An entirely reimagined experience where you will enjoy captivating storylines, breathtaking scenes, and stunning illustrations, developed and masterfully adapted from physical comic books to smart devices: Webtoon.
This format, which literally hooked me back in the day thanks to a masterpiece called Leviathan, has recently re-entered my life through some advertisements I stumbled upon. It has now transformed into a wonderful ritual that both relaxes and inspires me during the quietest hours of my day. However, during this comeback, I noticed several new and highly positive shifts that distance it from the traditional comic book form. After highlighting these innovations, I will also mention an incredible bonus benefit at the end of this article.
1. A New Comic Book Experience (The UI/UX Revolution)
This format brings a brand-new and, in my opinion, a far more effective user experience to the comic book universe than the physical print form ever could. Thanks to the vertical scrolling system designed specifically for smartphones, the next scene can hit you with a much more surprising and cinematic impact. Since the pacing is entirely at your fingertips, the storytelling technique gains an extra edge, making the reading flow significantly more comfortable compared to physical books. Furthermore, scenes are no longer forced to squeeze into square frames or restricted layouts as they are in print. Master artists have introduced a flexible and liberating structure to their visual narration within this seamless down-scroll system. Honestly, I often find myself trying to fully appreciate this presentation, catching the repetitive beauty of the same flow as if staring at a landscape.
2. An Abundance of Free Content
When I first started reading Leviathan on its original platform, Toomics (if I remember the date correctly, it must have been 2022), the series was not yet completed, and chapters were uploaded on a weekly basis. Back then, that platform enforced rigid restrictions: you either had to wait weeks for ongoing chapters to become free or give in to a VIP subscription. While I can’t recall the exact price today, I remember it as an amount I simply did not want to pay at the time. Naturally, waiting for a new chapter to unlock caused me to lose touch with the story from time to time. Today, however, following a change in distribution rights, you can directly access the chapters of this legendary series on the official WEBTOON app right after watching quite reasonable ad intervals—averaging only about 10 seconds. The evolution of the industry in this direction makes access to high-quality art far more achievable.
3. The Comment and Rating System
Within these applications, there is an excellent voting and commenting mechanism that allows successful productions to rise to the top instantly. Thanks to this, you don’t waste hours through trial and error to find a good read; high-quality works filtered by the community are listed directly in front of you.
4. Smart Bookmarking Feature
When you tap on the chapter where you left off and reopen the app, the automatic bookmarking feature starts you exactly from the last panel you read. Compared to the traditional bookmark concept in physical comics, it is a simple yet brilliantly convenient detail that elevates digital reading comfort.
5. Content Creator Protection and the Screenshot Dilemma
While reading Webtoons, you often come across scenes so dramatic and artistic that it feels impossible not to take a screenshot to share or look back on later. To safeguard copyrights and protect the hard work of content creators, apps have always guarded this content closely. Your phone’s ability to both record video and capture a stable screenshot is restricted by the system. However, specifically within the WEBTOON app, I can say there is an in-app “screenshot” feature that provides user convenience without compromising this protection. Still, when scrolling through those consecutive, magnificent scenes, not being able to save them and turn them into a clip with a song that comes to mind can occasionally make you feel a bit restricted :).
6. Bonus: The Impact on Foreign Language Learning
This newly discovered perk has become one of my biggest motivations for returning to this platform regularly. As someone who mostly built their language development through reading traditional books, I noticed that I faced gaps in everyday spoken language and practical dialogue, which led me to research new methods. Right at that moment, the Webtoon format came to the rescue. By bypassing those long and sometimes tedious descriptive paragraphs found in traditional novels, comic books leave you face-to-face with dynamic conversational texts. Moreover, they support these texts with deeply expressive visuals. Most of the time, you can grasp the meaning of a sentence within its full context without even needing a dictionary. Even if you do feel the need to look up a word, the visual power of those dramatic scenes allows the vocabulary to form a much more permanent memory pattern in your mind. Lastly, because the comic book world caters to a more niche audience compared to mainstream media, censorship and filtering are far less prevalent here. This allows you to directly consume the most organic, unfiltered, and living dialogues that you are actually likely to encounter in real-life target cultures.
Thank you for reading and sharing my thoughts. This post does not contain any platform endorsements or sponsored ads; since it consists entirely of my personal reading experiences, I might have repeated a few names frequently. I hope it serves as a helpful guide for you as well.
See you in the next article!
Semih Akgül
