Overview

Mylar3 is an automated comic book downloader for CBR and CBZ files that works with NZB indexers and torrent trackers. You keep a watchlist of series; Mylar3 monitors them for new issues, pulls the weekly comic release list, sends the releases it wants to your download client, then post-processes what arrives — moving, renaming and metatagging each issue into a tidy library. It is the maintained Python 3 continuation of the original Mylar project, licensed GPL-3.0, and it has become the reference comic counterpart to the Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr family in a self-hosted media stack.

Key Features

• Series watchlist: add a comic series once and Mylar3 keeps checking it for new issues, updated issue information and one-off specials, with per-series options for how aggressively each is followed.
• Weekly pull lists: the current week’s releases are loaded automatically and can be browsed several weeks ahead, so upcoming issues can be added to the watchlist before they ship.
• Download client integration: SABnzbd, NZBGet and the common torrent clients are supported, plus a blackhole folder for anything that drops files itself.
• Indexer support: multiple Newznab-compatible indexers, a raw indexer mode and direct download, with failed downloads retried against another source instead of being silently lost.
• Library scanning and gap filling: point it at an existing comics folder and Mylar3 reports which issues of a watched series are missing, then hunts for them.
• Renaming and metatagging: configurable file and folder naming, and issues are written with comic metadata through a bundled build of ComicTagger, either during post-processing or later in a manual pass.
• series.json generation: each series gets a metadata file that third-party comic readers and library tools can consume.
• Story arcs and trade tracking: individual story arcs can be monitored as their own collection, and trade paperbacks and graphic novels are tracked for releases (post-processing only — importing existing TPBs is not supported).
• Notifications: snatches, downloads and failures can be pushed to a range of notification services so you know what happened without opening the web UI.

How It Works

The web interface is the whole control surface: add series, set the comic location, plug in the indexers and download client, and Mylar3 runs the rest on a schedule. A background thread refreshes the weekly pull list, another searches for wanted issues, and finished downloads are unpacked, renamed and tagged before being moved into the comic directory. Everything lives in a small SQLite database inside the config directory, which is why the config volume is the one thing worth backing up.

Use Cases

• Keeping a long-running pull list of ongoing series current without manually searching every Wednesday.
• Auditing an existing comic library for gaps and filling them automatically instead of issue by issue.
• Getting consistent, tagged CBR/CBZ files that comic readers such as Komga, Kavita or a tablet reader can index properly.
• Running behind a home server next to qBittorrent, SABnzbd and the rest of an arr-style automation stack, where it handles the comics.

Things to Know

• It is a downloader, not a source: you still need indexers or trackers that carry comics, and a download client to do the transfer.
• Series metadata comes from Comic Vine, so a free Comic Vine API key is required for adding and refreshing series.
• The comic location must be readable and writable by the user the app runs as — a permission mistake there is the most common first-run error, and it surfaces as a configuration warning rather than a crash.
• If you want something actively rebuilt for the job, Kapowarr is a newer comic manager in the same niche; Mylar3 remains the more established option with story-arc and trade tracking.
• The container image from linuxserver.io is the simplest deployment; the web UI and API listen on plain HTTP, so keep it on a trusted network or behind an authenticating reverse proxy.

Licence

Mylar3 is free and open source software under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Source and releases are published on GitHub, with documentation at mylarcomics.com.