Manta Comics recently unveiled its new creator program, and K-Comics Beat writers Justin Guerrero and Masha Zhdanova have weighed in on the announcement.
From their perspectives as creators and reviewers, Guerrero and Zhdanova discuss the exciting potential opportunities of the program, as well as the details that might not be clear to a layperson. Without further ado, let’s see what they think!
Justin Guerrero: A new player has entered the online webtoon creator game: Manta. I’m all for it. For years, the main platforms that supported independent artists with a self-publishing option were WEBTOON and Tapas. WEBTOON was the biggest choice with the Canvas platform. While Tapas has its own self-published stories by creators, some of the series published on Tapas were already published first on Canvas.
So Manta making its move to allow for creators to also self-publish on its platform is a pretty big deal in my eyes as it provides creators with more options and as well as get eyes on their series by association with a major vertical comics platform.
With that said, I can confidently say looking at the process that simply creating your own series on Manta is not the same as making a series on Canvas or Tapas. Here, for some reason (maybe since it just launched?), it is done through a Google Form.
Strictly, creators cannot submit incomplete episodes; they must be complete along with a one-page synopsis of the story, Character Sheets (two lead characters minimum), and one complete sample episode (minimum). Episodes must be uploaded as JPG files (with a minimum width of 1500px). For reference, WEBTOON uses 1280px as minimum width. Manta also requires a minimum of 50 panels per episode, which is about average for a vertical-scroll webtoon.
I’m sure these requirements will make the length and quality of self-published series on Manta stand out compared to WEBTOON and Tapas. Something that also piques my interest is that creators can submit series that are rated All Ages, Mature (17+), or choose to submit two versions of the series to fit both.
On the topic of Mature-rated series being submitted, I can’t find any explicit content guidelines like those laid out by Tapas or WEBTOON. All I can find is that racist, sexist, and illegal content are not allowed on Manta. However, it doesn’t state on whether blood, gore, graphic violence, drug and alcohol use, nudity, profanity, or even sexual/erotic content are allowed.
If Manta is quite lenient on that type of content, we might see some creators feel at ease self-publishing erotic/pornographic series, or series that lean into horror or action with more R-rated visuals, until proven otherwise. It’s unclear whether these guidelines are still in the works or if Manta is deliberately willing to let users submit series, then undergo a strict approval process.
Surprisingly, if your series does get approved and published, creators will have access to monetization features on the Manta platform. Creators will have a subscription and pay-per-episode option, or a pay-per-episode option. This is in contrast to WEBTOON, which has Super-Likes and the Ad-Share program, the latter of which allows creators to lock episodes behind ads. Manta’s subscription and PPE models being available to self-publishers is unique, and I wonder how it will all work out.
At time of writing, I don’t yet have firsthand experience within the Manta self-publishing landscape, but I will keep my eyes open for any self-published series that will soon appear on Manta. I am especially interested to see how series will perform on Manta compared to the other two aforementioned platforms, and how the submission and management experience works for creators.
I am excited!
Masha Zhdanova: The thing that stands out most to me about this announcement (besides the Google Form solicitation, which looks a bit unprofessional compared to, for example, the VIZ Originals portal) is that they’re actively soliciting adult-rated work… and that they seem to want only adult-rated work. The form defines “All-Ages” as 17+, which is extremely funny but also kind of implies that by “All-Ages” they mean WEBTOON International’s Mature rating (which show nothing and even censor comics down from how they were originally published in Korea).
50 panels per episode is a lot of panels. In the last WEBTOON contest, the minimum requirement for a story comic (as opposed to a comedy/slice-of-life comic) was 40 per episode. 50 comic panels is the equivalent of 10-15 print comic pages. That’s a lot of comics! I work quickly, but it would take me a while to carve out enough spare time to work on a pitch like this with no guarantee of getting picked up at the end.
It’s also funny that every listed genre option is romance, fantasy, or romance-fantasy. Manta is clearly looking for a much narrower range of work than WEBTOON or Tapas represent, but I think this could also be its strength as a platform, since WEBTOON International does not allow any kind of NSFW/Mature/18+ content on its platform (which is what prompted Let’s Play’s creator, Mongie, to jump ship to other platforms, moving Let’s Play to Tapas and announcing a new, Manta-exclusive project) and Tapas doesn’t pick up NSFW originals as far as I can tell. Tapas doesn’t seem to pick up many originals at all these days. Interesting, if disappointing.
Anyway! Since it’s getting more difficult to be an independent NSFW artist these days, I can see that factor alone motivating creators to give Manta a shot—but the contracts would need to be generous enough to be worth losing creative independence. I don’t have any steamy comics in my backlog right now, but I do have a queer sci-fi story I might try submitting just to see what happens… First, I need to actually draw it, haha.
For more about Manta’s new creator program, click here.
