LINE Webtoon

Webtoon (stylized in all caps) is a South Korean webtoon platform launched in 2004 by Naver Corporation. As the name suggests, it is a platform for posting webtoons, compact digital comics in South Korea.

The platform first launched in Korea as Naver Webtoon and then globally as Line Webtoon in July 2014, as the Naver brand is not well known outside of Korea and some of its services are also not available outside of the country. The service gained a large amount of traction during the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2016, Naver's webtoon service entered the Japanese market as XOY and the Chinese market as Dongman Manhua. On December 18, 2018, Naver closed XOY and migrated all of its translated and original webtoons to Line Manga, its manga service that offers licensed manga. In 2019, Line Webtoon was changed to Webtoon in English; Spanish and French versions were launched.

The platform partners with creators to publish original content under the Webtoon Originals banner and hosts a number of other series on its self-publishing site CANVAS. Line Webtoon comics can be discovered through the "daily system" function, along with being read and downloaded for free on computers and both iOS and Android devices. In November 2020, Webtoon established a new subsidiary called Webtoon Studios for the purpose of licensing English-language properties. In August 2022 it was reported that Wattpad Webtoon studios announced that would expand with a new animation division.

History

Line Webtoon was founded by JunKoo Kim in 2004, under the name "Webtoon", after he watched the manhwa industry crash in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Kim, who grew up reading Japanese comics and superhero manhwa, was looking for a way to get new comics created because he found that there were very few new comics coming out. Kim theorized that tall, scrollable comics would work well on the World Wide Web, as users were already used to scrolling through web pages. Because of this unusual layout, Kim initially had difficulty finding artists to create webtoons on his service, but he found that manhwa was willing to do something different because of the poor state of the local manhwa industry. After the purchase of Wattpad in early 2021 by Naver Corporation both companies started to work together under Naver's content division. Webtoon now features webcomics such as: Lore Olympus, unOrdinary, True Beauty, and Gourmet Hound.

Global launch

On July 2, 2014, the Line Webtoon website and mobile app were launched worldwide, allowing international artists to upload their own works to the service. Hundreds of webtoons are available in the self-publishing section of Webtoon, known as CANVAS, where artists can be paid based on page views. Naver Corporation selected 42 webtoons (including ''Noblesse'', ''Tower of God'', and ''The God of High School'') and one new webtoon by an American artist to be available on the service in English at launch. According to ''148 Apps'', the service offered "plenty of content" at launch, as seven to ten webtoons were updated each day and the webtoons spanned various genres.

Partnerships

In April 2013, Naver Webtoon created a Profit Page Share program. This compensation program that allow artists to get a larger profit through advertisements or their own personal stores, but is shared between NHN Corp and the artists themselves.

In 2015, Line Webtoon partnered with American comics veteran Stan Lee, Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri, and make-up artist Michelle Phan in order to promote their service. Silvestri brought his long-running comics series '' Cyberforce'' to the platform. Various other established American comic book artists and cartoonists have also partnered with Line Webtoon over time, including Dean Haspiel (''New Brooklyn''), Katie Cook (''Nothing Special''), Seth Kushner and Shamus Beyale (''The Brooklynite''), and Tracy J. Butler ('' Lackadaisy'').

In September 2016, Line Webtoon partnered with the Patreon crowdfunding service, incorporating a "Patreon button" in the "Discover" portion of the website. This function creates an easier channel for readers and artists to mutually communicate. Naver invested US$3.6 million and $1,000 every following month for webtoon creators who reached a certain threshold of activity and popularity with a Patreon page. One month later, Naver signed with the Creative Artists Agency for film and television opportunities in the United States.

Line Webtoon also partnered with DeviantArt in the second half of 2016, in the form of the "Artist Alley Tour". The companies were active at four Comic Cons: Boston Comic Con, Baltimore Comic Con, Rose City Comic Con, and New York Comic Con. Here, Line Webtoon and DeviantArt held discussion panels, "Artist Alley Sponsorships", live draw events, influencer and creator demonstration areas, and on-site contests.

In 2017 Line Webtoon and Legendary Comics expanded their partnership with the addition of John Barrowman's Acursian and season 2 of Firebrand.

In 2018 included partnering with Noble Transmission and Common for the new ''Caster'' series.

In 2019 Webtoon's digital content subsidiary Studio LICO collaboratively produced with Big Hit Entertainment to release '' Save Me'' as part of the latter's BTS Universe (BU) which revolves around the output of South Korean boy band BTS.

On October 15, 2019, Crunchyroll and Line Webtoon announced a partnership to produce animated works of Line Webtoon's catalog. The two will team up to tackle the distribution, licensing, and retail of the series produced from the partnership.

In May 2020, it was announced that Webtoon was being transferred to Naver Webtoon Corp.

On January 19, 2021, Webtoon's parent company Naver acquired the popular user-written story site Wattpad. Wattpad will be partnering with Webtoon—which it had already done in its 2020 Watty Awards Contest—to provide more opportunities for creators.

In June 2021, Wattpad and Webtoon announced that the companies will merge their studio divisions to create Wattpad Webtoon Studios.

In August 2021, it was announced that Webtoon would be partnering with DC Entertainment to create standalone webcomics that “will appeal to all fans, without the need to know or read any previous stories.”

Userbase

The userbase of Webtoon grew rapidly after the service was released globally, with 10 million people reading on the platform daily and 35 million people monthly. In Asia, several webtoons receive 5 million views per week. In 2016, 42% of the webtoon creators on Line Webtoon were female, as were 50% of its 6 million active daily readers. 75% of the users in North America are 24 or younger and 64% are female.

As of July 1, 2019, Webtoon has grown to more than 100 billion views annually.

Contests

Naver Corporation has held various comics competitions through its Webtoon service. In 2015, Line launched the "Challenge League", a recurring competition where amateur artists have the chance to become an "official Line webtoon artist", as well as win tens of thousands of US Dollars. Over 19,000 people joined the first English-language Challenge League in February 2015, which was won by Stephen McCranie's ''Space Boy''. Local Challenge Weeks were also held; the first Thai Challenge League was held in April 2015 and had a grand prize of 1 million baht.

In June 2015, Naver Corporation hosted the Science Fiction Comics Contest, a global competition with a grand prize of US$30,000. JunKoo Kim called science fiction, the theme of the competition, "both the broadest and fastest-growing area in comics and entertainment, nd thusa natural fit as the genre for our second comics contest." This contest had over 800 entrants and was won by Srinitybeast's ''Overdrive''.

In November 2018, Webtoon hosted their Discover Creator Contest. The winner, Kris Nguyen's ''Cape of Spirits'', received a grand total of US$80,000 and an exclusive contract for the series.

On February 28, 2020 "The Short Story Contest" was announced. Running from April 30 to June 30, the contest was split into two categories: "Heart" and "Brain". The grand prize winners of each category would get US$15,000, an animated short, and a featured contract, with the subsequent winners being Marvin W.'s ''The Monster Under My Bed'' for "Heart" and Kotopopi's ''The Ladder'' for "Brain". The grand prize, silver, and bronze contest winners were published in two anthologies: The HEART Anthology, which released in September 2020, and the BRAIN Anthology, which released in October 2020.

Between April 2020 and July 2020, Webtoon ran an interactive contest series titled ''Webtoon GREENLiGHT'' wherein nine titles were selected and pitched to readers. The readers then voted (by liking the series' episodes) on which series would be "greenlit" as new Original series. Within one week, each series had to reach a record threshold of 60,000 likes on its third episode in order to be "greenlit" for publication. All nine series succeeded and are set to be released in 2021.

In th summer of 2022 Webtoon stated a new contest for their users to create an action comic called ''Call to Action'' where the winner got US$50,000 and a chance to be a Webtoon original.

Other media

Various movies, Korean dramas, animated series, and video games have been produced based on webtoons released on Naver Corporation's service. According to JunKoo Kim in 2014, "a total of 189 books, videos and games based on Naver webtoons have either been produced or are in the process of being made." However, Line Webtoon's first entry of video content in the United States came in 2016, in the form of an animated film based on ''Noblesse''.

On November 7, 2016, Air Seoul announced that it had collaborated with Line Webtoon to produce pre-flight safety demonstration videos. Some of the works featured in these include ''Denma'', ''The Sound of Heart'', and ''Noblesse''.

In July 2019, Webtoon produced their first promotional animated short series from one of their exclusive originals, ''My Giant Nerd Boyfriend''. A second set of promotions, from the work ''Let's Play'', was released in September, 2019.

In October 2019, Crunchyroll revealed on Instagram that it would be collaborating with Webtoon to release animated series based on selected webtoons as a part of its "Crunchyroll Originals" project. In February 2020, Crunchyroll announced that ''Noblesse'', ''Tower of God'', and ''The God of High School'' were chosen for later release.

Adaptations

Other media into webtoons

Some webtoons on the platform are adaptations of YA novels, including Renée Ahdieh's '' The Wrath & the Dawn'', Rebecca Schaeffer's ''Not Even Bones'', Hanna Alkaf's ''The Weight of the Sky'', Victoria Lee's ''The Fever King'', Nicki Pau Preto's ''Crown of Feathers'' and more.

Many South Korean webtoons on the platform are adaptations of web novels, including titles such as ''The'' ''Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint'' written by a Korean author duo under the alias Sing Shong and drawn by Sleepy-C from REDICE Studios, ''The Remarried Empress'', ''So I Married the Anti-Fan'', ''Like Wind on a Dry Branch'', and many more.

On June 23, 2021, it was announced that 2018 film '' On Your Wedding Day'' is adapted into a webtoon, to be serialized on webtoon platforms Naver and Kakao.

A webtoon based on TV series '' Our Beloved Summer'' is under production. The webtoon, a prequel about the high school days of the two main characters of the TV series (Choi Woong and Kuk Yeon-su), is scheduled to be released on Naver Webtoon in falls of 2021.

''Batman'': ''Wayne Family Adventures'', a series based on the Batman family from DC Comics began serialization in September 2021.

A webtoon based on the DC comics character Vixen, Vixen: NYC, is also being produced.

Webtoons into other media

Below is a list of Naver Webtoon titles adapted into television series, web series, and films.

Awards and nominations

See also

* Line Manga
* Studio N, a film studio that produces drama adaptations of Naver Webtoon series

Footnotes

References

External links

WebtoonNaver WebtoonXOYDongman Manhua

{{Webtoon (platform)

Webtoon publishing companies
Webcomic publishing companies
Naver Corporation
Internet properties established in 2004
2004 establishments in South Korea