ComicK Revive

An in-page manga reader for ComicK.
ComicK dropped its built-in reader, so this puts one back, pulling chapters from
outside scan sources with caching, position memory, and three reading modes.

Features  ·  Sources  ·  Install  ·  Usage  ·  Architecture  ·  Known issues

Warning

Beta (0.2.0). The core reading experience is solid, but a few things are still rough or experimental. Read Known issues first. It runs on Chromium browsers only and is loaded unpacked, since it isn't on the Chrome Web Store.

✨ Features

📖 Reading

• Three modes: vertical webtoon scroll, single page, and double-page spreads (read right to left). Switch anytime.
• Zoom and image-fit controls, full keyboard navigation, and smooth scrolling you can tune.
• Keeps your exact spot by anchoring to an image rather than a scroll position, so resizing, zooming, or switching modes never loses your place.

🔌 Sources

• Reads from AsuraScans, MangaDex, and MangaKatana out of the box.
• Add your own sources without touching code. A source is a small JSON "recipe" the extension runs at load time. Import one by paste, file, or URL, and there's a one-click prompt that lets an AI write the recipe for you, plus a built-in test tool that checks it against the live site.
• Set source priority by dragging, enable or disable any source, and point a source at a new domain when a site moves.
• Link a ComicK title to a source once and it's remembered. A fuzzy search helps you find the right match. AsuraScans' shuffled image tiles are unscrambled automatically.

🖥️ Dashboard & popup

• A full dashboard page (click the toolbar icon → Open dashboard) with your library, a cross-source search you can read from directly (no ComicK page needed), stats, settings, and source management.
• A popup on the toolbar icon with your recently read titles and quick stats, one click back into a chapter.
• Search any of your sources and start reading right inside the dashboard.

📊 Stats, backup & updates

• Reading stats: chapters read, active reading time, daily activity chart, and streaks.
• Backup and restore your reading history, library, sources, and settings to a single file, with merge or replace on import. Cached images are left out to keep it small.
• The dashboard checks for new releases and tells you when an update is out.

📂 Library & offline

• Tracks read/unread per source and per chapter, and the Continue button picks up at the exact page and scroll position where you left off, not just the start of the chapter.
• Caches pages and chapter data locally, so anything you've opened before loads instantly and works with no connection.
• You set the cache size limit and how it clears old data, and a per-manga cache manager lets you see and prune what's stored.

🧩 Inside ComicK

• Start Reading and Continue buttons are injected straight onto ComicK's pages. No new tab, no separate app.
• A settings panel for background color, image fit, scroll speed, and toolbar auto-hide.

📚 Supported sources

Source	Status	How it's fetched
AsuraScans	✅ Default	JSON API plus Astro pages. Handles rotating slugs and scrambled tiles.
MangaDex	✅	Official REST API and the MD@Home image CDN (English).
MangaKatana	✅	HTML scraping. Sensitive to Cloudflare, so retry if a search comes back empty.
Your own	➕ Add-your-own	Import a JSON source recipe from the dashboard, no rebuild needed.
More built-in	🔜 Planned	Additional bundled sources are on the roadmap.

Want another source now? Open the dashboard → Sources → Add source and import a recipe (an AI can write it for you). For a bundled TypeScript source, see Adding a new source.

🚀 Installation

ComicK Revive is a Manifest V3 extension for Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave). It isn't on the Chrome Web Store, so you load it unpacked.

Pre-built (easiest)

1. Grab comick-revive-v0.2.0.zip from the Releases page.
2. Unzip it somewhere.
3. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode (top right).
4. Click Load unpacked and pick the unzipped folder.
5. Head to comick.dev, open a manga, and hit the Read button.

Build from source

You'll need Node.js 18+ and npm.

git clone https://github.com/BrAtUkA/ComicK-Revive.git
cd ComicK-Revive
npm install
npm run build        # production build into dist/

Load the dist/ folder with Load unpacked, same as above. Reload the extension after each rebuild.

Command	What it does
npm run build	Type-checks and builds into dist/ (debug logs stripped)
npm run dev	Watch build that keeps debug logs
npm run package	Builds, then zips dist/ into release/comick-revive-v<version>.zip

Production builds drop console.log/info/debug on their own. warn and error stay. Pass DEBUG=1 to any build if you want all of it.

🎮 Usage

1. Open a manga or chapter on comick.dev.
2. Click Start Reading, or Continue Ch. N if you've read some already.
3. The first time you open a title, pick the matching manga on a source. That choice is saved.
4. Read. Position, mode, and progress all save themselves.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action		Key	Action
W / ↑	Previous page		1 / 2 / 3	Vertical / Single / Double mode
S / ↓	Next page		+ / - / 0	Zoom in / out / reset
A / ←	Previous chapter		Space / Shift+Space	Scroll down / up
D / →	Next chapter		Home	Scroll to top
F	Fullscreen		G	Settings
T	Toggle toolbar		Esc	Close reader

🏗️ Architecture

The extension lives in three separate worlds that can't see each other's globals, so code written for one will break in another. A small message bridge connects them, and every outside request goes through the background worker to get around CORS.

flowchart LR
    subgraph PAGE["comick.dev page"]
        BTN["Injected Read button"]
        VIEW["Viewer (reader UI)<br/>full DOM, no chrome.* APIs"]
    end

    subgraph EXT["Extension"]
        CS["Content Script<br/>chrome.* + ComicK DOM"]
        BG["Background Worker<br/>CORS proxy + IndexedDB caches"]
    end

    subgraph SRC["External sources"]
        AS["AsuraScans"]
        MD["MangaDex"]
        MK["MangaKatana"]
    end

    BTN -->|click, injects viewer| VIEW
    VIEW <-->|"window.postMessage (bridge.ts)"| CS
    CS <-->|chrome.runtime.sendMessage| BG
    BG -->|"fetch + source headers / DNR"| AS & MD & MK
    BG <--> IDB[("IndexedDB<br/>images + metadata")]

    style VIEW fill:#3b0764,color:#efe1ff,stroke:#a855f7
    style CS fill:#1e3a5f,color:#cfe3ff,stroke:#3b82f6
    style BG fill:#14532d,color:#dcfce7,stroke:#22c55e
    style IDB fill:#14532d,color:#dcfce7,stroke:#22c55e
    style AS fill:#7c2d12,color:#fde6d5,stroke:#ea580c
    style MD fill:#7c2d12,color:#fde6d5,stroke:#ea580c
    style MK fill:#7c2d12,color:#fde6d5,stroke:#ea580c

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Context	Entry	Has chrome.*	Has DOM	Role
Content script	src/content/index.ts	✅	ComicK DOM	Detect pages, inject buttons, relay the bridge
Background worker	src/background/index.ts	✅	❌	CORS proxy, IndexedDB image and data caches
Viewer	src/viewer/index.ts	❌	✅	The reader overlay; goes through the bridge for everything

How a chapter loads

Every source sits behind a caching layer that checks the cache before it ever touches the network, and patches itself if a cached image goes missing.

flowchart TD
    A["Open chapter"] --> B["CachedSource.getChapterPages"]
    B --> C{"All image blobs<br/>already cached?"}
    C -->|Yes| D["Serve cached:// URLs<br/>from the IndexedDB blob cache"]
    C -->|No| E{"Page-URL list<br/>cached? (7-day TTL)"}
    E -->|Yes| F["Reuse the cached page URLs"]
    E -->|No| G["Fetch fresh from the source"]
    D --> R["Render pages"]
    F --> R
    G --> R
    R --> H{"A cached blob<br/>fails to read?"}
    H -->|Yes| J["Self-heal: re-fetch the real<br/>URL from source, re-cache the blob"]
    H -->|No| K["Done"]
    J --> K

    style D fill:#14532d,color:#dcfce7,stroke:#22c55e
    style F fill:#14532d,color:#dcfce7,stroke:#22c55e
    style G fill:#7c2d12,color:#fde6d5,stroke:#ea580c
    style J fill:#1e3a5f,color:#cfe3ff,stroke:#3b82f6
    style K fill:#3b0764,color:#efe1ff,stroke:#a855f7

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🧰 Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Platform	Chrome Manifest V3 (service worker, content script, declarativeNetRequest)
Language	TypeScript 5
Build	Vite 5, three self-contained entry points with no shared chunks
UI	Vanilla DOM, no framework. Classes with co-located CSS
Storage	chrome.storage.local plus IndexedDB (image blobs and source metadata)
Icons	Lucide

🗂️ Project structure

ComicK-Revive/
├── src/
│   ├── background/      # Service worker: CORS proxy + IndexedDB caches
│   ├── content/         # Content script: page detection, button injection, bridge relay
│   ├── viewer/          # Reader UI (runs in page context)
│   │   ├── readers/     # Vertical / Single / Double page readers (+ continuous reading)
│   │   └── components/  # Source-link modal, chapter picker, settings, cache manager, ...
│   ├── sources/         # MangaSource impls + CachedSource wrapper + registry
│   ├── core/            # Storage, Settings, ReadingState, SourceMapping, image/data caches
│   ├── utils/           # bridge, imageLoader, fuzzy-match, keyboard, smooth-scroll, ...
│   ├── shared/          # Code shared across contexts (HTML title parsing)
│   └── types/           # Shared TypeScript types + defaults
├── rules/               # declarativeNetRequest header rules (per source)
├── assets/icons/        # Extension icons
├── scripts/package.cjs  # Builds the installable release zip
├── manifest.json        # MV3 manifest
└── vite.config.ts       # One build entry per execution context

🧩 Adding a new source

1. Implement the MangaSource interface (src/sources/Source.interface.ts) in src/sources/YourSource.ts.
2. Register it in src/sources/index.ts with this.register(yourSource). It gets wrapped in the caching layer automatically.
3. Add the site's domains to host_permissions in manifest.json (and a DNR rule in rules/ if the CDN needs a Referer).
4. Add its domain config (referer and headers) to src/utils/sourceDomains.ts.

The Kotlin source implementations in the Tachiyomi / keiyoushi ecosystem are a good reference for parsing each site.

⚠️ Known issues

This is a 0.2.0 beta, so expect rough edges. Sources can also break when a site changes its markup. If a title stops loading, try the chapter refresh button or re-link the source.

• Continuous reading (scrolling straight from one chapter into the next) is experimental and off by default. It can break when you resume a session, so turn it on in settings only if you want to try it.
• The page counter sometimes freezes during fast navigation.
• Single and double-page modes aren't as polished as vertical scroll yet.
• MangaKatana sits behind Cloudflare, so an empty search result usually just means "try again in a moment".
• Chromium browsers only. No Firefox.

🙏 Acknowledgements

• ComicK, the site this builds on.
• The Tachiyomi / keiyoushi extensions (Apache-2.0). The source-parsing logic is based on their Kotlin implementations.
• Lucide for the icons.

📄 License & disclaimer

Licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Free for any noncommercial use; commercial use isn't allowed.

Please also read the DISCLAIMER. ComicK Revive is an unofficial fan project. It isn't affiliated with any of the sites it talks to, it hosts none of its own content, and it's meant for personal use. Following each source's Terms of Service and your local copyright law is on you.