Grand Comic Reading Project #1: Doraemon Color Collection

[feihong]

The first installment of the Grand Comic Reading Project is... Doraemon! See first reply for details.

(Original post - you can ignore this because this thread started out as a suggestion thread but subsequently turned into the discussion thread for Doraemon Color Collection)

Since we're already halfway through August, let's gather some suggestions for our first Comic of the Month in September! I think we should do simplified character set comics for this first month. October's Comic of the Month will be a traditional character set comic.

[feihong]

Chinese Title: 哆啦A梦彩色作品集

English Title: Doraemon Color Collection

Japanese Title: ドラえもん

Character Set: Simplified

Genre: Comedic Sci-Fi Fantasy

Read Online: http://www.tuku.cc/comic/1742/

Jump to First Page: http://www.tuku.cc/comic/1742/1/4

Read Offline (CBZ File): http://www.divshare....ad/12300355-fb0

Buy Online: http://product.dangd...duct_id=9275455

Level: Easy

Page Count: 81

Summary: Doraemon is an ear-less robot cat from the future with a kangaroo pouch full of wonderful gadgets. For some reason, he lives with Nobita, a cowardly, idiotic schoolboy. Hilarity ensues.

Sample Page:

Profile: http://grandcomic.wi...olor_Collection

Word List: http://grandcomic.wi...ction_Word_List

Word List in Text File: doraemon_word_list.txt

This is a collection of classic Doraemon comics, in color art. Only the first volume is available online. I think it's pretty easy, if you can handle ChinesePod Intermediate then you should have no problems reading it.

UPDATE: I corrected the CBZ file and then tested it in ComicRack. It should display the pages in the correct order now. Also added links to profile and word list. The word list is available as a tab-delimited text file.

[jbradfor]

I'm in! I've heard of this one, and my wife was a fan of it when she was growing up. So maybe we can read it together, but she'll have to slow down for me

BTW, can any one recommend a good "comic book viewer" program? Both windows and linux, please. I've never heard of these before.

[Gleaves]

Sounds good. I've seen Doraemon suggested on here a few times, but have never checked it out.

I haven't used comic viewers in a while, so feihong may have some better suggestions, but for Windows there is ComicRack and Linux there is Comix. I also use comic reader mobi on my ipod (edit: It looks like comic reader mobi ran into some troubles with the appstore, so ComicZeal might be a better bet).

Feihong - Have you had luck ordering from dangdang in the U.S.? I've never been able to get it to work.

[renzhe]

BTW, can any one recommend a good "comic book viewer" program? Both windows and linux, please. I've never heard of these before.

A quick search gave this: http://comical.sourceforge.net/

I haven't tried it yet, the format is new for me as well. I stocked up on Doraemon last time I visited China, but I'll need some new ones. It's my favourite reading for falling asleep.

Doraemon is a good suggestion, because the main thing people complain about is the lack of beginner-level reading material. This is really easy stuff, and almost everything you encounter (other than some of the names for the gadgets from the 4-dimensional pocket) is useful stuff.

BTW, the reason Doraemon lives with Nobita (大雄 in the Chinese version) is that Nobita's descendants from the future sent him back through time to sort Nobita's life out. This is not technically a spoiler, as it's well-known, but if it bothers anyone, I'll edit it out.

[feihong]

I don't have a whole lot of experience with comic book viewers on desktop computers. In the past, I mostly just viewed comics in my web browser. The only comic book viewer I have really used is ComicZeal 4 for the iPad ($7.99). I have also tried using Stanza on the iPad, but its image viewing support is rudimentary, so a lot of images look blurry.

In any case, the CBZ format is simply a normal ZIP file that contains a bunch of images in it. So if you rename the extension from CBZ to ZIP, you should be able to unpack the contents and view them with any image viewer. The only thing that a comic viewer helps you with is making it easier to pan and zoom on the image, and resetting the position to the right side every time you turn the page (since Japanese comics are viewed right to left).

I've never tried ordering anything from Dangdang. I only included that link because I've noticed other forum members saying that they had ordered books from there. Gleaves, do you have a Chinatown close to where you live? If so, you can go into a Chinese bookstore and ask them how they order their wares. They would probably be happy to special-order it for you if you give them the name of the book and specify that you want the simplified version.

[Gleaves]

Gotcha. I'm always looking for new/easier ways to order books so I was hoping that you'd had some luck with dangdang. I've ordered from Bookseed.com before and they have this color set here for $14. Or if anyone really, really likes Doraemon, all 45 volumes for $120.

[deathtrap]

Maybe I'm just the only one,but for those that just spent a good amount of time looking for the link to the first page and couldn't find it then Click here to go to the first page

edit: HTML not allowed, this is not my morning =/

[feihong]

Thanks, deathtrap. I forgot how busy that page is. I've edited my own post as well.

[SiMaKe]

@feihong

Unless I screwed something up when downloading or installing ComicRack (definite possibility), this archive seems to be missing the first story. It starts with the "cement" story rather than the "bird" one.

http://www.divshare....ad/12283116-e0c

[jbradfor]

I did the same as SiMaKe, got the same results as SiMaKe.

[Gleaves]

Feihong - Thanks for getting this going. Should we use this space for discussing Doraemon? (Or did you want to start a "Comic #1" topic?)

FYI - Here's the birds from the first story:

小鸟 xiǎo​niǎo​ little bird / birdie

鸽子 gē​zi​ pigeon / dove / various birds of the species Columbidae

公鸡 gōng​jī​ cock / rooster

麻雀 má​què​ sparrow / mahjong

鱼鹰 yú​yīng​ name used for many fishing birds / cormorant / osprey

猫头鹰 māo​tóu​yīng​ owl

天鹅 tiān​'é​ swan

[Gleaves]

Just noticed SiMake and jbradfor's posts. I haven't had any trouble with the archive file on my ipod (it has the first story), but I will try in on my PC when I get home.

[jbradfor]

I took a closer look (and zoomed out so I can see the original page numbers). All the pages are there, but ComicRack is showing them in the wrong order. If you zoom out to see the whole page (ctrl-2), then go to the end (ctrl-e), and then keep hitting page up, you'll see that the first stories are weirdly interspersed.

[Later...]

AH HA! Renaming the extension to .zip and looking at the contents, whoever created it didn't do a great job. Pages 1-9 are listed with only one digit, and when the .zip file was created the first 10 pages were interspersed among the two digit numbers...

[Gleaves]

You'd think a comic reader program would be smart enough to figure out that numbering. Here's a newly packed file with all double-digit numbering.(Megaupload link). Should work fine in readers.

[feihong]

I suspected there might be a problem with the naming of the image files, but I didn't try changing it because it worked fine for me.

Gleaves - I don't mind discussing Doraemon now, because it seems like everyone is OK with the first suggestion. I actually didn't expect everyone to agree to Doraemon so readily, I thought someone would suggest some other titles and we'd spend some time discussing which one was better, but the way it turned out is OK with me. Also, thanks for posting a corrected CBZ file!

I just read through the Grand First Episode Project, I think the idea is really good and there is a lot to emulate there. I will try to start another thread as soon as I think of a good name for it, perhaps "The Grand Comic Reading Project" as roddy suggested.

[SiMaKe]

@jbradfor

Good catch. I noticed the numbering when I, at first, extracted the files from the zip file. But wasn't sharp enough to make the connection. Duh!

@gleaves

Thanks for the corrected file.

@feihong

Thank you for setting the whole project up and getting it moving.

[deathtrap]

@jbradfor & Gleaves, that's not a problem with the archive. It's a problem with the comic reader you're using. It's sorting everything alphabetically. That means it sorts numbers digit by digit instead of taking the whole number into account (2 will always be sorted after 19 and before 20...etc.) Yay developers!

[jbradfor]

@feihong

I actually didn't expect everyone to agree to Doraemon so readily,

I have a feeling the first dozen or so will be easy to get agreement.

@deathtrap, I guess that's a matter of opinion whose fault it is. The files in the archive were out of order, so the reader would need to resort them. IMHO, a reader should display the files in order in the archive and not try to change it. Also, IMHO one should always use leading zeros to avoid these problems. But I don't want to blame the archive too much, I really appreciate whoever created it for us, problems and all!

[Gleaves]

I guess I never learned the word/sound for sneeze. It is important for the second story. I was completely confused for a minute.

阿嚏 ā​tì​ onomat. atchoo! / to sneeze