Manhwa

Manhwa is the Korean word for comics, written with the same Chinese characters that give Japanese the word manga. For most of the twentieth century it meant printed books read left to right, rented by the night from neighbourhood shops. The modern form barely resembles that. It is digital, coloured, published a chapter at a time, and built for a phone held upright.

The vertical format is called webtoon, and it changes the drawing itself. There are no facing pages and no panel grid, only one long strip, so the artist controls pace by how much empty space sits between beats. A reveal can be a full screen of nothing followed by one image. Platforms such as Naver and Kakao publish weekly and pay by readership.

Adaptation moved the format outward. Solo Leveling, Tower of God and The God of High School all began as webtoons before Japanese studios animated them. The look carries over: bright colour, heavy vertical composition, and fight scenes that were originally designed to be scrolled through rather than turned.