A webtoon is a full-color comic built as one long vertical strip, read by scrolling down a phone, and released in weekly episodes. Manga is Japanese comics: mostly black and white, read right to left, serialized in magazines and collected into paperback volumes. A Western comic is the page-based, left-to-right format from American and European shelves, usually in color and sold as monthly issues.
They borrow from each other constantly, which is why people mix them up. But each one is built for a different screen and a different reading habit, and that difference matters a lot more to a creator than to a reader.
This post is about the webtoon side of the comparison, because that is where most of the confusion lives. If you are also weighing a long-form print book, comic vs graphic novel vs webtoon vs manga covers the graphic novel angle.
Webtoon vs manga vs comic at a glance
| Webtoon | Manga | Western comic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it started | South Korea, on the web | Japan, in print magazines | United States and Europe, in print |
| Reading direction | Top to bottom | Right to left, then down | Left to right, then down |
| Color | Full color | Mostly black and white with screentone | Usually full color |
| Layout | One continuous vertical strip | Pages and two-page spreads | Pages and spreads |
| Read on | Phones, in apps | Print volumes and apps | Print and digital pages |
| Release rhythm | Weekly episodes | Weekly or monthly chapters | Monthly issues |
| Collected as | Stays online, hits get print editions | Volumes of roughly 200 pages | Trade paperbacks and hardcovers |
Is a webtoon a manga?
No. Manga means comics from Japan, or comics drawn in the Japanese tradition. A webtoon is a digital format that grew up in South Korea, where comics are called manhwa. So a Korean webtoon is manhwa in a vertical-scroll format, not manga.
The mix-up is understandable. Plenty of webtoons use anime-influenced character design, the big reading apps host translated manga next to webtoons, and fans often use the words loosely. The quick test: if you read it by swiping down one long column of color panels, it is a webtoon. If you read it page by page starting from what a Western reader would call the back, it is manga.
One more wrinkle. Not all manhwa is a webtoon (older Korean comics were printed on pages), and not all webtoons are Korean. Creators everywhere now publish in the vertical format, and Chinese comics (manhua) often use it too.
What is the difference between a webtoon and a comic?
The page. A comic is designed around pages and page turns. The artist knows the reader sees a whole page at once and uses the turn to hide a reveal. A webtoon has no pages at all. The reader sees roughly one phone screen at a time and controls the pace with their thumb.
That one difference changes the craft:
- Panels stack instead of sitting in grids. Comic panels share rows. Webtoon panels are usually full width, one after another, with nothing to scan sideways.
- Space becomes timing. A long gap of empty scroll before a reveal is a pause the reader physically has to travel through. Page layouts cannot do that.
- Lettering has to be big. A comic reader can study small text on a large page. A webtoon reader is on a phone, moving fast, usually with no zoom.
- Episodes replace issues. A US comic issue runs roughly 20 to 32 pages. A webtoon episode is a few dozen panels, and it has to end on a hook because closing the app costs the reader nothing.
A Western comic also leans harder on dense, detailed pages and on the print object itself: the cover, the variant, the shelf in a comic shop. Webtoons live almost entirely in apps.
Where did webtoons come from?
Korean web portals in the early 2000s. Artists started posting comics online as long vertical images because that is how a web page scrolls, and portals like Naver built dedicated comic sections around them. When smartphones arrived, the vertical strip turned out to be the perfect shape for a phone, and the format took off.
Naver's WEBTOON app carried it internationally, and the word "webtoon" is now used for the format in general as well as that platform. Tapas is the other big English-language home. Both run open tiers where anyone can post, which is a large part of why so many new creators start here. Where to publish your webtoon goes through each option and what it asks of you.
How is reading manga different from reading a webtoon?
Manga is page-dense and mostly monochrome. Artists use screentone patterns for shading, speed lines for motion, and a lot of decompressed action spread across pages. Chapters come out in weekly or monthly magazines, then get collected into paperback volumes (tankobon) of around 200 pages, and popular series run for hundreds of chapters. For Western readers, the right-to-left direction takes a chapter or two to get used to.
Webtoons are the opposite on almost every axis. Color also does real work: with no page breaks, a shift in palette is often how a reader knows the scene or time of day has changed. Backgrounds tend to be lighter, faces and reactions carry more of the story, and the whole thing is tuned for a small screen in short sessions.
Genre overlaps a lot. Both do romance, action, fantasy and school stories. Webtoons have a particular strength in romance, drama and "regression" or "system" fantasy, while manga covers nearly everything, including long sports and adventure epics.
Which format should you make?
If you are a new creator without an audience, make a webtoon. That is our honest recommendation, for four reasons:
- Readers already hold the device. There is no print run, no distributor and no shelf to fight for.
- The big platforms let anyone post, and they reward a steady schedule rather than a publishing deal.
- Weekly episodes give you feedback every week instead of once a year.
- A strong webtoon can be re-cut into pages later. Going the other way is much harder.
Make manga-style pages if your influences are manga, you love black-and-white work, and you want the page-turn pacing that manga readers expect. Make a Western comic if you want a printed object: comic shops, conventions, issues you can hold.
The catch with webtoons is the schedule. Weekly is a real workload, and a comic that posts for two months and then stops tends to disappear. Build three or four finished episodes before you publish the first.
Can you draw a webtoon in manga style?
Yes. Style and format are separate decisions, and plenty of popular webtoons use manga-influenced art. The format decides the canvas (a tall vertical strip). The style decides how the art looks inside it.
The one adjustment: heavy black-and-white screentone that looks rich on a printed page can turn to noise at phone width. Flat, high-contrast color holds up better when a reader is scrolling fast, which is why most webtoon art looks the way it does.
How do you make a webtoon in BookZeta?
Start a project on the create screen, choose the Graphic creation mode, and set Format Type to Webtoon. That sets an 800px-wide vertical canvas with no spine or back cover, because a webtoon never goes to print. The webtoon maker page shows what the finished result looks like.
From there:
- Build your cast first. Each character gets a fixed physical identity that the image generator reuses on every panel, plus named outfits, so your lead looks like the same person in episode one and episode twelve.
- Pick a style and stay with it. Graphic Mode includes webtoon and manhwa styles as well as manga, anime cel, noir and modern comic looks.
- Generate panels with text as layers if your script is still changing, so you can fix a line of dialogue without regenerating the art.
- Export for the platform. Publish & Export gives you a ZIP of numbered image slices for WEBTOON or Tapas, or an HTML viewer you can host yourself. Exporting webtoons explains which one to use.
The full workflow, from premise to first episode, is in how to make a webtoon.
The short version
Webtoon: vertical, color, phone, weekly, Korean roots. Manga: pages, mostly black and white, right to left, Japanese, collected into volumes. Western comic: pages, color, left to right, monthly issues. If you want readers fast and you can keep a schedule, the vertical strip is the easiest door to walk through, and you can start a webtoon with the characters you already have in your head.
