read these properly offhand are Comical (for OS X... an otherwise awful reader that is sluggish and lacks basic keyboard navigation controls) and CDisplay for Windows (not even CDisplayEx does it right). I'm not sure if the example I provided, which is based on actual files I have, are technically coded "correctly" by the CBR standard, but since some programs do read them correctly, I would urge others to follow suit. Until then, I can't justify giving Simple Comic a rating that it otherwise deserves.