I've dabbled in eComics off and on for years now. I recently lost my collection and have been rebuilding it slowly over the last few days. So while I'm setting everything back up again I decided to throw together a quick howto guide on managing an eComic collection. I like to not only have a convenient way to browse my media but I like the actual storage of the files to be neat and tidy, this guide will show you how to do just that.


ComicRack

When I first started reading eComics I used CDisplay to view the comic files, while a great program it's really nothing more than a simple reader. Then I stumbled across ComicRack and it's like the clouds parted, the sun blasted through, and angels began to sang.

An easy way to think of ComicRack is to think of it like an iTunes for comics. Properly configured it will allow you manage, organize, and read your entire comic collection from one program. So to start you'll want to download and install ComicRack, you can find it here (at the bottom of the page).


Setup

I'm not going to go too far into the setup because it's very simple and and very similar to almost any other media manager. i.e. You point it to your library and tell it how to handle the contents.

To add your library's location Edit>Preferences>Libraries



You can probably figure out what to do from there. From there the rest of the options are pretty much personal preference, you can tweak how the program displays comics, how it starts up, enable hardware acceleration, etc.


PlugIns

Now out of the box ComicRack is pretty robust, so much so I haven't explored it fully. With that said, you're going to want to grab a couple of plugins though to really get the most out of it. You can find the plugins (as well as several others) here. For now though just grab "Comic Vine Scraper" and "Organize Library Files & Folders X.XX" (where X.XX is the most recent version).

Once they're downloaded do not extract them. Load up ComicRack and again go to Edit>Preferences and this time click on the "Scripts" tab. From there click "Install" and navigate to the .zip of each plugin. Once you install both and exit the preferences window it should prompt you to restart, if not simply restart by going to File>Restart or hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q. Once the program has restarted go back to the Scripts tab and it should look like this:






Making it All Work

Now just populate your library by scanning your eComics folder. Comics that haven't had their info filled in should be greyed out a bit, the info shown at this point is ComicRack guessing based on file names and such. Assuming the "guesses" are relatively close you should be good to scrape all of the info with one of the plugins you just installed. Double check to make sure this is the case, pay special attention to the issue numbers. If they're off it's very easy to mass edit the comics. You can adjust the series name by selecting all of the comics and then right clicking and selecting "Info...". If the issue numbers are off you can edit them individually or use the wizard (right click Automation>Auto-Number Wizard).

Again though, if the pre-populated info is good you don't have to worry about the above. Once you have the series name and issues set select all of the comics and right click and then click Automation>Comic Vine Scraper.




It'll then pause while it tries to search for the series, then it will display a list of possible series allowing you to select the correct one. Choose the right series for the select comics and then the scraper will download the needed info. Once it's downloaded the series info it will then being filling in all of the info for the comics: series name, issue, title, publisher, writer, etc. Pretty much anything you'd want to know about the comic.

Now let ComicRack save all of this new info by going to File>Update all eComic Files. Now that all of the info for your comics has been loaded and saved you want to organize the files themselves. This is where that other plugin comes in. Select all of your comics (in my experiences it's safe to just do them all at once with a ctrl+A) and right click then click Automation>Organize Library Files and Folders X.XX.

Being the first time it will ask you where you want the root of your library to be stored. Navigate to wherever you want the actual files to be stored at and let it rip.

Now all of your comics are properly identified and organized. ...and of course you can do the most important thing with ComicRack too, read your comics with it. It has tons and tons of ways to customize how your comics are displayed, it even has a groovy little magnifying glass that you can use to read the finer print on some of your comics. Hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions feel free to post them here.