Earlier this week when I posted up a blurb about iComic, a native iPhone application which essentially allows you to read files in zip format, most people were excited with the prospect of being able to read their favorite comics or manga at their convenience from their iPhone. Some though expressed disinterest mainly because they weren’t into comics or manga. Using a few tools from the web, you can turn any text file into reading material using iComic and your iPhone thus turning it into a pretty nifty eBook reader. Project Gutenburg alone has over 20,000 free books that you can download in text format from such famous authors as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Skakespeare and many more. Once you’ve downloaded your text files, download iJpegBook which is available for Windows and OS X. iJpegBook which was originally created for the Sony PSP but works great for the iPhone using custom size settings, essentially turns your text files into numbered jpeg files. Once the text files have been converted and saved into a folder, archive the folder into zip format. Then upload the zip file into the var/root/media/Comic folder of your iPhone. Voila, eBook reading on the iPhone.

Actual Screenshots From iPhone: (Zoomsuit Issue 1)

Actual Screenshot From iPhone: The Raven By Edgar Allen Poe.

iComic is a native iPhone application that allows you to read comics, manga, etc… in .zip format. The application is available via the developers site but only with Japanese menus. I’ve translated the menus to English for the people unable to read Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana. There are three different options for page turning. Gravity Page Slide uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to turn the page for you by just tilting your iPhone. Button Page slide allows you to turn pages by tapping on either side of the touchscreen to advance or go back a page while Swipe Page Slide turns pages using a swiping motion across the touchscreen. To get back to the settings menu while in portrait or landscape mode, tap on the upper left part of the screen. There are tons of comics, manga or books in .zip format available on the web so you’re best bet is Google. The files to be read need to be uploaded into the var/root/media/Comic folder of your iphone. The translated menus are available for download below after the screenshots and need to be unzipped. After unzipping, upload the entire Japanese.lproj folder into the Applications/iComic.app folder overwriting the original files.

Screenshots:

Reading Full Metal Alchemist On The iPhone: