While teaching a middle school workshop on comics in 2019, I asked each one of my students about the comics they liked to read. Half the class responded the same way: webtoons. Since its international launch in July 2014, Korean digital comics giant’s commitment to international outreach and significant funding from its parent company, the Naver Corporation, has made it the most successful comics platform around the world, gaining readers by the millions.
Every day on the internet, new micro-trends emerge, only to become old news five minutes later. In Polygon’s new series The Next Generation of Everything, we’re looking at what’s blowing up in the worlds and fandoms we follow, and what the latest shifts say about where Extremely Online life is going next.