CBZ/CBR → Markdown
Going from Comic book archive (.cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cb7) to Markdown (.md) is a routinely useful direction for this kind of file — Markdown is plain text, so any editor opens it and it versions cleanly. Going from Comic book archive to Markdown does raise extra questions worth thinking about: you lose metadata such as title, author and language. Below we explain in detail how Comic book archive becomes Markdown and what to watch out for, and the page ends with a converter that does the job right in your browser — nothing is uploaded, the file never leaves your machine.
What is CBZ/CBR?
A comic archive (.cbz, .cbr, .cbt, .cb7) is really just a set of one-image-per-page files packed into an archive under a different extension: .cbz is ZIP, .cbr is RAR, .cbt is TAR and .cb7 is 7z. It has no text layer, so it can be neither searched nor copied, and page order comes entirely from how filenames sort — which means the names must be zero-padded (001.jpg, 002.jpg) or page 10 lands right after page 2. It suits comics, art books and page-scanned volumes: it is a collection of images, not a text book. Read the CBZ/CBR format guide
| Extensions | .cbr.cbz.cbt.cb7 |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Comics, art books and books scanned to images; fundamentally an image bundle rather than a text book. |
What is Markdown?
Markdown is plain text plus markers (# headings, ** bold, | tables) — effectively a superset of .txt. Any text editor opens it, and it versions cleanly in Git. Its expressiveness is deliberately limited: no pagination, no headers or footers, no precise control over type size or position, and no complex layouts. Those trade-offs make Markdown an excellent authoring and conversion source, but as a final reading format its experience depends entirely on which app opens it. Read the Markdown format guide
| Extensions | .md |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Authoring, notes and technical docs; a clean intermediate format before converting to EPUB or TXT. |
How to convert CBZ/CBR to Markdown
A comic archive is a renamed archive: .cbz=ZIP, .cbr=RAR, .cbt=TAR, .cb7=7z. It has no text layer, and page order comes from filename sorting — if names are unpadded (1.jpg, 2.jpg … 10.jpg) page 10 lands right after page 2, so rename with zero padding first.
Markdown output keeps text and only the most basic hierarchy (# headings, paragraphs, simple lists). Pagination, headers and footers, comments, tracked changes, precise type sizes and text wrapping are all gone — it is a content archive, not a layout archive.
Layout must be rebuilt: the paragraph, column and figure positions in the source were arranged for a fixed page and mean nothing once the target reflows. The converter can only re-stitch a text stream, so paragraphs may merge wrongly, columns may interleave and figures may land mid-sentence. Read the first few chapters afterwards, watching dialogue breaks and figure placement.
The source has no text layer — every page is an image. No text-targeted conversion can conjure text: you either get blank output or the image inserted as one oversized object. Getting searchable, reflowable text requires OCR first, and OCR on Chinese fiction introduces character errors that need proofreading.
The source is one full-page image per page while the target reflows: each image is inserted in sequence, and with no text layer you end up with an image stream. The result is usually huge and unsearchable — a worse reading experience than the original.
Convert CBZ/CBR to Markdown
COMIC → MARKDOWN
The conversion runs entirely in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
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