Fixed layout ePub converted from AZW3 displays black pages

[tomsem]

I am trying to convert a manga AZW3 to ePub. The conversion is 'successful', and calibre viewer displays something (but with issues), but Apple Books and Thorium Reader only show black pages.

It seems perfectly okay when converted to KEPub for Clara Colour, but sending it 'as is' to my PB InkPad Color 3, it includes a black rectangle with the image overlaid on top of it (resulting in 2 pages) and I don't know what accounts for that (if I convert to PDF with calibre this black rectangle shows in the same way). It also has black rectangles in calibre viewer (resulting in 2 pages).

(I edited the AZW3 to add ToC entries before conversion.)

I have tried both calibre direct conversion and also KindleUnpack's, with the same symptoms.

I am able to produce a 'working' ePub using Kindle Comic Converter with extracted images, but page order is all messed up because the image numbering in the AZW3 does not follow the page sequence.

The HTML in the AZW3 is different than that from the other manga AZW3's that convert well: the latter have 2 top-level <div> tags, each of which contains <img> tag for the page image in each. The AZW3 that converts to 'black rectangle' ePub has only the first of these <div> sections.

I have 2 ideas for workaround:

1. Rename image files using a script to read the manifest in metadata.opf to determine order and generate ePub with KCC.

2. convert to KePub and back to ePub. <-did not work