Any suggestions on either a cheap tablet to only read comics on, or suggestions of a community to ask for recs?

Not a suggestion, but I have tried reading comics on a 10 inch tablet and I hated it. I think it may have to do with the pixel density. I ended up picking up a yoga tab 13 (13") and I love it. I read the entire Saga series on it.

I'd never heard of yoga tabs, I'll take a look! Thanks!
- I owned an older model at one point. They're notable for having a large sort of cylindrical area on one side that acts as a grip. While I personally wouldn't use it for reading comics (but that's because I'd rather have a larger screen; see my other comment talking about screen sizes), they have an integrated stand that hooks up to that cylinder, so you can prop it upright, which may be more-comfortable if you intend to use it in the landscape orientation with a table in front of you for long periods of time; it provides control over the screen angle, like a laptop. Most tablets and tablet-cases-with-integrated-stands can't do that.
  
  I got mine mostly because I wanted a tablet with a long battery life; the cylinder provides space for a (comparatively) large battery. It also has pretty decent speakers as tablets go, though I don't imagine that that'd matter much if you're looking to just read comics.

Depends on what you're going for.

My own experience has been that comic books benefit from a high-resolution screen, and a large screen. I spent a while trying to view them on a tablet and generally wound up shifting over to a desktop.

For size: a comic book is designed to be comfortably read at regular reading distance.

https://www.measuringknowhow.com/comic-book-dimensions/

The standard dimension for a Comic Book today is 6-5/8 inches in width by 10-1/4 inches in length.

If you want to have the ability to view two-page spreads with the pages side-by-side, then you'd ideally want a screen that's 13.25 inches wide and 10.25 inches tall if you want to replicate that reading experience.

Even a 14" screen laptop (if 16:9 aspect ratio, 12.2" by 6.9") isn't going to be as large, and the laptop may not be ideally situated for reading distance.

A 16" screen laptop (16:9 aspect ratio, 13.9" by 7.8") is still a fair bit smaller than the actual comic book.

It's only when you're getting up to a 21" desktop display (18.3" by 10.3") that you can display a comic spread at full size on a standard-dimension monitor.

If you could get a non-standard resolution, you could get by with a 12" diagonal screen -- that's that comic diagonal, but you'd need something in a ratio of 1.547, which I doubt that you're going to find.

As for resolution, I don't know what resolution comics are being published or pirated at these days, but to Google up a quick example:

https://readcomic.me/comic/spider-man-2022/issue-11

That image is 1965 pixels high. You'd need a 4k screen to view that at full resolution.

So if you want the full effect, you're looking at something like a 21" 4k desktop monitor to view current scans taking up the originally-intended arc of your viewing angle, and that assumes that your display is as close as you'd hold a comic book.

Can you view a comic smaller and at lower resolution? Sure, you can zoom in and out to read details and the like. You can just not view full-page spreads, only do a single page at a time. Depends on what you're willing to give up.

If I were going to view a comic book in a portable form, though, I'd try to get the largest display I could manage, and probably as high-resolution display as I could. I'd probably lean towards using a low-end, large-screen 16" laptop rather than a tablet.

I've found that small, portable devices like tablets and e-readers -- both of which I have read books on -- work a lot better with traditional, "text" books than with comic books. Phone screens are even worse, really cramped. With "text" books, those devices can mitigate the impact of the small screen, re-flow the text so that each on-screen page has less text than does a page in the book. You flip the page more frequently, but no big deal. But that doesn't work with comics -- you can't re-flow the images in a comic book, graphic novel, or artbook. There, you have to view the content in the original page "chunk" size.

EDIT: One other point. Someone mentioned e-ink screens. I have owned several e-ink devices, like them for "text"-style books, but one point to keep in mind is that if you think that you're going to need to be zooming in or panning around comic pages because of the size of the screen, their slower response time may be annoying....and the outstanding battery life one can get from an e-ink display is predicated on the assumption that the image is spending the bulk of the time being static and unchanging, not being constantly zoomed or panned.

This is a lot to think about! I really appreciate the depth of thought you've given this. I initially assumed I just want to tablet but I'll give comics a whirl on the ol' desktop and see how much better they are...

Thank you again for all this, seriously!

Lucky you. We were talking about tablets on !android@lemmy.world this week.

https://lemmy.world/post/9103168

Use Tachiyomi on Android to read your comics, it's a great app.

Any recommendations for sources for Western comics? Like old dark horse or independent comics?
- There are western extensions afaik

Not a comic guy myself but I've heard from friends the boox colour eink is very good but thats 2nd hand info and I don't know what it costs. Hopefully it at least gives you somewhere to start from.

Edit - spelling

Too much money! They're up in iPad price range.

I had an old Amazon Fire tablet, one of the cheapest models. Thing was basically useless, even after I extracted it from Amazon's environment.

But, it was perfectly functional for reading, and was an excellent size for comics of any sort in particular. Was also good for video. Just don't expect it to do literally anything else. Except shop from Amazon I suppose, which is not very helpful.

Fire tablets would be way more useful if Amazon killed their app store and just went with Google and Android. Not smiling for Google, but the Amazon app store is shit and doesn't include useful things. And Amazon gets all the telemetry.
I use an old Fire tablet for jellyfin and kavita, and it works well for comic books. Pixel density is fine for single pages, but can get a little hard to read two page spreads without turning the tablet, but not enough of an issue to be a deal breaker

I got the ad supporter version, and use Fire Toolbox to remove the Amazon garbage and lock screen ads.
I just love this description so much, thanks!

Samsung Tab A8/9 Lite should be good...

Lenovo M10 3rd gen.

They are about £120, basic tablets with decent batteries, 10 inch screen, has a memory card slot.

I would love if there were full-color e-ink that I could read comics at full size on

Lenovo tab p11 pro

Tcl had the nxtpaper or something like that that is an affordable android tablet with a matte screen. Wouldn't be as good as a boox color but much more affordable

I was in that exact situation and got this one.

Tablet 10.1 inch Android 12 Tablet 2023 Latest Update Octa-Core Processor with 64GB Storage, Dual 13MP+5MP Camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 512GB Expand Support, IPS Full HD Display (Black) https://a.co/d/i2nz6dE

Battery life not great but it works for what I wanted it for.

Kindle Fire. Sideload the Play Store.

https://www.howtogeek.com/232726/how-to-install-the-google-play-store-on-your-amazon-fire-tablet/