Comics that read top to bottom bring in new readers
Tapping into overlooked young, female audience drives explosion in web comics
For decades, the fans who powered the comic book industry made weekly pilgrimages to their local comic shops to buy the latest issues about their favorite caped-andcowled adventurers. These Wednesday Warriors, named for the day that new installments typically land on shelves, still do. Voracious readers of printed comics, they skew older — and are mostly male.
But now all it takes is a smartphone, as the world of comics is reshaped by the kind of digital disruption that has transformed journalism, music, movies and television. Web comics have exploded in popularity in recent years, in part by tapping into an audience the industry had long overlooked: Gen Z and Millennial women. The stories they offer — of a young woman battling sexism in the world of esports or a romance-focused retelling of Greek myth — are mostly free and scroll vertically on smartphones, where readers younger than 25 live.
And they have minted stars from a new generation of creators.
“Even 10 years ago, I wouldn’t be doing this,” said Kaitlyn Narvaza, 28, of San Diego, who is known as instantmiso on Webtoon where her series “Siren’s Lament” has drawn more than 430 million views. “We have these opportunities to share these romance stories as American creators — as American women authors and comic artists. We didn’t have those opportunities before.”
Webtoon, which originated in Korea in 2004 and is the world’s largest digital comics platform, said more than half of its 82 million monthly users are women.
The platform has attracted readers with hits that are a departure from traditional tales of good versus evil. In “Lookism,” a young, friendless man wakes up in a tall, handsome body; “The Remarried Empress” features a protagonist who is, well, remarried; “unOrdinary” centers on a teenager with a secret past that threatens to bring down his high school’s social hierarchy.
“Let’s Play” is about a young woman who wants to design video games. “It is a gaming comic with romance or a romance comic with gaming,” said its creator, Leeanne Krecic, who quit her job in information technology a few years ago to focus on comics.
She thinks readers relate to the main character’s struggles with career and dating. “The majority of American comics have been the hero story, which is great, nothing wrong with that,” she said. But “in Korea and Japan, they’ve been telling the romance story, the high school story.”
Some digital comics have found broad success far beyond phone screens. Rachel Smythe’s “Lore Olympus,” which retells Greek myth like a soap opera and zeros in on the romance between Hades and Persephone, hit No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list last year as a graphic novel. “Lore Olympus, Vol. 2” came out July 5 and is already a national bestseller. And other series with more conventional storylines of violence, horror and suspense, such as “Hellbound,” “Sweet Home” and “All of Us Are Dead,” were turned into hits on Netflix.
Traditional publishers have noticed the success of these digital platforms. Marvel and DC and Archie Comics have struck deals with Webtoon to produce original digital stories featuring some of their biggest characters.
But print comics are far from dead. In fact, their sales exploded during the pandemic, with so many
people bored and stuck at home. Experts estimate that total North American comics and graphic novel sales were approximately $2.08 billion in 2021, a figure that includes the combined revenue of multiple legacy publishers, as well as their digital sales, which together totaled only $170 million.
Ken Kim, Webtoon’s CEO for North America, said that successful digital creators understand that young readers — the platform’s target demographic — tend to want stories reflecting their lifestyles and dreams.
Tapas Media, another major web comics platform, says that more than 80% of its readers are between 17 and 25 and roughly two-thirds are women.
Some of its most popular series revolve around topics the current generation of young readers can directly relate to. Michael Son, Tapas’ vice president of content, pointed
to “Magical Boy,” a series featuring a transgender teenager discovered to be a descendant of a goddess.
“We wanted to get rid of gatekeepers,” he said. “The readers really directed what content directions we were taking. What organically popped up was a very young, very femalecentric readership that was also reflected in the creator base.”
Digital platforms offer creators new paths to publish, sometimes with ownership of most — if not all — their intellectual property.
The money that today’s creators make is often modest — Webtoon said it paid more than
$13.5 million to its roughly 1,500 English-language creators in 2021, meaning most are in no position to quit their day jobs. But the most successful can do well: Webtoon said its top Korean creators can make in the range of $250,000 a year.
Still, industry veterans
warn young up-andcomers to proceed with caution. Contracts should be carefully vetted before signing. And the weekly publishing schedule can be punishing for creators.
And some creators have not found digital platforms as good a fit. Veteran cartoonist Dean Haspiel, 55, published his comic “The Red Hook,” about a New York City superhero, on Webtoon in 2016. The series continued for more than four seasons but “didn’t get the kind of response that we wanted,” he said.
“Ultimately I started to understand that the Webtoon reading audience is a very different audience than the kind of comics I would produce,” he said.
But many new creators are delighted to have a way to reach that audience.
“I’ve always been like, ‘The money is there, the readership is there, we are just tapping into it,’ ” Krecic said. “We found a gold mine.”