Disney & Webtoon Announce Multiyear Partnership for Mobile Marvel Comics Release

3 days ago 5

The Korea Herald announced Disney’s made a deal with Webtoon to host their products on their animation platforms, Marvel comics included:

Webtoon Entertainment, the US-based parent company of Naver Webtoon, struck a multiyear partnership with Walt Disney Co. to bring around 100 titles from Marvel, “Star Wars” and other Disney properties to its vertical-scrolling platform, the companies announced Wednesday.

The partnership will release adaptations of existing comics for smartphone viewing as well as original content developed for the mobile format. The content will appear in a dedicated section of Webtoon’s English-language app, Webtoon said.

“Amazing Spider-Man” debuts this month, followed by “Avengers,” “Star Wars” and other titles. Users can read initial episodes for free before purchasing additional chapters with in-app coins.

The deal helps fill a major content gap for the Naver Corp.-backed company as it expands beyond Asian markets. The platform boasts 155 million monthly active users globally, but has lacked superhero titles — which Disney’s Marvel catalog will now deliver in earnest. The platform’s demographics skew younger and more female than traditional comics readers, and its popular titles lean toward fantasy, romance and slice-of-life genres.

For Disney, the partnership marks a shift from Marvel Comics’ traditional distribution through comic shops and download services that cater to older fans. The entertainment giant could tap into Webtoon’s younger, mobile-first user base while opening new revenue streams for its extensive back catalog.

Isn’t that interesting they admit Marvel’s attracting far more older folks than younger at this point, if at all. But don’t be surprised if the comics they want to host on Webtoon are much newer productions, and far less of the older classics, something this article doesn’t clearly dwell upon. I don’t think many women or younger readers, in Asia or elsewhere, are going to care about the newer, more PC stuff Marvel’s been putting out far too long.

So is this is good venture Webtoon is taking? Hardly. I just don’t see the use of doing partnerships with a company that’s turned PC, and is now struggling to remain relevant, which it no longer is. Readers of Webtoon’s sites would be advised not to waste money on Marvel, or even Star Wars comics that’ll be made available on Webtoon. It’s just not worth it.

originally published here

Read Entire Article