If you’re not familiar with the webcomic scene, one of the major webcomic hosting sites Tapas, is officially closing after a bit over a decade. The presence of the platform was for creators initially when I started using it back in 2015, but the scope of the site was currently catered to a specific audience: those who like to read eastern webcomics (webtoons) in vertical scroll format. Now I barely use the platform, and it makes sense it’s becoming defunct by October.
Keep in mind: Tapas was for more western audiences, while scroll format was considered novel in the early 2010’s. It wasn’t popular as a format, and folks experimented with it a bit. Some fully commit themselves to the new and created their series with that in mind. But what mattered then, was having a supportive community and feedback among peers. Folks who don’t have the means to create a site wanted to find a reliable platform to share their work, or have a mirror connected for those audiences. But those spaces are becoming more sparse. Or rather, the only space to cater for mainstream audiences are geared towards WEBTOON and the scroll format being preferred nowadays compared to traditional page formats on mobile devices.
I don’t know how the WEBTOON original folks see it, but with my experiences with WEBTOON CANVAS is that the visibility with these works are staggering. I remember seeing OIYD! being featured on the front page for the Canvas side of things for a moment, but they never notified me of doing so. Sure, I appreciate the exposure, but I knew at the time I was not ready for the thousands of people who looked at my work, who haven’t had the time to sit down, and were ready to blaze through my pages. There was no sense of community on the site; you have to seek it through on its social media or discord, but even so it’s not the same.
Non-comic folks see and assume that there’s an equal playing field when it’s barely the truth. The platform is exacerbated by the consumption model of modern consumerism. It’s not ideal to work with, yet the majority who were able to make means on such platforms are a small percentage. That is by design, carried over by the Asian model of webcomic production on those platforms. And it’s not a model that the western webcomic world isn’t accustomed to. This video explains the process generally. Despite it’s for webnovels, it’s pretty similar how comics on WEBTOON and Tapas were treated in the West.
I’m glad there’s some pushback on this though. Not everyone wants to have one site to be the main one for reading webcomics, and there’s vast amounts of different web hosts to choose from. But, I still think this will be an issue moving forward. If we depend on one site for everything, then we must persist with the alternatives. And man, do we need to try more nowadays.