Naver Webtoon 'Lore Olympus' Wins the Comics Industry's Academy Award, the Will Eisner Award

Rachel Smythe, winner of the Eisner Award

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver Webtoon’s original webtoon ‘Lore Olympus’ announced on the 24th that it won the Best Webcomic category at the U.S. ‘Will Eisner Awards.’ This is the first time that a vertical scroll webtoon genre has won in the webcomic category.

The ‘Will Eisner Awards’ is a representative American comic award ceremony established in 1988, named after the American comic master Will Eisner. It is the most prestigious comic award in the U.S. and is also referred to as the ‘Academy Awards’ of the comic world. Every year, a panel of professional judges selects nominees from the year’s serialized works in each category and announces the winners at the San Diego Comic-Con, the largest entertainment festival in the U.S.

The Best Webcomic category of the Will Eisner Awards selects the best online comic work serialized during the year. Among the five nominated works this year, besides ‘Lore Olympus,’ the original webtoon ‘Batman: Wayne Family Adventures,’ a collaboration between Naver Webtoon and DC, was also nominated.

Rachel Smythe, the creator, expressed her gratitude at the awards ceremony held on the 22nd (local time) at the San Diego Comic-Con Convention, saying, “I thank fans around the world who love ‘Lore Olympus.’ This work changed my life, and I am proud to share this story with Naver Webtoon’s global readers.”

‘Lore Olympus’ is a romance fantasy that modernly reinterprets Greek mythology about Hades, the king of the underworld, and Persephone, the rookie goddess. It was first released in 2018 through Naver Webtoon’s English service ‘WEBTOON’ and officially began serialization in Korea in August 2020. It has been globally recognized for its originality and artistic quality, recording over 1.2 billion cumulative views worldwide.

Rachel Smythe is a New Zealand-born creator who debuted through Naver Webtoon’s overseas challenge comic system called ‘Canvas.’ Canvas is an amateur creative platform that applies the ‘Challenge Comics’ board, a user-created content (UCC) comic board first established by Naver Webtoon in the industry, to the global market. Currently, about 820,000 amateur creators worldwide gather on the platform, creating a large-scale global creative ecosystem.

From the user perspective, it is also showing significant growth. Naver Webtoon first launched its English service in July 2014, and the monthly active users (MAU) in the U.S. grew from 6 million in 2019 to over 15 million earlier this year. It also ranks overwhelmingly first in comic revenue in the U.S. app market.

Kim Hyung-il, leader of Naver Webtoon’s North American business, said, “‘Lore Olympus’ is a work that captivated global readers with its amazing artistry and storytelling. We are pleased that our efforts to steadily promote ‘webtoons’ in the U.S. market from the early days have been recognized in this way, and we will continue to do our best to promote the professionalism and artistic quality of various webtoon works to the global market.”