Growing Pains: Webtoons vs. Graphic Novels

In high school, I spent a lot of time reading webtoons, admiring the artwork as I scrolled through my phone. I feel that webtoons have become a modern replacement for graphic novels, and they offer a wide variety of stories and subject material. The artwork is typically colored, and the panels are carefully and thoughtfully broken up in each chapter to create a distinct flow in each chapter, so I recognized that a vast amount of effort is put into their creation. When I read Som’s graphic novel, Spellbound, I was immediately reminded of the many webtoons I had read in the past, and I was able to resonate with the story just as much as I had with webtoons. I also looked in depth at the color usage and analyzed how certain colors evoked different moods and set scenes differently, making me appreciate the use of color in webtoons even more. Other graphic novels tend to be in black and white, whether they be the superhero comics that many Americans grew up on, or Japanese manga that my older brother recommended to me when I was young. These art forms all tell stories with a combination of text and drawings, and this distinct style has captured the hearts of readers all over the world. Thus, I created this webtoon in which I compare webtoons and graphic novels, basing it off of my own experiences reading both. Of course, this webtoon is not on one long page, but rather is split into five pages, a decision I made for the sake of uploading convenience for this project, but it still follows the same stylistic patterns of a typical webtoon!

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