This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Huge_Trust_5057 on 2024-09-04 02:30:50+00:00.

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Gee I haven’t written anything about hobbydrama in years! This is one of the write ups that I had in my folder that I was going to post after the blackout, but I forgot to do so.

Note: sources and comics are mostly in korean. I put them in for the pictures and references, maybe you could use a web translator if you want to read them.

In south korea, webcomics are considered a very widespread hobby, although koreans prefer to call them “Webtoons”. There are many legendary webcomics that shaped an era and was enjoyed by many people. However there is one webcomic, which was so famous, for being so bad. This is the story of Relatable.Jpg, broadly considered one of the worst naver webcomic.

Webcomics Korean webcomic are a bit different from webcomics from other countries. While american webcomics are usually posted on the author’s own website, or a website made by a team of a few authors, most major korean webcomics are posted on large webcomic platform sites run by companies, where authors are hired and paid for making webcomics on a regular basis, usually weekly.

Many major webcomic platforms exist, with many IT companies having one. Kakao, who owns korea’s largest messaging app, owns one. KT, an internet provider, also has one. Even a food delivery app has one.

However, the one best and paramount webcomic platform is Naver webtoons. If you’ve ever heard of webtoons, the site, webtoons is a site for non-koreans run by the Line Corporation, which has major ties to naver. Webtoons hosts translated korean comics on naver webtoons as well as some english original comics.

Naver Webtoons is the company that is at the top of all korean webcomics. It has hosted many great and legendary webcomics that shaped the entire history of korean webcomics, and it would be a challenge to find koreans who didn’t watch a single webcomic from Naver webtoons in their teens, and many still do.

Being an artist for naver webtoons is the kind of job that children would write as their dream job, and something korean artists daydream about.

How can you become an artist for naver webtoons anyway? Naver webtoons has a “challenge webcomics” feature, also known as the “canvas” in line webtoons site. It’s a feature where new amateur artists can host their comics free of charge, but without getting paid. If your webcomic posted here gets enough attention and the moderators of naver webtoons deem you worthy, your webcomic gets moved to “Best challenge webtoons”, where your webcomic compete with other webcomics for fame and attention. If your webcomic is good enough, and if you’re really lucky, congratulations, you are now hired by naver webtoons and your webcomics are now going on naver webtoons’ main site.

This process is a long, hard struggle that, even as a pretty decent webcomic artist, often requires years, if not decades, and many aspiring webcomic makers never make it. It is a throne for only the best webcomics of the nation, after all. But is it?

Whose Idea was this??? In 2016 naver webtoons held a contest for webcomics. The prize? Getting instantly hired as a webcomic artist, without getting through any of the process I listed above. But, it was only open to artists with (nearly) zero former experience of making a webcomic. It was presented as a contest to find absolutely unique webcomics.

However, the contest had a few problems. First, the contest only ran for about 4 weeks, and requred three comic strips. It’s worth reminding that korean webcomics usually aren’t four-panel comics, usually the number of panels in a single strip go into a few dozen panels. Most artists, even working full time on a comic, upload comics once or twice a week. So excluding the time it takes to actually draw the comics, the contest gave the authors quite a short time to come up with the story and concept of the comic.

When the comics drawn for this contest was uploaded and shown to the public, people realized this was horribly low-quality. But a contest was a contest and the three winners were soon announced.

First comes, . A man pissed by S.korea’s conscription, realizing the war is the only reason he needs to be conscripted, singlehandedly sneaks into north korea to kill kim jong un, Doom-style. It was quite poorly accepted at first, but as the story kicked in and the weird sense of humor started to get refined the comic actually was pretty well accepted, later ending the whole series with a not-bad score. 8/10.

Second comes, . A “humorous”, slice-of-life webcomic about the author’s daily stuggles. It failed. Very badly. The jokes landed flat, the art was below average. It abruptly stopped at 30 strips without any notice. 3/10

And the third one is what today’s write-up is about.

Relatable.JPG Relatable.JPG is the third one. It’s, from what you might expect from the title, relatable short comics. Sort of like, “isn’t it really anxiety-inducing when you take a test and number 4 comes three timez haha” type humor.

Well as you can see, the first thing that’s problematic is it’s art style.

Wait, before you flak me, I’d like to point out that a good art style isn’t necessary for a good comic. XKCD uses simple stickman-type figures, but the simple artstyle and the author’s very nerdy humor makes XKCD one of my favorite webcomics. Homestuck, while I gave up reading it after a few front panels, is also another really popular webcomics that doesn’t have the best art. The sound of your heart is one of korea’s legendary naver webcomics that, in a korean idiom, “if you don’t know it you’re a north korean spy”.(however the webcomic does rely heavily on references to korean culture and the translated version had much less success internationally), which again, doesn’t have the best art style. In fact, in some cases, comedic webcomics may actually benefit from a weird, scribble-like art style. Kejang comics is a amateur webcomic that has one of the art styles of all times, but its surrealist and “haha random” humor went perfecly with the art style. It had quite a success and screenshots from the comics are used like emojis on DCinside, korea’s 4chan. The comic even got a book! It’s worth noting that the publisher of the book is literally named “sorry tree”, with a description of , quote, “We make books that may make us sorry for the trees(which were cut down to make this book).”

However, the art style of Relatable.jpg was, well, not beautiful, and this definitely amplifed other problems. Maybe if the content was genuinely funny, people might have considered the art style unique and adding to the funny-ness of the comic. But it didn’t.

The whole content, excluding the art, was the real problem. The problem was it was too generic and overused. Relatable humor comics were already being churned out by amateur webcomic authors as early as 2008, and there were already a ton of low-quality relatable webcomics. “Haha isn’t it weird when our parents tell us to wake up saying it’s 10:00 but it’s acually 7:30 haha”, “haha doesn’t it suck when we eat a burger and all the contents drop out of the other side” “haha where does the eraser we drop go, they always disappear never to be seen again haha” “haha doesn’t it suck when you pick a music you like but your friends don’t seem to like it haha” stuff. There’s an ancient korean site, naver boom, a precusor of naver webtoons, a portion of it was salvaged, and almost all comics on the front page were “relatable” webcomics. It is also worth noting how there are, right now, 670 challenge webcomics on naver webtoons whose title contain the word “relatable”(although some portion of it is probably mocking this webcomic. I’ll explain it later). This format was considered pretty dead by the time, and this comic used exactly that.

often, the relatable stuff was already used in other webcomics. For example, ep.5 relied on three “haha isn’t it really awkward when you tell your friend goodbye but the bus/train doesn’t leave so you just need to stare at each other haha” jokes. This was already used in another webcomics, especially , a really popular webcomic, so there were lots of controversies about the comic ripping off other webcomics.

However, from a purely outsiders perspective the webcomic wasn’t that bad! The author used to write an almost similar webcomic somewhere else before it was posted on naver webtoons, and it was accepted quite well! He even got sponsored a tablet from a company for the webcomic, the comic even got translated into …

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1f8ibwv/webcomics_relatablejpg_naver_webtoons_worst/