Fast Comic Reader

Fast Comic Reader is a small-sized and portable software application which enables you to open and view electronic comic books, namely files with the CBR and CBZ format. It features numerous settings via the right-click menu to help you navigate easier and enhance images.

As there is no setup pack involved, you can save the program files to any part of the hard disk to immediately launch it. There is also the possibility to save Fast Comic Reader to a USB flash drive or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any PC with minimum effort and no previous installers needed.

More importantly, it does not alter Windows registry settings or create extra files on the disk without permission, as it happens with common installers, therefore leaving the disk clean after removal.

The GUI is based on a minimalistic window with no kind of elements visible. In order to open a comic book file, you have to drop it on the Fast Comic Reader executable file while navigating Explorer directories.

The current page is shown on the bottom left corner of the screen and you can use the mouse wheel to easily scroll through pages. By opening the right-click menu it is possible to enter full screen mode, zoom in and out, fit the height or width, and other viewing settings.

Image processing is enabled by default, and you can enhance the contrast level, correct gamma, remove the show-through effect (low, medium, high), soften or sharpen the image, remove noise, display thumbnails to jump to a particular page number, as well as change the background color. Other removable objects include JPEG artefacts as well as minor, medium or major patterns.

CPU and RAM consumption was low during our tests, and Fast Comic Reader had a good response time. It did not hang, crash or pop up error messages. The only downside about it is that it's not intuitive concerning how to open comic book files. Otherwise, Fast Comic Reader features standard and useful settings for enhancing the view mode and making image adjustments when reading comic book files.