Netcomics, one of the earliest Korean online comics platforms, is shutting down, even as the Korean webtoon phenomenon has become a major force in the U.S.  The shutdown was announced on the platform’s site, with user registration and coin purchase no longer available and the site set to cease operations on December 29 (all coins are to be used by that date).

Netcomics was also one-time physical manhwa publisher in the U.S., building on its creator relationships for digital comics to launch book-format products in 2006 (see "New Manhwa Publisher").  The digital platform, which launched in 1998(!), had 40,000 manhwa volumes available that year, with 1 million registered users (see "40,000 Manhwa Volumes").

Heewoon Chung, CEO of Netcomics parent eComics was a visionary, but his company was later eclipsed by Korean giants Kakao and Naver, which now control the bulk of the webtoon business in Korea and the U.S.

Naver is the majority owner of Webtoon Entertainment, which raised $365 million and went public in the U.S. last summer (see "Webtoon Raises $365 Million").  Kakao, which raised nearly $1 billion dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Singapore last year (see "Tapas Parent Raises Nearly $1 Billion”), owns the Tapas platform (see "Tapas Is the Main Course").  Both of those two largest webtoon platforms are aligned with major web fiction platforms: Webtoon with Wattpad, and Tapas with Radish and Wuxiaworld.

Netcomics, a pioneering company with a run of over a quarter century, is ending its run, but it's worth noting for its leadership in taking the comics medium online and its role in adapting comics to the digital world.