NAVER : WEBTOON to Strengthen Partnership with DC Comics by Revealing Next Content Lineup at Collision Conference

- The success of DC and WEBTOON's 'Batman' team-up as part of Supercasting campaign provides a strong foundation for further collaboration
- DC's original webtoons 'Red Hood: Outlaws' and 'Zatanna & the Ripper' to be release in July and August through WEBTOON

2022-06-26

WEBTOON recently announced its next content lineup with DC Comics, emphasizing its ongoing strong partnership with the American company. David Lee, Head of Content at WEBTOON, and Marie Javins, Editor-in-chief of DC Comics, discussed their up-coming collaborations at the North American tech-centric 'Collision Conference' on June 23, under the topic of 'A New Era of Comics and Digital Superheroes'.

The conference was hosted by Rosie Knight, producer of Den of Geek, a media outlet specializing in American pop culture. Collision Conference is the largest tech startup conference in North America with 35,000 attendees from 140 countries, including global startups, venture capitalists and investors. The event took place in Toronto, Canada, June 20-23.

WEBTOON has participated in Collision Conference twice since 2021, and at this year's event, the company discussed the impact of IT technology development on superhero content and the digital comic industry with DC Comics.

"Our collaboration with DC Comics has proved the scalability of WEBTOON's platform and webtoon content, which has received much love and support from the industry and comic fans," said Lee. "We will provide readers with more new stories featuring DC's popular characters in our digital format."

Javins also mentioned, "Through partnership with WEBTOON, DC Comics was able to expand its characters and the fictional world into new genres. We are delighted that the collaboration has provided us with opportunities to meet DC Comics fans as well as other international readers who are not familiar with us."

Earlier in September 2021, WEBTOON introduced the original series of 'Batman: Wayne Family Adventures' with DC Comics as part of its 'Supercasting' campaign.

The Supercasting campaign is a project that presents original stories that have not been released before in web comics or web novels through partnerships with global entertainment companies. The original content that WEBTOON created in collaboration with DC is significant in that it has made Super IP into new webtoon content, rather than an adaptation of an existing published comic into the webtoon format.

'Batman: Wayne Family Adventures' was listed on Twitter Trending on the day of its launch, exceeding 500,000 English service subscribers in a week. It is currently being published as a series in eight different languages and has surpassed 50 million views globally.

Also, it was recently nominated for the 2022 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards web comic sector, which is known as the 'Oscars' of the North American comic book industry, receiving favorable reviews for its artistic quality.

Thanks to such an achievement, WEBTOON will publish more original webtoons with DC Comics, starting with 'Vixon: NYC', which has been published as a series since May. In addition, 'Red Hood: Outlaws' and 'Zatanna & the Ripper' are scheduled to be released on WEBTOON's English and Spanish services in July and August, respectively.

Lee also participated as a speaker at VidCon, the world's largest creator event, held in California on June 25. Lee discussed WEBTOON's creator ecosystem with Chelsey Han (aka Uru-chan), the author of fantasy webtoon 'unOrdinary', expanding WEBTOON's influence in the global market.

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