As a kid, I burned through a lot of hobbies and phases. There was the NES, pogs, trading cards, and I was huge on comic books. I still have them all, stored away in plastic cases and as (probably) worthless as ever. Nonetheless, these are pieces of nostalgia that I don't want to let go. Knowing that a lot of my favorite comic books exist online forever would make letting go a lot easier, though.

Read along in this article and I'll show you how you can find, save, and read some of the oldest and most classic comic books on your Windows PC.

To start off, I need to introduce you to AIBQ, otherwise known as the Comic Books Archive.

comic books online

AIBQ has been around forever and is probably the best resource when it comes to preserving popular, classic comic books online. You're going to want to head straight to the Catalog page and you'll quickly see just how vast the collection is, currently with over 900 comics available for download.

They've currently got 44 series indexed in their database:

  1. All Humor Comics
  2. America's Greatest Comics
  3. Andy Devine Western
  4. Barker
  5. Beware Terror Tales
  6. Bill Battles the One Man Army
  7. Bill Boyd Western
  8. Blackhawk
  9. Bob Colt
  10. Bob Swift
  11. Buccaneers
  12. Buster Bear
  13. Bulletman
  14. Campus Loves
  15. Captain Marvel Adventures
  16. Doll Man
  17. Exotic Romances
  18. Exploits of Daniel Boone
  19. Gabby
  20. GI Sweethearts
  21. Hickory
  22. Hopalong Cassidy
  23. Intrigue
  24. Jonesy
  25. Ken Shannon
  26. Lady Luck
  27. Love Secrets
  28. Marmaduke Mouse
  29. Marvel Family
  30. Mary Marvel
  31. Mighty Midget
  32. Minute Man
  33. Nickel Comics
  34. National Comics
  35. Plastic Man
  36. Police Comics
  37. Rocky Lane Western
  38. Smash Comics
  39. Spy Smasher
  40. Strange Suspense Stories
  41. Sweethearts
  42. This Magazine is Haunted
  43. T-Man
  44. Yanks in Battle

After clicking the cover of whatever series you're interested in, you'll see a list of issues. If the issue is marked as unavailable, you will not be able to download it from this website.

free comic books online

Clicking on an issue that is available will bring up a prompt to download a CBR file. Save that file to wherever you'd like. Now, we need a quality comic reader. That's where ComicRack comes in. We've done a nice article about ComicRack in the past, but I'll give you a little refresher course.

After you've installed and run ComicRack, click on the tab that says "Folders" at the bottom left of the application. From here, navigate to wherever your CBR is stored. Mine's on my desktop.

free comic books online

Like my screenshot shows, once you've selected the appropriate folder, all books in that folder will be displayed in a thumbnail view. From there, just double click on the book you're interested in reading.

comic books online

From there, just use the navigation bar to scroll through the comic as you read. The navigation bar is near the top of the screen. Optionally, you can use your mouse wheel to scroll up and down through pages. No more rough edges or page creasing!

I hope this helps mend the poor hearts of those of you who trashed all those comic books you had as a kid. Leave me a comment and let me know what your all-time favorite comic is!  Oh and don't forget to check out our free comics manual, Bam! Your Guide To Cool Online Comic Books by Lachlan Roy, which also features other comic sources and comic software.