Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards has recognized a vertical scroll webtoon

Ha Young

• 2 min read
Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards has recognized a vertical scroll webtoon

Lore Olympus is a webtoon that was created by Rachel Smythe and published on Naver Webtoon. It was nominated for the best webcomic category of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and it won. This is great news for Naver Webtoon and Rachel Smythe, and it will hopefully open up the door for more webtoons to be recognized in the future.

Naver Webtoon announced on the 24th that its original webtoon "Lore Olympus" won the best webcomic category of the "Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards" in the U.S.
This is the first time that a vertical scroll webtoon genre has won in the webcomic category.
The Will Eisner Awards is an American manga awards ceremony, which was created in 1988 named after American comic book master Will Eisner.
Every year, a professional panel of judges selects candidates for each category among that year's serial works and announces the winners at the San Diego Comic-Con, the largest entertainment festival in the United States.

Rachel Smythe is a New Zealand-born writer who debuted through Naver Webtoon's global cartoon audition system "CANVAS." "I am grateful to fans around the world who love Lore Olympus," he said at the awards ceremony held at the San Diego Comic-Con Convention. "This work has changed my life, and I am proud to share this story with global readers of Naver Webtoon."'

Canvas is an amateur creative space platform that applies the UCC bulletin board 'Challenge Cartoon' built by Naver Webtoon to the global market.

Naver Webtoon first introduced its English service in July 2014, and the number of monthly active users (MAU) in the U.S., which was 6 million in 2019, surpassed 15 million earlier this year.

Among the five nominees for the best webcomic category, "Batman: Wayne Family Adventure," an original webtoon by Naver Webtoon and DC, was also selected as a candidate.

This is great news for Naver Webtoon and for Rachel Smythe. It's great to see that the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards has recognized a vertical scroll webtoon as the best webcomic. This will hopefully open up the door for more webtoons to be recognized in the future.