Comical Comic Reader

[Hadi Sapre]

Comic - In contrast to tragic. From the point of view of the ancient Greek dramatists, tragedy had to involve the fate of a great personage, e.g. a king. Comedy on the other hand, dealt with the common people, the masses. To this day, this formula remains intact in that comedy as a form of entertainment is largely intended to appeal to the masses. The behavior of such lessor figures was felt to be amusing from the point of view of tragic figures. Hence, comical is an attribute often assigned to comic.

Comic occurs most often in generic terms, like comic opera, stand-up comic, a pile of comics (cf a couple of comics, a pair of comics), referring to things or events or actions or images(, etc.) that are intended to be deliberately funny -- to make other people laugh. It also refers to the people doing the intending and the acting, etc; and to the socioeconomic system that is implied by such artifice. It's Artificial, not natural.

Comical, on the other hand, seems to refer exclusively to amusing Natural things, etc. Stuff that really happens; shit my dad says. I don't think they need to be ludicrous or absurd; those are extremes on the humor spectrum. Even gentle irony can make one laugh sometimes. I agree, though, that excess absurdity or boffo ludicrosity often makes the laugh bigger.

Most (but not all) of the -ical words appear also in the -ic list. And there isn't much, if indeed any, systematic pattern visible to me from a desultory inspection of the isolated word lists. But maybe there is one. Anyway, there they are; data is always preferable to speculation.

Also note that there are certain "stock terms" such as comic writer/comic actor which imply the first meaning above. It's always possible that if you met someone thus described, they wouldn't say or do anything particularly funny (when they're not "at work"). If you ever did hear of someone described as a comical actor, you'd probably expect him to be more consistently funny.

You characterise something as comic when you want to say that it is funny. A comic monologue, for example, is meant to make the audience laugh. This word is used especially to talk about writing and drama or things that are funny in a deliberate and theatrical way. It is not used to describe people (except for comic writers).

Comical, on the other hand, is again something funny, but in a ludicrous or absurd way. A series of comical misunderstandings, for example, make you laugh because they don't look like they could really be happening, yet they are.

Comic is connected with comedy and refers to "a characteristics". Comical usually have a sense of "fun" as a result of "strange" and/or "unusual" happenings or situations.

I noticed the post on trying to use comical with registry rapper and it struck me that it should be fairly simple (assuming you can get the program to build) to go in and change the registry calls to write to a file instead. I pulled down the source for comical and wxwidgets. On examining wxwidgets, I realized it already had code to go either to the registry or a file. So, I changed comical from using the wxconfig code that pointed to the Windows registry to the wxfileconf class. Had to do some other minor changes to get it to compile with the latest version of wxwidgets.

I did finally manage to get the executable to build. I was able to view a zip file with jpeg graphics in it. Haven't tested further. The settings are being saved out to Comical.ini in the directory pointed to by the home environment variable. I'm assuming one should be able to create a batch file to set home before running the program in order to get this to execute from a flash drive.

I also have a few other cross-platform applications that I've managed to compile under Windows and that also use the 'home' directory to store files in, including fltdj and flphoto (using the fltk cross-platform library) if anyone's interested in those programs too.

Since I don't have space to upload the executable and no one's offered to host it, I thought I'd just share the differences so anyone interested could recompile and build the program for himself or herself. You'll find the instructions to build comical and have it output settings to a local file instead of the registry here:

Be sure to check under the Windows subsection on the page not the Linux one. The patches are offered as is. You'll probably have to set the HOME environment variable to where you want the settings file to go before running the application.

This reader allows you to read the comics or graphics novels on the screen, advancing page by page or in groups of two pages. You can rotate the image, zoom it (in Fit, Fit-to-Width, Fit-to-Height, Original, and Custom modes), go to full screen, browse from left to right or right to left.

Web comics are immensely popular, with some having a following that would put many mid-sized newspapers to shame. Most comic enthusiasts read the comics on the web pages of their creators, while some make use of RSS feeds to receive update notifications and options to read them right in the feed reader.

Comical is one of the few applications that offers web coming viewing and downloading capabilities. The program needs to be installed before it can be started. Comical then displays a list of supported comics in a sidebar in its interface, and the comics or instructions in the larger main part of the program window.

Comics are downloaded by simply double-clicking comic titles in the sidebar. This downloads the latest available comic of the series. The Comics menu at the top displays an option to download older comics from the series (called Download all unread). This option is not available for all supported comics though.

Information about comics are stored in an XML file in the program directory. It is possible to load a custom user generated XML file to add comic strips and websites. The developer adds new comics to the available database regularly as well.

Comical is an easy to use comic viewer and downloader. The program could use some comfort options, like an option to subscribe to select comics to make sure they are updated automatically whenever the program is running, and better in comic options to navigate between comics.

Comical is a free program for the Windows operating system. It does require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. The comic reader and downloader is available for download at the developer website over at Bootblock.co.uk.

Light, Efficient CBR Reader. It is the most popular comic book reader. It is able to read all comic book formats(.cbr file, .cbz, .pdf, etc..) and Manga. Everything is designed to give you the best reading experience, it load comic booksimmediately, reading is fluid and comfortable.

We put this in the Memoirs section because Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo are, more or less, based on Hunter S. Thompson and his buddy Oscar Zeta Acosta ... but one category can't really contain this drug-addled desert odyssey. "If you're gonna take a road trip and you're gonna do it by car, I'm sad to say that the best you can hope for is for yours to be the second-greatest of all time," says our critic Jason Sheehan. "Why? Because Hunter Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta have already taken the top slot and will hold it forever."

Sarah Vowell walks the reader through the first three U.S. presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley), but make no mistake: This is no whistle-stop tour. Vowell, in her sardonic but never caustic way, grounds us firmly in the era in question while never missing an opportunity to draw trenchant parallels to our own. She visits gravesites and ghoulish medical museums, but the book doesn't seem so much death-obsessed as death-charmed. You'll come away wanting to trace her steps to the Washington, D.C., boardinghouse where the Lincoln assassins met and plotted, which is now, as she notes, a karaoke restaurant serving better-than-average bubble tea.

Phoebe Robinson is one-half of the awesome podcast 2 Dope Queens and a fierce voice for diversity in comedy. Her debut essay collection is about black hair, yes, but also about what it's like to be the one black friend in your group ("Hint," she writes, "it's annoying"), what it's like to be black in general ("very cool and awesome and also annoying") and, as she puts it, "all the stuff that makes some dude on the Internet call me a 'See You Next Tuesday.' " You should also check out her follow-up collection, Everything's Trash, But It's Okay.

Writer Melissa Broder started the @sosadtoday Twitter account in 2012 to deal with a merciless cycle of panic attacks and anxiety that went on and on. Which doesn't sound like great material for comedy, but sometimes the only way out of unhappiness is to make fun of it. As she puts it in the introduction to this collection, based on those darkly funny tweets, "There aren't that many ways to find comfort in this world. We must take it where we can get it, even in the darkest, most disgusting places."

Collecting her bestsellers Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, this indispensable volume of Fran Lebowitz's essays transports the reader to a place (New York City) and a time (late '70s-early '80s) with uncanny specificity. Lebowitz writes lean but compact prose as effortless as it is ruthless. You could bounce a quarter off every blistering sentence, every scalding take (her ferocious defense of smoking in restaurants, for example) and come away with your eyebrows happily singed. They call her the modern-day Dorothy Parker, but there's a generation of contemporary writers who'd kill to be called the heir apparent to Fran Lebowitz.

John Hodgman wrote his first few books in a voice one might call "Erudite, Condescending Polymath," but with 2011's That is All, he began to drop that pose and let notes of searching melancholy enter the mix. That process continued apace with this, his fourth book, a collection of essays built from his life as a writer, husband, father, friend, homeowner, full-time Yankee and part-time Mainer. He's as funny and charming as ever here, but he is also more worried, more doubtful, shuffling off the carapace of intellectual swagger to expose something more raw and relatable.

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