COMICS NOW! Star on GitHub
No. 3.1.0 November 2026 Free under AGPL-3.0
Support on Ko-fi

Immerse yourself
in the comic.

Komga and Kavita are great file browsers, but reading comics on a phone still means pinching and panning across tiny text. Comics Now! is a self-hosted CBZ/CBR/PDF server that uses local AI to detect panels and speech bubbles automatically—paired with a browser-based visual editor when you want to tweak the reading order yourself.

Read a comic in your browser Open the GVE editor

Public-domain and open-licensed pages, loaded locally. No account and no upload. The GVE editor is designed for a desktop browser.

Page 7 of Give My Regards to Black Jack #001, showing a young doctor and a speech bubble.
A right-to-left manga page in the reader. Tap the panel for a closer look.

Start it in one command.

Docker Compose, Docker CLI or npx. Node and SQLite underneath, with no JVM and no paid tier.

GitHub npm Docker Hub 

services:
  comics-now:
    image: ghcr.io/comicsnow/comics-now:latest
    container_name: comics-now
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
      - /path/to/your/comics:/comics:ro
    restart: unless-stopped

Test it in your browser right now.

Two samples from the reader. Tap a panel in the manga page or a bubble in Zip Comics and a close-up opens over the page. Tap the close-up to return. The rest of the app is in the contents.

Panel zoom

Page 7 of Give My Regards to Black Jack #001
Give My Regards to Black Jack #001 Page 7, right to left

Speech bubble zoom

Page 6 of Zip Comics #001, published in 1940
Zip Comics #001 (1940) Page 6

The AI does a first pass. You make the final call.

Comics Now! finds panels and speech bubbles on its own. When it misses a tricky one, open GVE Now! in the same browser, drag the box, and save. The reader has the change on the next page.

GVE Now! Black Jack #001 · p.7 Save
The GVE Now! editor showing a manga page with detected panel and bubble boxes. drag to fix
GVE Now!, the editor Blue boxes are panels, yellow are bubbles. Drag a corner or draw a new one; nothing changes in the reader until you save. GVE Now! source
The same page in Comics Now!, zoomed to the top-right panel showing a man at a sink.
Page 7 of 16
Comics Now!, the reader The same page in the reader. One tap on the panel, and it fills the phone. No pinching, no panning.
Open the editor See it in the reader

GVE Now! is designed for a desktop browser. The reader is the phone-first half.

Built for huge libraries and small screens.

The parts that matter after you have scanned ten thousand pages. No dashboards, no busywork.

  • Panel and bubble zoom

    Local ONNX models find the boxes on every page. Tap one and it fills the screen, in right-to-left manga or western comics.

  • Crossover reading maps

    See how a tie-in connects across series and publishers, and which issue to open next.

  • Metadata that fills itself in

    ComicVine, Metron and the Grand Comics Database, with Gemini cover matching when the filenames are wrong.

  • An MCP server for your shelf

    Sixty-plus tools let Claude, Gemini CLI or Cursor search the library, fix tags and build reading lists.

  • CBR and PDF, handled

    Convert to streamable CBZ once. Keep or delete the originals, with separate rules for CBR and PDF.

  • Offline and E-Ink

    Resumable downloads for tablets, plus monochrome and color display modes for Boox, Kobo and PocketBook.

How it stacks up against Komga and Kavita.

Eight differences that matter. We win some, they win some. Pick the tool that fits how you read.

Feature comparison between Comics Now!, Komga, Kavita and Ubooquity, as of v3.1.0.

Swipe sideways to compare all four readers

Capability Comics Now! Komga Kavita Ubooquity
AI panel and bubble zoom Built inLocal ONNX or Modal GPU No No No
Visual zoom-box editor Built inGVE Now!, in the browser No No No
Crossover reading map Interactive graph Flat lists Flat lists No
Multi-source auto-tagging Built inComicVine, Metron, GCD and Gemini External tools Kavita+, a paid add-on No
AI agent and MCP tools 60+ tools No No No
Dedicated E-Ink modes Monochrome and color No dedicated mode Themes only No
OPDS and EPUB support Not yet OPDS and EPUB OPDS and EPUB OPDS and EPUB
Runtime and license Node and SQLiteAGPL-3.0 JVMMIT .NET and SQLiteGPL, plus a paid tier JavaFreeware, unmaintained

If OPDS clients and EPUB novels are must-haves today, Komga and Kavita are the better tools for that job. Comics Now! is built around the reading view, the editor and AI-assisted cataloguing.

Questions people ask before installing.

If yours is not here, open an issue on GitHub and ask directly.

Open an issue
Why not just use Komga or Kavita?

They are better if you need OPDS clients, EPUB novels and a large ecosystem of third-party apps. Comics Now! is built for reading comics on a phone: local AI finds panels and speech bubbles, a visual editor fixes the misses, and a reading map shows how crossover issues connect. You can run all three and pick the reader you prefer.

Do I need a GPU for panel detection?

No. The detectors run locally on your CPU or GPU, and pages can also go to Modal serverless GPUs so a large import does not slow down your home server.

How does CBR and PDF conversion work?

Comics Now! converts RAR/CBR and PDF files into streamable CBZ archives with page integrity checks. You can keep or delete the originals, with separate rules for each format.

Is it really free?

Yes. The server and the editor are AGPL-3.0, with no account and no paid tier. You bring the hardware, the comics and, if you want cloud tagging or detection, your own API keys.