We love ourselves some comic books and have since we were very young. We're also big fans of digital books and have enjoyed reading on our iPhone for many years now. Unfortunately, the small screen of our phones don't make for an optimal graphic reading experience. Don't get us wrong: we used to read plenty of comics on our iPhones, but it wasn't great, panning through all those miniature panels.

Literally our first thought when we heard about the iPad was: that'll make comics reading a dream. And it has, but who's running this dream?

Comic Zeal Comic Reader ($7.99)

Comic Zeal by bitolithic was probably our first true love on the iPhone. Back in the day there was no iTunes syncing, so it was a lot harder to get comic book files (CBR/CBZ) onto your iPhone. The app offered a link to a few public domain Golden Age comics or you could load your iPhone using ComicSync, a software that converted and ported your comics over Wi-Fi. Sure the iPhone screen was tiny and the syncing process laborious -- but, comics! In your pocket!

Comics! In Your Pocket!  But With Much Tapping and Zooming

It wasn't optimal, but Comic Zeal had a slick, easy to use interface, navigation buttons that got out of your way, and sharp graphics. Other e-readers, like Stanza, added CBR/CBZ support, but it never measured up. This was a dedicated comic book reader and it delivered.

All Your Settings In One Simple Interface

So imagine our eagerness to see what bitolithic would do with all that gorgeous extra space and power in the iPad. It was going to be so, so, so sweet. We eagerly updated to the universal Comic Zeal, expecting great things. 

Hmmmph. While comics still look great on the iPad, we strove in vain to discover a reason, any reason, to justify the cost. With a four dollar price upgrade, we expected more than just being able to use the same app on our iPhone or iPad. We could get that already using the iPhone version on the iPad. Sure, the controls and navigation buttons were a touch pixelated, but that was it. Using the $3.99 iPhone only version, you get the same reading experience, the same slick interface, the same sharp graphics. What do you get if you shell out extra? Smaller, non-pixellated control buttons. That's the only thing we could find.

Is the Bottom Image Worth Four Dollars?

We don't want to sound like complainers. Comic Zeal Comic Reader is dynamite in what it does. You can organize your digital comics into boxes based on title or series, comics you finish get a cool "bag" transparency put over them to indicate their status, and comics you're halfway through get a nice red bookmark and open up exactly where you left off. Tap the right side of the screen to turn the page, left to go back, middle to bring up the controls (including the ability to add orientation lock and to take a picture of the screen), and double tap on a spot to magnify it. This last command was really necessary if you only have the option of reading on the iPhone or iPod touch, but sometimes you do want to magnify a panel just to take in some particularly lush artwork. And if you're a manga reader, there's even a mode for that letting you read in the opposite direction.

Old or New the Comics Still Look Great

You can still choose to sync through Wi-Fi, though we find plugging in to iTunes is still the fastest way to transfer tons of files  to your iOS device. What we'd like to see is a bit more of an ability to add comics on the fly. While bitolithic offers a smattering of free Golden Age comics, there are tons more out there, and giving us the ability to find those online and download seems a handy (almost necessary) feature when you're talking mobile devices. We shouldn't be tied to our desktops to find titles.

Comic Viewer ($4.99)

The last complaint we had about Comic Zeal is handled head on in DenVog, LLC's Comic Viewer. The app opens to the shelves of your comic collection and right up in the left hand corner is a Download button. Tap on it to be taken to a built in browser with four bookmarks to four links including Comic Books Archive, a sizable Golden Age repository including such titles as Plastic Man, Spy Smasher, Hopalong Cassidy, Bulletman, and more. If newer comic are more your speed, two of the links take you to more recent fare. 

Marmaduke Mouse. Great Literature or Just Great Fun?

You can also navigate to wherever else you might find comics online, though we worked far harder than we feel we should have to and still didn't manage to get comics into the app. We ultimately used the same link from Comic Viewer in Safari and were given the option of opening the issue in Comic Zeal as well as Comic Viewer. So while the app has made an effort to provide users with a mobile ability to add content, it didn't prove as helpful as we'd have liked. Fix this browser issue and it could be killer to find and add comics on the fly in a simple in-app process.

As Long As We Have to Go to Safari, We Could Use Any Comic Book Reader to Get Online Comics

Comic Viewer opts for a less is definitely more approach when it comes to controls. The app comes with a comic instruction booklet that walks you through the use of it, though navigation is pretty much the same here as everywhere: tap the right hand side to advance, let to go back, middle for controls. 

Not Much in the Way of Controls

And the controls are pretty skimpy too. Library takes you out of a comic and back to your shelves of titles, while Settings lets you control the background and brightness as well as turn on sound effects, which only seem to work with the page scrubber at the bottom of the panel. You don't need more functionality to read, but some finer controls can make the process more enjoyable.

Where Comic Viewer distinguishes itself is in the landscape orientation. Here you're presented with two pages side by side. This can come in handy if you have a large two-page spread or if you're reading older comics with bigger print and fewer words, but today's comics often tend to smaller print boxes and wordier explications.  We found reading Golden Age comics a snap this way, while newer ones required much tapping and pinching. Neatly, though, each side of the screen can operate independently, letting us zoom in on the right hand side without disturbing the left. 

Landscape Works Best With Big Print Comics

Uploading can be done either through this browser option (theoretically) and much more reliably through iTunes, though we found the process of getting titles ready to read took longer than we'd expected.

With a little more work, we feel this app could deliver a much better experience than it currently does, though its delivery of the graphics themselves is tight and crisp.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane! No, It's Just an App

While we were disappointed with Comic Zeal taking more of our money and giving virtually nothing back in return for upgrading, we still feel that it's definitely the app to beat in the digital comics realm. Plus, it comes in a universal flavor whereas Comic Viewer only targets the smaller iPad demographic. This means you can get your read on no matter where you are, even if it's far more fun on the big screen. While DC, Marvel, and others work with developer comiXology to give you the latest, there's no reason you can't upload older titles to your iOS device and enjoy those. But should you do that, Comic Zeal can manage these for you in either the four or eight dollar flavor equally well. 

But bitolithic and DenVog, LLC need to pay attention and make with some top-shelf features, because free apps are coming up. We found Bookman from Takashi Kato to offer plenty of comic reading functionality including device universality, title specific settings, a working built in browser, Dropbox connectivity, and more for no cost at all. Free is a mighty powerful incentive and Bookman is definitely an app to watch out for.