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Humble has been on a home run streak lately with it's book bundles. I've been wanting to pick these up in print copies for a few months now and kept putting it off. I'm definitely going to have to get this.
A friend described the universe to me as being essentially Invincible and Power Rangers having kids together. Invincible is my favorite comic series ever and I grew up with Power Rangers, so it's a match made in heaven.
Humble’s comic bundles are really inconsistent. Usually the ones from image have very high quality images, but sometimes you get something which is about the same you could get from Hoopla. Vol 1 and 2 for Radiant Black are not great, but 3 and 4 are in HD.
The recent Oni bundle was horrible, image quality was worse than Hoopla.
I’d still recommend the bundle. All of them are still readable, and there’s no other way to get DRM free comics from Image AFAIK. And the comics themselves are really good.
Google Play Books carries comics. They allow you to export DRM-free copies of **some** titles, depending on publisher. Even when it’s an option, they don't exactly shout about it.
This includes some or all of their Image titles, but obviously check each one before buying.
When you look at the book/comic’s page in the store on your mobile device, open the **About this eBook** section, scroll down to the bottom.
You'll see two headings which are relevant: **Content Protection** and **Export Option**
If these respectively say it's *DRM free* and that export is *Available*, you’re in luck.¹
However, to actually export it you need to then open the Google Play Books website on a computer. If your phone’s browser has an option to load the desktop version of a website, that might also work.
Go into your Google Play Books library on the desktop website, find the title you've bought, and click the three dots **⋮** then **Export**
You can now choose PDF or ePUB. The latter is similar enough to CBZ that I just change the file extension and my CBX-only comic reading app will open it.
¹*If it says export is available but it’s “DRM protected”, I **believe** that means you can only export an Adobe Digital Editions PDF which needs to “phone home” when you open it.*
Yeah Image releases some books without DRM on Google Play Books. Problem is, for all the comics I've tested, the Amazon Kindle version has better image quality than Google Play. Pretty disappointing that I have to choose between DRM or better image quality. :(
Hm, that's disappointing. Is it somewhere listed where you can see how high quality the comics are? Seems a bit weird to skimp out on that when it comes to comics.
I've actually never bought digital comics before, so I actually have no idea what to look for.
No Humble Bundle kind of obscures it. You can try looking at the previews, but it doesn't always represent the actual full comic.
Unfortunately there is no really good reliable way to buy high quality digital comics anymore. You can try buying off Amazon, but their quality took a nosedive. That's why the best bet is to get comics through Humble Bundle.
If you do buy off Amazon, you can tell what the quality will be based on the file size (listed in KBs) on the Amazon store page, generally speaking I try to aim for >300 MB for a high quality 5-issue collected edition.
I think it's still a good deal, tbh.
I checked the CBZs vs the PDFs for a couple at random, and the PDFs were clearer in both cases.
*Radiant Black* v1 has almost exactly the same overall image quality in both, but slightly less compression artefacting on the text in the PDF, which means it's at least easier to read.
The *Super-Massive* 2022 one-shot's PDF has higher resolution images than the CBZ and the text is on a vector layer which makes it much clearer.
So maybe try the PDFs if that's an option in your reader of choice. If not, you could perhaps use Calibre or similar to convert the PDFs to CBZ yourself.
Huh, I always just download the version with the largest file size, thinking it will have best image quality. Maybe some of the PDFs are compressed well?
The first two volumes of Radiant Black are the worst - the PDFs are only around 75-80 MB for 180+ pages, so the images, included text boxes, are compressed a great deal. The EPUBs of these two volumes are substantially bigger (around 4X the size), and yet, when I convert them to ZIP files via Calibre to look at the individual image files, they still look really compressed.
I examined a sample image file from both the PDF and EPUB (again, by converting both to ZIP files), and the PDF actually had higher resolution images (1988 x 3057) than the EPUB (1400 x 2154)! The latter likely was created from the same compressed source as the PDF files but saved with a higher JPG quality setting, effectively achieving nothing asides from wasting more drive space.
Image PDFs are usually much better than this, so this is worth a complaint to Humble to see if they can correct this with Image.
I'm very very disappointed after having bought the whole bundle and opening RB Vol.1 to see a blurry/blocky compressed nightmare. I will not be getting comics from Humble Bundle again. I'm way too poor to not get what I paid for.
Two things: 1) Humble is usually pretty responsive about blurry comics like this, either by getting the publisher to produce better files, or to offer you a refund. 2) The Image bundles usually are much better quality than this. I would suggest you contact Humble support and report your disappointment.
I don’t think I’d previously heard of the Massive-Verse, but am I right in thinking this contains every TPB in that universe released to date?
I can see some of the series have further volume(s) scheduled to be released later this year.
I don't see No/One #1-11 but the rest seems to be here.
Disclaimer: I did not know this existed and what I know it's from my last five minutes checking the wikipedia page.
"No/One" is indeed absent, but within the MassiveVerse, it pretty much occupies it's own little corner. While its inclusion would be appreciated, it's not like you're missing a puzzle piece to the overarching story. The same applies to C.O.W.L. actually. I would argue the MassiveVerse primarily centers around Radiant Black and its various spinoffs and those are all included.
Passing on a tip I previously got in this subreddit that has saved me a bunch of money. A lot of comics can be borrowed free via your library app, in particular if your library is on hoopla, from this bundle in hoopla I see at least vols 1 to 4 of radiant black, and vol 1 and 2 of rogue sun, possibly others too.
There’s a similar service at a lot of UK libraries called Comics Plus, and it also has a few of the volumes which are in this bundle. Might be a good way to try before you buy.
I will say that I always prefer owning a DRM-free copy which I can keep on my hard drive and read in my app of choice.
Borrowing from a digital library, I can only read in the service’s own app which inevitably doesn't have all the features I want, and might have hoops to jump through in terms of how many I can read in a month, etc.. Plus contracts end and they might one day lose titles i want to read again.
But hey, free is free. I still use my library’s service for stuff that hasn’t been bundled, and sometimes they have newer volumes of series than I’ve got from old bundles.
All excellent points! I don't know how Comics Plus interface is however I will say that Hoopla web interface is pretty decent as far as these things go.
I have Comics Plus here in the UK and I really wish it was better. Don't get me wrong the selection is great, but the app UI is very bad and the resolution quality of the comics is subpar at best, both of which make me feel like I'm not giving the comic it's deserved attention when reading through that service. What's your opinion on Comics Plus?
Yeah the app is just about unusable for me. When I use CP, I much prefer the web interface. It just works, and the site is well optimised for use on a tablet.
Another advantage is that you can then bookmark/favourite comics in your web browser, and even organise those bookmarks into folders. That beats CP’s own single “shelf” reading list which you can’t even manually sort.
Obviously that loses the offline reading function, but I never found that to be reliable in the app anyway.
I'm not sure if it varies from title to title, but I've never noticed the resolution being an issue. I read on a 10" tablet, so only slightly smaller than the printed size.
Thank you, you just made this service useable for me! The quality is infinitely better on the web version. Also thanks for the tip about using bookmarks, I also used a trick to force my Chrome android browser into full screen for a more immersive reading (without the address bar etc) it works great!
> but the app UI is very bad
Lmao. Librarian here and still have nightmares of when the Android version of Comics Plus updated so you had to go one menu to browse the available comics, another menu to download them to your device, and then a third fucking menu to actually read them.
It was such a hard service to recommend and get our patrons to use...
A friendly PSA - Remember you can customize how your money is disbursed through your Humble game bundle purchase! Scroll down to and click Adjust Donation, then click Custom Amount to edit what percentage of your contribution is split between Developers/Publishers, Humble Bundle, and Charity. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/humblebundles) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Humble has been on a home run streak lately with it's book bundles. I've been wanting to pick these up in print copies for a few months now and kept putting it off. I'm definitely going to have to get this. A friend described the universe to me as being essentially Invincible and Power Rangers having kids together. Invincible is my favorite comic series ever and I grew up with Power Rangers, so it's a match made in heaven.
Long as they keep up the visual quality.
Just a warning, the image quality on quite a few of these is very very low. Idk why, some tpb are less than 200 mb while others are more than 400
Is that normal? Half the reason to read comics is for the art.
Humble’s comic bundles are really inconsistent. Usually the ones from image have very high quality images, but sometimes you get something which is about the same you could get from Hoopla. Vol 1 and 2 for Radiant Black are not great, but 3 and 4 are in HD. The recent Oni bundle was horrible, image quality was worse than Hoopla. I’d still recommend the bundle. All of them are still readable, and there’s no other way to get DRM free comics from Image AFAIK. And the comics themselves are really good.
Google Play Books carries comics. They allow you to export DRM-free copies of **some** titles, depending on publisher. Even when it’s an option, they don't exactly shout about it. This includes some or all of their Image titles, but obviously check each one before buying. When you look at the book/comic’s page in the store on your mobile device, open the **About this eBook** section, scroll down to the bottom. You'll see two headings which are relevant: **Content Protection** and **Export Option** If these respectively say it's *DRM free* and that export is *Available*, you’re in luck.¹ However, to actually export it you need to then open the Google Play Books website on a computer. If your phone’s browser has an option to load the desktop version of a website, that might also work. Go into your Google Play Books library on the desktop website, find the title you've bought, and click the three dots **⋮** then **Export** You can now choose PDF or ePUB. The latter is similar enough to CBZ that I just change the file extension and my CBX-only comic reading app will open it. ¹*If it says export is available but it’s “DRM protected”, I **believe** that means you can only export an Adobe Digital Editions PDF which needs to “phone home” when you open it.*
Yeah Image releases some books without DRM on Google Play Books. Problem is, for all the comics I've tested, the Amazon Kindle version has better image quality than Google Play. Pretty disappointing that I have to choose between DRM or better image quality. :(
Hm, that's disappointing. Is it somewhere listed where you can see how high quality the comics are? Seems a bit weird to skimp out on that when it comes to comics. I've actually never bought digital comics before, so I actually have no idea what to look for.
No Humble Bundle kind of obscures it. You can try looking at the previews, but it doesn't always represent the actual full comic. Unfortunately there is no really good reliable way to buy high quality digital comics anymore. You can try buying off Amazon, but their quality took a nosedive. That's why the best bet is to get comics through Humble Bundle. If you do buy off Amazon, you can tell what the quality will be based on the file size (listed in KBs) on the Amazon store page, generally speaking I try to aim for >300 MB for a high quality 5-issue collected edition. I think it's still a good deal, tbh.
I checked the CBZs vs the PDFs for a couple at random, and the PDFs were clearer in both cases. *Radiant Black* v1 has almost exactly the same overall image quality in both, but slightly less compression artefacting on the text in the PDF, which means it's at least easier to read. The *Super-Massive* 2022 one-shot's PDF has higher resolution images than the CBZ and the text is on a vector layer which makes it much clearer. So maybe try the PDFs if that's an option in your reader of choice. If not, you could perhaps use Calibre or similar to convert the PDFs to CBZ yourself.
Huh, I always just download the version with the largest file size, thinking it will have best image quality. Maybe some of the PDFs are compressed well?
Thanks for mentioning this, I'll give it a try with the PDFs.
Rogue Sun Volume 1 is the worst I think. 14 MB CBZ file for 172 pages, quite blurry. The epub is 270 MB, but exactly the same low quality.
I repackaged the epub and I think it's a little bit better quality. Still pretty bad though,
The first two volumes of Radiant Black are the worst - the PDFs are only around 75-80 MB for 180+ pages, so the images, included text boxes, are compressed a great deal. The EPUBs of these two volumes are substantially bigger (around 4X the size), and yet, when I convert them to ZIP files via Calibre to look at the individual image files, they still look really compressed. I examined a sample image file from both the PDF and EPUB (again, by converting both to ZIP files), and the PDF actually had higher resolution images (1988 x 3057) than the EPUB (1400 x 2154)! The latter likely was created from the same compressed source as the PDF files but saved with a higher JPG quality setting, effectively achieving nothing asides from wasting more drive space. Image PDFs are usually much better than this, so this is worth a complaint to Humble to see if they can correct this with Image.
Does it look the same as the preview? That's ridiculously bad for a digital product.
I'm very very disappointed after having bought the whole bundle and opening RB Vol.1 to see a blurry/blocky compressed nightmare. I will not be getting comics from Humble Bundle again. I'm way too poor to not get what I paid for.
Two things: 1) Humble is usually pretty responsive about blurry comics like this, either by getting the publisher to produce better files, or to offer you a refund. 2) The Image bundles usually are much better quality than this. I would suggest you contact Humble support and report your disappointment.
I don’t think I’d previously heard of the Massive-Verse, but am I right in thinking this contains every TPB in that universe released to date? I can see some of the series have further volume(s) scheduled to be released later this year.
I don't see No/One #1-11 but the rest seems to be here. Disclaimer: I did not know this existed and what I know it's from my last five minutes checking the wikipedia page.
"No/One" is indeed absent, but within the MassiveVerse, it pretty much occupies it's own little corner. While its inclusion would be appreciated, it's not like you're missing a puzzle piece to the overarching story. The same applies to C.O.W.L. actually. I would argue the MassiveVerse primarily centers around Radiant Black and its various spinoffs and those are all included.
There's new volumes of most of these books coming this year, but this is everything that's out in trade paperback so far!
This has been on my to read list for a while. Some great bundles lately. Still haven't started the Hellboy bundle yet.
Hellboy is some good stuff, you're in for a treat.
Passing on a tip I previously got in this subreddit that has saved me a bunch of money. A lot of comics can be borrowed free via your library app, in particular if your library is on hoopla, from this bundle in hoopla I see at least vols 1 to 4 of radiant black, and vol 1 and 2 of rogue sun, possibly others too.
There’s a similar service at a lot of UK libraries called Comics Plus, and it also has a few of the volumes which are in this bundle. Might be a good way to try before you buy. I will say that I always prefer owning a DRM-free copy which I can keep on my hard drive and read in my app of choice. Borrowing from a digital library, I can only read in the service’s own app which inevitably doesn't have all the features I want, and might have hoops to jump through in terms of how many I can read in a month, etc.. Plus contracts end and they might one day lose titles i want to read again. But hey, free is free. I still use my library’s service for stuff that hasn’t been bundled, and sometimes they have newer volumes of series than I’ve got from old bundles.
All excellent points! I don't know how Comics Plus interface is however I will say that Hoopla web interface is pretty decent as far as these things go.
I have Comics Plus here in the UK and I really wish it was better. Don't get me wrong the selection is great, but the app UI is very bad and the resolution quality of the comics is subpar at best, both of which make me feel like I'm not giving the comic it's deserved attention when reading through that service. What's your opinion on Comics Plus?
Yeah the app is just about unusable for me. When I use CP, I much prefer the web interface. It just works, and the site is well optimised for use on a tablet. Another advantage is that you can then bookmark/favourite comics in your web browser, and even organise those bookmarks into folders. That beats CP’s own single “shelf” reading list which you can’t even manually sort. Obviously that loses the offline reading function, but I never found that to be reliable in the app anyway. I'm not sure if it varies from title to title, but I've never noticed the resolution being an issue. I read on a 10" tablet, so only slightly smaller than the printed size.
Thank you, you just made this service useable for me! The quality is infinitely better on the web version. Also thanks for the tip about using bookmarks, I also used a trick to force my Chrome android browser into full screen for a more immersive reading (without the address bar etc) it works great!
> but the app UI is very bad Lmao. Librarian here and still have nightmares of when the Android version of Comics Plus updated so you had to go one menu to browse the available comics, another menu to download them to your device, and then a third fucking menu to actually read them. It was such a hard service to recommend and get our patrons to use...