Webtoon (Vertical-Scroll Comics)

ウェブトゥーン（縦スクロール漫画） / 2003– / Layout / Reading on the Web

A comics layout that grew on Korean portals and runs down a single column. The blank space between panels stops being a mere break and becomes the material, because its length carries elapsed time or a change of scene while it also takes on background colour, falling rain, and even the dialogue lifted out of the frames. Since the reader cannot glance ahead, the act of scrolling becomes the passage of story time.

Webtoon (Vertical-Scroll Comics) — Second generation webtoon in a single vertical column, 2014 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Seoung13 — Second generation webtoon in a single vertical column, 2014 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Seoung13

At a glance

Visual cues

Panels line up in a single vertical column, with nowhere for the eye to move sideways
The blank between panels runs longer than the panels themselves and holds background colour, falling rain, or dialogue
A single panel roughly eight times taller than it is wide, needing several scrolls before it can be seen whole
Full colour from the outset, drawn to one fixed width matched to the screen

Best used for

Building a story to be read by scrolling, where pacing is designed as lengths of blank space rather than as page turns
Staging a fall or a dive where the point is to stretch out the reader's own reading time

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Dictionary entry

Type: Dialogue does not have to stay inside the frame, so push it into the blank. Separating narration from speech that way pulls the narrator apart from the character.
Composition: Fix the width and extend only downward. Give a long pause a long blank and a tense passage a run of short ones, so the unit of division is the height of the gap rather than the page.
Material: Assume full colour throughout and let the background colour of the gaps set the mood of an episode. Pour a repeating image such as rain or a falling body through the blanks until the edge between gap and panel dissolves.
Caution: Stacking print page layouts one under another turns the blanks back into meaningless slack and disables the pacing mechanism that sits at the centre of the form.
Further study: the argument over how blank space between panels carries elapsed time and a change of scene / how an extremely tall panel makes reading time and narrated time coincide / why Korea alone broke from the printed page while webcomics in Japan and the United States kept it

Related entries

Shōjo Manga (少女漫画)Shared effects: Intimacy / Exhilaration / Play.Compare Webtoon (Vertical-Scroll Comics) and Shōjo Manga
Golden and Silver Age Comic Book Style (黄金期・銀の時代のアメコミ)Shared effects: Exhilaration / Play.Compare Webtoon (Vertical-Scroll Comics) and Golden and Silver Age Comic Book Style

Often confused with

Infinite Canvas (インフィニット・キャンバス)compare

Cite this entry

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