Im not going to go into the specifics of the naughty bits. Im sure we all know how to sweep things. There is an automated comic downloader called Mylar that is attempting to be a Sickbeard for comics, but at the moment I would call it very much a Beta. Possibly an Alpha. It doesn't work very well, so I have pretty much given up on it till it has had more development time.
Thankfully, with comics being the tiny sizes they are (generally between 10MB and 50MB) I tend to use the "download everything, sort it out later" approach. You could probably set up something clever with RSS feeds and the like, but I can't be bothered with all that. As such, this will be more about what you do once you have them then how you get them. If you do want more detail on the naughty bits, feel free to shout at me on Steam or something.
So, you have a big pile of downloaded comics, all probably named crazy and unhelpful things. First things first, what does all that shit after the name mean, and is it important? Usually, unless you have acquired the comic from someone with really random naming conventions, the bits you are actually interested in are at the beginning of the file name and the trash info you wont care about is at the end. It will normally look something like this:
5punkycomic 001 (2015)(3 Covers)(Digital)(wankypirateface).cbr
This would be a comic called 5punkycomic, its issue 001 of a volume that started in 2015. It includes 3 alternate covers, was originally digital (rather than scanned) and was uploaded by someone called wankypirateface. Also, its a cbr file. Lets break that down a little more.
The name is fairly straightforward, however don't forget comic creators love for differentiating between different series that contain the same character by sticking silly words on the front, hence Amazing Spider-man, Spectacular Spider-man, Superior Spider-man etc.
Issues again tend to be pretty straight forward. Sometimes there will be a decimal involved (issue 3.1, issue 7.5) which usually means this is a kind of bonus issue that isn't really required reading, maybe is separate to the ongoing story but fits chronologically at that point. You can nearly always skip these if you cant be arsed with them. Also, they sometimes like to do novelty silliness, like having an issue 1000000, set in the future. Comics!
Volumes, also sometime called Series, are where it starts getting a bit more confusing. The standard is for a Volume (which is kind of analogous to a Season of a TV show) to be named after the year its first issue was released in. Sometimes they go for a more straight forward Volume 1, Volume 2 etc, but even then people will mostly refer to them by year.
Sometimes Issues and Volumes get all weird. For example, Ultimate Spider-mans first Volume (V2000) went from issue 1 to 133. Then the next Volume (V2009) went from issue 1 to issue 15, then suddenly jumped back up to issue 150. Why? Fuck knows. Comics!
If it says how many covers there are, that will be because some comics are released with more than one version. The story inside will be the same, but the cover will be different. Sometimes they have a different main character on the front, sometimes it will be a Deadpool variant edition, sometimes it is because they did a special version to promote a film or something. Basically, its all to push up sales, safe in the knowledge that some weirdos will buy the same book multiple times to complete their collection. People putting digital comics together often collect all these different cover pages together so they are all in the same file. Handy if you want a look at them all, safe to ignore if you are only interested in the story.
There will sometimes be an extra bit in here saying either noAds or C2C. noAds means they have taken out the pages that, in the original comic, had an advert for a car or some cereal or something. C2C means cover to cover, and includes all the adverts, letters pages and whatever. Its entirely down to personal preference which one you go for. I prefer noAds myself, but its not the end of the world if I can't find one. Some people are much more passionate about it than I am.
The Digital bit can be pretty much ignored nowadays: New comics are almost all fitting the floor as digital comics, and old comics that are only available as scans...well, if thats all there is thats all you can get. Go for digital if you can, but honestly most of the scans are decent enough you can barely tell the difference anyway.
The bit with the name of the scanner can be completely ignored. Who gives a shit?
The filetype is sort of important but at this point is pretty much irrelevant. Most of the comics you will find will be cbr's, some will be cbz's. cbr is based on RAR files, cbz is based on ZIP files. For what we will be doing later, you want cbz, but we can convert them easy as pie. Just make sure they are either cbr or cbz and you are good (avoid pdfs, they are shite for comics).
So, you have your files and you understand the naming convention. Now what?
1) Get yourself a copy of ComicRack. There are other, smaller, simpler comic readers out there, but this one is the best. It makes things much easier to organise, keeps track of what you have and have not read and even does snazzy things with synchronising to the App version that you can get for Android or iOS. I wont cover that stuff here (although I can later if people want), for now just download and install it.
2) Go into preferences in ComicRack and open up the Libraries tab. Add a book folder. This is the folder on your hard drive where all your comics will be going, not where your comics currently are. For example, mine is at D:\Comics
3) Go down to the Advanced tab and under Books make sure "Allow writing of Book info into files" and "Book files are updated automatically" are checked. This makes ComicRack write all your metadata to the file itself, rather than just keeping it in the ComicRack database. The advantage of this is that if something goes wrong and CR dies, you can reinstall it and all your read progress and the like will still be there. As someone who didnt always do this and once lost all my metadata meaning I no longer knew how far through the comics I was reading I had got to, trust me when I say you don't want to be in that position.
4) Hit Apply and OK
5) In windows, go to your book folder and add in a new folder. I call mine Dump (so it is in D:\Comics\Dump). You can now shove all your comics in this folder. This is also where you will put any new comics you get in the future that you want to organise. Dont worry if there is other miscellaneous shite taken along for the ride (nfo files and the like) as after you have processed your comics you can just delete everything thats left in the Dump folder.
6) Before you can organise your comics, ComicRack needs to know what they are. To achieve this we will use a plug in for ComicRack called Comic Vine Scraper. Comic Vine is kind of like the imdb of comics, and lets applications use its database for stuff via an API. You will need to download the Comic Vine Scraper plugin hereand install it. Next you will need to sign up to Comic Vine (its free) to get your API key. There is no direct link to your key that I can find, so once you are signed up go hereto get it.
7) Back in ComicRack on its main screen you should now see a little green star icon somewhere near the middle of the screen, on a bar with a bunch of other icons. Click the drop down menu and hit configure. The first page it presents you is where you need to put your API key. Then go to the Behaviour tab and make sure both of the "Save that choice" options are selected. You can leave everything else on its defaults for now.
Next, you want to install the plugin that will move and rename your comics based on the metadata from Comic Vine. Its called Library Organiser and you can get it from here. Once it is installed you should have a couple of other icons next to Comic Vine Scrapers little green star that look like piles of books. Click on the drop down menu and hit configure.9) On the Overview tab set Mode to Move, make sure your book folder is in Base Folder (so D:\Comics for me) and make sure "use file organisation" and "use folder organisation" are selected
10) On the Files tab, enter the following for File Structure:
Code: Select all
{<series>} { <number3>} {(<year>)}Also make sure "Space inserted fields automatically" is enabled.
11) On the Folders tab, enter the following:
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{<series>}{ (<startyear>)}Again, make sure "Space inserted fields automatically" is enabled.
12) Go to the Options tab and make sure "Remove empty folders" is enabled. You will need to add your Dump folder to the exceptions list (D:\Comics\dump for me) otherwise it will keep deleting the thing every time you process your downloaded comics. Everything else can be left on its default values.
13) Hit "OK"
14) Go to your Library in ComicRack (bottom left of the screen) and add a new folder. I call mine Processing.
15) In that folder, make a new Smartlist. Call it "to Convert", make sure its set to match All on the Library, then add a rule saying "File Format" "Contains" "rar" and Apply
16) Make another Smartlist in your processing folder, this time called "Needs Scraping". Set it to match Any on the Library and add two rules, one saying "Publisher" "is" and one saying "Tags" "is". Leave the text box for both rules empty, then hit apply.
17) Make another Smartlist called "Dump Folder". Set it to match All on the Library, then add a rule saying "File Directory" "Contains" "dump". Obviously you will need to alter this if you have called your dump folder something else.
Thats all the setup done, now you need to actually process some stuff.
1) Make sure all the comics you want to process are in your Dump folder.
2) Open up your To Convert smartlist. Select all, right click and go to Export Books, Convert to CBZ. This will make sure all your comics are in the cbz format.
3) Open up your Need Scraping smartlist. Select all, then click on the green star and select Start Scraping. It will try and guess what the comic is and mostly it will work, but if it isn't sure it will ask you to select it manually from a list of possibilities. I recommend using the Show Issues list as sometimes when it isn't sure about a comic it will just assume its issue 1.
4) When that is complete, open up your Dump Folder smartlist. Select All, then hit the button that looks like a bunch of books with swoosh marks. All being well, it will shove all your books into logical folders and rename them appropriately. If you have more than one of the same comic it will ask you which one you want. As a general rule I tend to go for the one with the fewer pages (as that tends to mean less adverts). If there is no difference in page count, its up to you: either the bigger file size (tends to be higher quality) or the smaller filesize (might be lower quality but will take up less space.)
Congratulations! All done!
Do say if you get through this and something goes wrong/is missing. Its been ages since I set it up so I might have missed something. Also, theres a bunch that ComicRack can do that i've not touched here, so give me a shout it you want more information on how you can use it to put your stuff into handy folders, read lists and the like, or if you want to know about using the shared library feature, or how to sync it with the mobile/tablet app.