BTS’s comic is 7FATES: CHAKHO, an urban fantasy tale about seven young men who have come through hard times and now must unite to “unlock their destiny”; the word “chakho” refers to the Chakhogapsa, or “tiger hunters,” of Korean history. The comic is slated to launch on January 14, and in the run-up, Webtoon is posting teaser photo-comics on its platform and very brief web videos on its social media. The teaser webtoon, Webtoon x BTS, has 2.5 million views and almost 380,000 followers.
This is the second comic to emerge from the “Super Casting” program announced earlier this year (see “Webtoon’s North American CEO Ken Kim”), in which Naver, the parent company of Webtoon and the webnovel platform Wattpad, teams up with outside companies to create original comics based on their intellectual properties. The first two partners were HYBE, the management company behind BTS, and DC Comics (see “DC Universe Characters Are Coming to Webtoon”).
Deadline reports that the next two Super Casting events will be webtoons by two other K-Pop groups managed by HYBE: Dark Moon, an urban fantasy/teen romance story by Enhyphen, and The Star Seekers, in which a boy band suddenly develops magical powers, by TXT.
While these properties have been announced only as webtoonss, Webtoon recently unveiled a print graphic novel program (see “Webtoon Announces New Graphic Novel Program”). Some Webtoon comics have also been picked up by other publishers, including Lore Olympus. Del Rey’s hardcover and paperback editions of that comic were the top two selling adult graphic novels in bookstores last month (see “November 2021 NPD BookScan – Top 20 Adult Graphic Novels”), and the paperback topped the ComicHub chart as well (see “Top 20 Graphic Novels – November 2021”).