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One of my admittedly stranger personal quirks is that I did NOT grow up reading comics, for the most part. I did have the occasional comic book as a child, but they were few and far between. As a grown-up man (at least superficially), I have a HUGE collection of comics, in both hard copy format and in scanned format. In fact, my core collection – in both hard copy and digital format, numbers somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand comics. The first comic book I had access to buy on a regular, monthly basis, with the money I got from mowing the lawn of my grandfather’s cantankerous next-door neighbor, was Tomb of Dracula. Having gotten swept up in the latest wave of Monster Mania that regularly sweeps through popular culture, I was able to keep up with the adventures of Quincy Harker (born at the end of Stoker’s original novel), Rachel van Helsing (granddaughter of the venerable Abraham van Helsing), and the other vampire hunters who served as Dracula’s antagonists and foils. The stories were written by Marv Wolfman (no, I’m not remotely kidding – I always assumed it was some facetious pen name, but that’s the writer’s honest-to-gosh real name), and drawn by the inimitable Gene Colan, in collaboration with the equally brilliant ink artist Tom Palmer.
L’une de mes bizarreries personnelles étranges, oui, je l’avoue, est que, pour la plupart, je n’ai PAS grandi en lisant des BD. Quand j’étais enfant, j’ai eu une BD de temps en temps, mais elles étaient rares. En tant qu’adulte (au moins superficiellement), j’ai une ÉNORME collection de BD, aussi bien scannée que réelle. En fait, ma collection de base (en dur et en numérique) fait à peu près quelque chose comme 10 000 BD.
La première BD que je pouvais acheter régulièrement, une fois par mois, avec l’argent reçu en tondant la pelouse du voisin grincheux de mon grand-père, était Tomb of Dracula. Happé par la vague de la manie des monstres qui arrive régulièrement dans la culture populaire, j’ai pu suivre les aventures de Quincy Harker (né à la fin du roman original de Stoker), Rachel van Helsing (la petite-fille du vénérable Abraham van helsing) et les autres chasseurs de vampire qui étaient les antagonistes et faire-valoir de Dracula. Les histoires étaient écrites par Mary Wolfman (non, je ne blague pas du tout – j’ai toujours pensé que c’était un nom de plume facétieux, mais c’est vraiment le nom de l’auteur) et dessinées par l’inimitable Gene Colan en collaboration avec l’artiste d’encre, tout aussi brillant, Tom Palmer.
These inexpensive masterpieces really caught my attention. Gene and Tom’s art was lush and incredibly detailed. Gene was undoubtedly a phenomenal pencil artist, and Tom drew over Gene’s pencils with India ink and the application of Zip-a-Tone (the tiny closely placed dots or parallel lines sometimes used for shading in comics) with unparalleled flair and skill. As is so often the case, my parents threw my comics away during my early teen years, and I didn’t think much about comics again until I met my close friend, Raymond. Raymond had a HUGE collection of comics, and he generously sold me his copies of the original Tomb of Dracula issues that I had sadly lost. One thing led to another and here I am, 42 years later, with a genuinely unwieldy and unmanageably large collection of four color adventures.
Ces chef-d’œuvres peu chers attiraient vraiment mon attention. L’art de Gene et Tom était luxuriant et incroyablement détaillé. Gene était sans aucun doute un artiste du crayon phénoménal et Tom dessinait par-dessous ses crayons avec de l’encre de Chine et l’application de Zip-a-Tone, les minuscules points ou lignes parallèles très proches les uns des autres, qui étaient utilisés parfois pour colorier des BD) avec un flair et une compétence uniques.
Comme c’est souvent le cas, mes parents ont jetés mes BD quand je suis devenu adolescent et je n’y ai pas beaucoup repensé avant de rencontrer mon excellent ami, Raymond. Raymond avait une ÉNORME collection de BD et il m’a généreusement vendu ses exemplaires de numéros originaux de Tomb of Dracula que j’avais tristement perdus. De fil en aiguille, me voici, 42 ans plus tard, avec une grande collection, dont la taille la rend vraiment peu maniable et ingérable, d’aventures en quatre couleurs.
Digital Domination
This situation is a genuine problem for me. I haven’t bought any new comics in about a decade or so, but I do still like to go back and re-read some of my favorites. Jim Starlin’s Warlock series, for example, was very innovative and creative when it first saw the light of newsstands in 1972. Side note, most readers are undoubtedly familiar with at least one of Starlin’s signature creations: Thanos. Yes, the antagonist for the last two Avengers movies was created by Jim Starlin in the early 1970’s, and was the main antagonist in the feature Warlock, first in Strange Tales, and then in his own eponymous series.
But who in their right mind would want to go through a bunch of comics long boxes to find the particular comic they wanted to read at any point in time? Not me, I can tell you. It’s far too big of a lift at this point. The obvious solution is to manage a digital backup collection.
Scanning
Fortunately, back in the day, I started scanning my collection before it started becoming so unmanageable, so I was able to reread them conveniently. Even better, I eventually got pen-based Windows XP/Tablet PC Edition laptops that allow me to read them in portrait format, as originally printed, at something very close to the original size. On my Windows machines, I did this using CDisplay, Comical, or the Ice Cream eBook Reader. Fortunately, Linux has a couple of equally viable options.
The application I use for this on Linux is Comix. It can be installed easily from the command-line interface, using the command:
sudo apt-get install comix
from a terminal.
Remember from earlier columns, SUDO (or Super User DO) gives you temporary administrative access to install software. APT-GET is the command-line software install/update/uninstall manager for Ubuntu, and COMIX, of course, is the application we’re installing.
Comix
Once Comix installation has completed, we can launch it by clicking the Dash (top left icon on your control strip that runs along the left side of the screen), and type in ‘COM’. This should be sufficient to show the icon for Comix. Click to launch it:
The interface is admittedly kind of spare, but this is an application that pretty much only has one specialized use. Click the File menu up top and go to Open, then navigate to where one of your comic book files (either a CBR or CBZ format file) is stored.
Ouch!
Whoa, that didn’t work! Before even clicking on a CBR, Comix generated this error:
Well, looks like it’s back to the terminal and another apt-get command. Let’s try this:
sudo apt-get install rar
and see what happens. Linux goes out to the internet and does a small download, followed by an installation. So, now, let’s try again:
NOW, we’re talking! This cover is NOT by Gene and Tom, although it is a good cover. It’s penciled by Gil Kane, and looks to me like it’s inked by John Romita, who was best known as the long-time artist on Spider-Man, after Spidey’s co-creator Steve Ditko departed from Marvel Comics.
Navigating in Comix
In the top left corner of the Comix window, we have First Page, Previous Page, Next Page, and Last Page navigation buttons. To the right, we have buttons to fit to page, fit horizontally, fit vertically, manual zoom (toggle between full size and fit modes), double-page spread, and ‘manga mode’, which reverses the page order. There’s also the intriguing Magnifying Glass, which produces a square that can magnify whatever part of the art you pass it over, so you can see more detail.
On the left side, there are thumbnails for each page. Let’s look at one of my all-time favorite comic book panels by finding it in the thumbnails (close to the last page), then clicking it:
Wow! I still have to say, that is just a masterful use of shadow and light to produce an incredibly memorable image!
And, just to show Gene’s versatility, here’s the cover and splash page from the hilarious and incisive satire comic ‘Howard the Duck’, as we saw last month:
Obviously, it’s much easier to pull out one 2 TB external drive with several thousand comics and open the one you want, than to dig through a bunch of physical boxes. As much of a simple application as it is, Comix is a real blessing in allowing me to read my comics collection in a convenient fashion.