Introduction
A CBZ file is a comic book, manga or graphic novel stored as a
ZIP archive of page images. It is not a format with a
specification so much as a convention: renaming a ZIP of scans to .cbz
tells comic readers to show the images one page at a time. The convention became
popular through the CDisplay reader in the early 2000s.
Related extensions use other archive formats: CBR
for RAR, .cb7 for 7z and .cbt for tar.
Structure
The archive holds one image per page, usually JPEG, PNG or WebP. Readers sort the
files by name to find the page order, so pages are named with leading zeros, such as
001.jpg, 002.jpg. Images may sit in a folder inside the
archive. Many files also hold a ComicInfo.xml file, a metadata convention
from the ComicRack program, giving the series, issue number, title, writer and
artist.
Links
Software
- YACReader (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS)
- SumatraPDF (Windows)
- calibre (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- KOReader (e-readers, Android, Linux)
- Okular (Linux, Windows)