A CBZ or CBR file, also known as Comic Book Archive or Comic Book Reader file, is an archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, generally comic books.

A renamed ZIP or RAR file

As the first two letters imply, CBZ or CBR files are normally used to pack comic books. The third letter identifies the archive format: ZIP and RAR respectively.

Comic Book Archive files are, in fact, ZIP or RAR files with their extension renamed. While CBR files are the most common, CBZ files are preferred because the ZIP format is more widely supported.

Inside the archive

Comic Book Archive files are composed by a series of images, tipically JPEG or PNG files. GIF and BMP are also supported by most comic book viewers.

Comic Book Archive files can also contain text files that some comic book viewers display when opening the file.

Adoption

The Comic Book Archive format was made popular by the CDisplay image viewer, which has now been discontinued by its original author. There are now many comic book viewers that support this format.

Because of the simplicity, accesibility and popularity of the CBZ format, Robot Comics joins various publishers and creators that offer their comics in this format.

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