Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this opinion piece, WEBTOON contacted our editorial team to clarify several statements. We have updated the piece to note cases of online speculation and improve clarity. K-Comics Beat stands by its staff and their opinions.
In 2021 I wrote a “history of webcomics” article covering the period from 2010 to 2021, on the grounds that the most recent webcomics history I’d seen stopped in 2011 and a lot of Webcomics People I’d been seeing around online at the time seemed to be discounting the effects of platforms like Tapas and WEBTOON on the scene.
It’s been five years since that article, so what’s going on in the webcomics space today?
First, Hiveworks is… not what it once was. Not much else to say about that that hasn’t been said already, so let’s focus on the bigger fish in this pond.
WEBTOON has been making moves. They’ve started adapting popular podcasts and web serial novels to vertical scroll comic format, licensing comics from every major print direct market publisher (from Image to Marvel), converting them to vertical scroll and reposting them to their platform, picking up even more comics from their Korean counterpart (including some that had been previously licensed by other manhwa portals like Tappytoon) and doing splashy marketing campaigns like subway ads in New York City. Not on the list? Promoting English-language Originals.
That was a snappy overgeneralization, but it reflects a sentiment prevalent among webtoon fans and creators. Discoverability for Canvas creators has supposedly tanked with the most recent UI updates, a sentiment expressed by Reddit users in a specific discussion thread.
UPDATE: In an email responding to this article, a representative for WEBTOON told K-Comics Beat to clarify that this is being addressed as of May 15th, 2026 on their Notice Page.
Some Originals and CANVAS creators publicized their disagreements with the platform, allegedly unfair contracts, and overzealous content moderation.
And what of Tapas, the yellow underdog to WEBTOON’s neon green market leader? They’ve pretty much done away with English-language originals entirely. The most recently launched Original started in 2023, and everything else they’ve published as an Original since then either is an ongoing comic that launched much earlier or is translated from Korea. And what they’ve been translating is nothing as unique or quirky as Mystic Pop-up Bar. Not these days. Many of their Korean licenses are not exclusive to Tapas, and those that are fit solidly into the existing manhwa genres of action/fantasy/action-fantasy/villainness-reincarnation/fantasy-romance/you get the gist.
In the summer of 2022, Tapas pivoted away from English-language originals and focused on material popular in Asia and user-generated comics (the equivalent to WEBTOON’s Canvas feature, available under the Community tab on Tapas) But when the platform first launched as ComicPanda, that was one of the things the platform’s founders were most excited about adding. In this interview with CBR in 2012, Chris Klein described the site as “artist-focused and community-based,” and emphasized how much they wanted a variety of genres different from what traditional comics offer. Creators and readers raised on manga and American cartoons in equal measure found a welcome home on Tapastic in the mid 2010s. But when you look at the front page of Tapas today, the distance from that original vision is striking.
Both Tapas and WEBTOON are criticized for their translated content being altered, rushed, or far behind their Korean counterpart’s updating schedules. The market is flooded with hundreds of shiny fantasy comics that all look identical to each other, and readers and creators alike are getting tired.
UPDATE: A representative for WEBTOON told K-Comics Beat that these alterations are made “to meet local content guidelines.”
The reason creators jumped to WEBTOON and Tapas a few years prior was for discoverability and the possibility of monetization, but even that doesn’t seem to be as effective as it was just five years earlier, according to many Canvas and Tapas Community creators on social media. Indie comics legend John Allison started posting his newest comic Solver to WEBTOON and Tapas after his Dark Horse series Steeple got picked up as a WEBTOON Original, and after a few months of regular posting on both sites he’s got… less than 500 subscribers, combined. John Allison! The author of Giant Days and Bad Machinery and Scary Go Round! Steeple, meanwhile, has over 14,000 subscribers now, and the occasional banner appearance on the app homepage. As far as I’ve heard, though, for a WEBTOON Original to get a season 2, season 1 needs to hit much higher numbers than that.
Personally, I still read comics on WEBTOON. But I haven’t seen a new comic advertised to me that I actually wanted to click on in years (unless it’s a new comic from a creator I was already following.) I went from having three to five new episodes to read every day to one or two as the comics I’d subscribed to years earlier wrapped up and nothing appealed to me enough to replace them with.
As a creator, when I was in art school studying comics, the thing everyone said about WEBTOON was that they paid more than any other publisher. That belief may have changed as the average annual salary for a WEBTOON professional creator is around $48,000. Some creators claim that the publishing schedule is often so demanding that creators have to use some of their salary to pay assistants to help them finish their comics on time, and still overwork themselves and burn out in the process. According to anonymous posters on Reddit, the per-episode payment was an advance on any earnings from WEBTOON’S “Fast Pass” system (a way for readers to read episodes early by paying directly), so creators didn’t receive any additional earnings from Fast Pass until they earn out their episode order.
UPDATE: A WEBTOON representative told K-Comics Beat that the company updated their monetization offerings for Originals and Canvas multiple times since then, and that creators receive Fast Pass revenue from the day their series launches as well as a guaranteed minimum payment regardless of series performance.
While the most popular creators apparently bring home millions of dollars a year, the median earning for the vast majority outside of the top 100 creators is barely a living wage in some parts of the US, especially if you account for all of those expenses.
UPDATE: A WEBTOON representative told K-Comics Beat how the company provides other means for creators to make money, such as “earnings in publishing, entertainment adaptations, merchandise, etc.” The company also expressed that comic artists working in teams is “very common” and “having assistants is not indicative of a demanding schedule.”
I would love to draw my comic for a living, and I probably will still post my comic on Tapas and WEBTOON so as many people as possible can see it, but I doubt either platform will benefit me significantly. A lot of people are posting their comics on their own websites now, or directly to social media like Tumblr and Instagram (where the algorithm has turned to favor multi-image posts with music.) Maybe that’s the way to go.
In my previous article on webcomics history, I quoted Becca Hillburn as saying webcomics go through periods of big deal networks/hubs followed by decentralization. I think we’re at the end of this particular centralization period now.
