[lilman]

I use CZ for reading manga, so I'll try to answer your questions.

Originally Posted by Rob_E

ComicZeal seems pretty good. Navigation is good. It says it supports pdfs as well as .cbr/.cbz files, but I failed in my attempt to sync a pdf file yesterday.

I haven't tried pdf manga in CZ yet, and honestly I wouldn't want to. The whole point of CZ is that you can import your cbz/cbr collection which are merely archives of the original image scans, using pdf comics adds a layer of indirection.

Originally Posted by Rob_E

It puts a smaller-sized file on the iPod, rather than loading something more space-intensive that the iPod's smaller screen wouldn't be able to take advantage of, which is nice.

CZ will only downsize images which are larger than the maximum supported for a device. This is smart as the maximum supported size is much larger than the actual screen, so its nice to be able to have images larger than the screen since they look better when you zoom in.

Originally Posted by Rob_E

But, as near as I can tell, the desktop application exists entirely to support the mobile application. Not a huge deal if you plan on doing most of your reading on your device, but since your digital collection can quickly outstrip your device's storage, it seems like better desktop management might be helpful.

Yes, CZ Sync is simply for syncing your comics over wifi, not a management tool. It also does some comic processing, but I prefer to use my own program for that.

Originally Posted by Rob_E

Also, while it supports standard formats, it looks like it actually converts those to a different format for transfer to the device, which means you're storing your files twice and there's virtually no chance of syncing back information on what's been read and bookmarks because the ComicZeal files are not the .cbr/.cbz files that you started with.

CZ takes the cbr/cbz archive that you've transferred over, unarchives it to an image folder, and then deletes the archive (I only know this because my iPad used to be jb and I looked at CZ's file structure). So you're only storing one copy of the comic. I'm not sure if you can transfer the comics back from your device to your computer. When you load CZ's app file share in iTunes you only see a single "imported" folder which contains all of your comics, so you can't individually transfer comics from your device. I'm not sure what format they would be in once you transfer back... I would guess image folders.

Originally Posted by Rob_E

On the mobile application, however, it seems to do a good job with bookmarks, collections, and keeping track of what's been read.

Yes, it does a very good job keeping track of what you've read and all of your collections. Each comic gets its own bookmark so you can keep track of where you are while reading multiple series.

Now as much as I love CZ, I have been really annoyed that every single release has at least one serious bug in it. The dev seems to consistently break the program with each new feature. I wish more time would be spent on ironing out all the current problems before working on new stuff. At least the dev listens closely to the community for bug fix/feature requests.

Goodreader is my favorite pdf reader, and I recommend it even if you don't want it for pdf comics. As far as free programs go, Stanza is the best for cbz/cbr.