# Webtoon (Vertical-Scroll Comics) (ウェブトゥーン（縦スクロール漫画）)

> 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.

- IndexStyle No.530 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/webtoon-vertical-scroll
- Kind: Layout · Family: Reading on the Web · Era: 2003–
- Mood: Intimacy, Exhilaration, Play
- Color cues: #EDE6CA / #354751 / #FFFFFF (cues taken from reference works, not a fixed palette)

## Defining characteristics

- 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

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: 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.
- Layout & structure: 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 & texture: 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.

## What to avoid

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.

## Application checklist

Before calling a piece an application of this style, check it against the defining characteristics:

- [ ] 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
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Shōjo Manga (少女漫画)** — A field that built its own grammar for translating psychology into space. Panels are broken open, flowers and stars scatter across the background, and the inner voice runs out into the margins. The large eyes and the overlaid panels are devices for drawing the flow of feeling rather than the flow of time. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/shojo-manga
- **American Comic Book Style (アメリカン・コミックの様式)** — The grammar of exaggeration born from four-color printing and Ben-Day dots: bold outlines, primary-color costumes, speed lines and bursting onomatopoeia printing American myth on cheap newsprint. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/american-comic-style

## Further study

- コマ間の空白が時間の長さや場面転換をどう担うかという議論
- 縦に極端に長いコマが、読む時間と語られる時間を重ねる仕組み
- 日本や米国のウェブ漫画が紙の版面を保ったのに対し韓国だけ離れた経緯

## Reference works

- 縦一列に流れる第2世代ウェブトゥーンの画面 2014年 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Webtoon%20second%20generation.png
- チョ・ソク《心の声》2006年 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%EC%A1%B0%EC%84%9D.png

## Source of record

- The Comics Journal — The Webtoon: A New Form for Graphic Narrative (署名記事) — https://www.tcj.com/the-webtoon-a-new-form-for-graphic-narrative/

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/webtoon-vertical-scroll
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/webtoon-vertical-scroll/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compose_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)