diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plugins/comic_input.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plugins/comic_input.py
index e66ca49f2d..daf1ff5184 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plugins/comic_input.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plugins/comic_input.py
@@ -232,9 +232,10 @@ class ComicInput(InputFormatPlugin):
     def create_wrappers(self, pages):
         from calibre.ebooks.oeb.base import XHTML_NS
         wrappers = []
-        WRAPPER = textwrap.dedent('''\
+        WRAPPER = textwrap.dedent(u'''\
         <html xmlns="%s">
             <head>
+                <meta charset="utf-8"/>
                 <title>Page #%d</title>
                 <style type="text/css">
                     @page { margin:0pt; padding: 0pt}
@@ -253,7 +254,8 @@ class ComicInput(InputFormatPlugin):
         for i, page in enumerate(pages):
             wrapper = WRAPPER%(XHTML_NS, i+1, os.path.basename(page), i+1)
             page = os.path.join(dir, u'page_%d.xhtml'%(i+1))
-            open(page, 'wb').write(wrapper)
+            with open(page, 'wb') as f:
+                f.write(wrapper.encode('utf-8'))
             wrappers.append(page)
         return wrappers
 
diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/opf2.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/opf2.py
index 1d4ff3fa9a..b12ea4b6c9 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/opf2.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/opf2.py
@@ -1493,7 +1493,10 @@ class OPFCreator(Metadata):
         manifest = E.manifest()
         if self.manifest is not None:
             for ref in self.manifest:
-                item = E.item(id=str(ref.id), href=ref.href())
+                href = ref.href()
+                if isinstance(href, bytes):
+                    href = href.decode('utf-8')
+                item = E.item(id=str(ref.id), href=href)
                 item.set('media-type', ref.mime_type)
                 manifest.append(item)
         spine = E.spine()
