Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics | Tagged: bobbie chase, michele wells, Rebecca Taylor, wattpad webtoon studios, Webtoon

From DC Comics To Putting Webtoon Comics Into Print

Bobbie Chase was previously VP of Global Publishing Initiatives & Digital Strategy at DC but is now executive editor of Webtoon Unscrolled.

Bobbie Chase was previously Vice President of Global Publishing Initiatives & Digital Strategy at DC Entertainment, where she launched the company's graphic novel imprints aimed at middle-grade and YA readers, and previously worked as an editor at both Marvel Comics and Disney. She was one of the victims of the DC Bloodbath redundancies but has more than landed on her feet as executive editor of Webtoon Unscrolled, which published print versions of digital Webtoon comic books.

Talking to Shaenon K. Garrity at Publisher's Weekly, Bobbie Chase stated "As someone who did superhero comics for 35 years of my career, it's wonderful to be on the creator-owned side" with Webtoons allowing "first-time creators producing smash hits out of the gate."

At Webtoon, Chase is in charge of their printed comics with Webtoon Unscrolled. Their first three books, True Beauty, Tower of God, and Cursed Princess Club burnt through more than 200,000 copies in their first six months of publication. And plan to publish twenty ongoing series in print by the end of 2024, including Lumine by Emma Krogell, a fantasy about the adventures of a runaway werewolf and a witch boy, and Third Shift Society by Meredith Moriarty, in which a psychically gifted but broke young woman finds work as a paranormal detective. Chase also notes that their readership is younger and more female than the norm, with half the site's creators being women, and many of the top series are by female or nonbinary creators, across romance, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. And because the books are creator-owned, Webtoon Unscrolled has to fight for the print rights to each one.

Which is where another DC executive editor alumni comes in, Inklore editorial director Rebecca Taylor, formerly Justice League Group Editor. Inklore from Del Rey/Penguin Random House got the rights to Rachel Smythe's big Webtoon hit Lore Olympus, to launch their imprint, with a targeted audience 18–35 and largely female, and seeking LGBTQ content. "They're reading romantasy, they're reading BL, they're reading horror. Basically, anyone who's reading or writing fan fiction on AO3, that's our audience" and that they "haven't been catered to by traditional publishing… so they've created the content they wanted to see in webcomics, fan fiction, and fan art. And they are legion." Michele Wells, who also moved from DC Comics to webtoon publisher Tapas, sees to have left that job a year ago and has gone freelance.

And of course, DC Comics is putting its own IP that went through Webtoon, into print, with Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, Vixen: NYC, Red Hood: Outlaws, and Zatanna & the Ripper

Other comics such as UnOrdinary by uru-chan, a superhero series from Webtoon, have their second volume out in July 2024 from HarperAlley. And Oni Press' has Webtoon's Covenant by LySandra Vuong, a queer dark fantasy romance, for April. PW highlights plenty of other webcomics-to-print examples over the last twenty-five years, but noting there has been a big jump recently. And while they note the challenge of taking comics intended for vertical scrolling and editing them into comic pages, they don't tackle what happens when the reader picking up a printed book tries to scroll up as I just did with a restaurant menu…

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