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On Wednesday, Webtoons announced some more licensing arrangements. I wasn't going to comment beyond the quick Mastodon post I made, but then with their quarterly report coming out yesterday, I think the two speak to a larger story.

Their Wednesday press release seems straight-forward on its surface. It says Webtoon is partnering with Warner Brothers Animation to bring some of Webtoons' comics into animated form. The press announcement only lists some of the properties -- a standard marketing tactic is to spread out the announcements of specific properties over a longer period to keep interest ongoing -- and it also doesn't note the distribution venue at all. But it also states that "the companies intend to enter into an agreement" (emphasis mine) meaning they haven't actually finalized the contracts yet.

Now, as you may recall, Webtoons made a few headlines in September around some contract deals with Disney. Following that up so quickly with an announcment about making a deal with Warner Brothers struck me as a very cynical business plan. Those are two massive deals in a very short amount of time, but they're also both agreements without any actual content behind them. I mean, yes, there are specific titles involved but the announcements are all about plans and "forthcoming projects." They essentially don't have anything to show besides the contracts. And in one case, not even that.

That screams to me that Webtoons is trying to generate as much market buzz as they can. Without any content to back that up, the buzz is all about the company itself, meaning they are trying to drive up the stock price. And the only reason to inflate the stock price is to be able to sell. Either a good percentage of their shares or the company as a whole. Stock prices are intended to reflect the value a company has in bringing its goods/services to the market; the prices are an ancillary result of a business doing well. By intentionally driving the prices (in either direction, honestly, though most people focus on "up") that signals that you're business model is focused on selling stocks, not on doing business.

But then we also have their third quarter earnings reported yesterday. A single quarter loss of $11.6 million, down from $20 million in profit during Q3 2024. Despite a nearly 9% increase in revenue over the same period. That is, they brought in a lot more money but spent so much of it that they went in the hole. They further forecast that their fourth quarter earnings this year would see a revenue decline of as much as 5%. This despite increases in both monthly users and monthly paying users. Which is to say that they're going to continue spending more money than they're taking in even as they bring in more money!

Now, admittedly, the old axiom of having to spend money to make money has an element of truth to it. But it seems to me that Webtoons, since its IPO last year, has been spending more cash that it's bringing in and, more notably, has mostly been spending much of that on licensing agreements instead of content or app improvements. (I noted earlier this year how they've in fact actively made their app worse.) But yesterday's earnings report saw an immediate drop in their stock price by 25%! Webtoons is not only spending much more money than they're making, but over the past year and a half, they've got nothing to show for it. A bit of vaporware and that's it.

There is nothing I'm seeing in Webtoons this year that doesn't strike me as a cynical plan to sell stock, and they're not doing all that great a job at that. When Webtoons was still part of Naver, we weren't privy to their finances, but rumors were circulating that that part of their business was continually run at a loss. While this year's news doesn't 100% confirm those rumors, they certainly lend a lot of credence to them!
There was a < AHRef="https://www.dc.com/blog/2025-11-11/dc-announces-new-dc-go-crossover-webcomic-the-flash-fantastic-four">joint DC/Marvel announcement yesterday about using a pair of crossovers to promote the company's respective digital offerings. One of which is The Flash/Fantastic Four. While I'm not going to sign up for DC Universe Infinite just for this comic, I am intrigued because I think it makes for one of the most interesting opportunities between the two publishers.

See, one of the frequent refrains I hear from comicdom with regards to intercompany crossovers is trying to match power sets. While there are some very direct comparisons -- like Green Arrow/Hawkeye and Aquaman/Sub-Mariner -- and more than a few less-direct-but-still-fairly-obvious comparisons -- like Thor/Shazam and Silver Surfer/Green Lantern -- the opportunities that I find most intriguing are ones that are rarely, if ever, brought up. Like The Flash/Fantastic Four.

Obviously, there's no power correlation here. The closest the FF have to a speedster character is that former team member Crystal used to be married to Quicksilver. I'm not as versed in the Marvel Universe as I used to be, but I haven't seen that even mentioned in over thirty years. But the super power comparisons are not what's interesting here anyway. The interesting angle is the specific personalities involved.

Barry Allen, as you might recall, was a scientist. A scientist in the vein typical of 1950s pop culture where he was adept in all the sciences from chemistry to physics. The same holds true for Reed Richards. Although Reed is at the uppermost echelon when it comes to scientific geniuses, Barry's no slouch. What's interesting between them is their different approaches. Reed is more interested in the aspect of solving puzzles for their own sake, whereas Barry comes to the table as a forensic scientist, often working backwards from a solution instead of towards one. Those two approaches to the same interest, I think, are more fascinating from a storytelling perspective than whether Reed is stretchier than Elongated Man.

But also of note here is that Barry's interest in superheroing frequently makes him seem a bit "flighty" or unserious when it comes to his romantic relationships. Johnny Storm is also similarly unserious when it comes to relationships, although here again, for different reasons. He, too, is usually more interested in superheroing, but more for the thrill of the adventure itself than Barry's more altruistic ideal of helping people. It's these similar traits that come from differing motivations that are potentially interesting because each character can see bits of themselves in the other, but can be forced to reflect on why they are also dissimilar.

Now, whether or not Iris West also appears is unclear, but the comparisons with Sue Richards could also be interesting. They were both originally just "love interest for the main character" when they were introduced, but had to develop into real characters over the ensuing decades. Their differing approaches here, again, make for narrative interest. They went from just kind of going along with whatever "their man"'s adventures took them to becoming protagonists in their own right, in part, "forced" into the role by virtue of their spouse being perptually distracted.

Oh, and as a curious -- but I doubt will be mentioned in the issue -- aside, both the Flash and the Fantastic Four started their super-powered careers in Central City. So there's that obscure continuity connection too!

Now whether this book is any good is another matter altogether. A great idea can falter in its execution, and I haven't seen anything here beyond what's in the announcement. But it's the first DC/Marvel crossover I've seen that struck me as at least having the potential to make for some interesting and complimentary character dynamics. I expect I'm in a minority here, but I'd be much more interested in intercompany crossovers if they focused more on team-ups based on their characters and not on their power sets. Someone will have to tell me how this is, though; as I said, though, it's not interesting enough for me to sign up for a service that I wouldn't likely use beyond reading this single issue.
A letter published in the January 10, 1938 issue of Time Magazine...
Sirs:

In your article in TIME issue of Dec. 27 regarding the accomplishments of Walt Disney, the author has failed to give credit to the man who is the father of animated cartoons and who created them almost 30 years ago at which time Mr. Disney was probably running around in rompers.

I refer to Mr. Winsor McCay who died about three years ago.

Mr. McCay was an artist in every sense of the word and his cartoons of “Little Nemo” and “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” that appeared in Sunday newspaper supplements were the joy and delight of the youngsters of that day.

His first animated cartoon showed a prehistoric animal he called “Gertie” and while Mr. McCay stood in front of the screen and gave a sort of lecture, “Gertie” would bow and act as if she were responding to Mr. Mc-Cay’s instructions.

I am not for taking away from Mr. Disney any of the glory he justly deserves, for I, like many others, consider him the No. 1 animated cartoonist of today but I am only asking for credit where credit is due.

HENRY W. WILSON
New York City
It's Veterans' Day here in the US, and I was going to do a post today rounding up all the comic strips I could find that referenced it. But one of the first ones I came across -- indeed THE first one I came across -- was Dogs of C-Kennel by Mick and Mason Mastroianni...
This gets at an issue that I think has been indicative of the federal government for at least all of my life, but has been put in sharp relief in more recent years. Namely, that the government supposedly of the people, by the people, and for the people very much is not any of those things. Especially the latter.

I am not a big fan of the military to begin with. Armed conflict is juvenile in the first place, and I am philosphically opposed to any ogranization that requires obediance without question by design. That said, I do understand and appreciate the often noble intentions many people have in joining the armed forces. The disconnect, though, is that the nobility they have in enlisting -- the notion of potentially fighting to the death for a set of ideals -- is not reflected in the people overseeing the organization.

How many stories have you heard about veterans having to fight for health benefits they were promised? How many stories have you heard about veterans unable to get the help they need? They're treated by the government -- both Congress and the White House -- as cannon fodder, discarded and forgotten the second they're not actively useful as a weapon.

You can determine most organizations' priorities by their spending. And while it varies from year to year and service to service, the smallest line items in US military budgets tend to be housing and health care. That there are 30,000 homeless veterans in the US is a tragedy in every sense. But I think, most tellingly, it highlights the imbalance between the nobility of people who volunteer to be part of the military and the ignobility of those ostensbily tasked with ensuring they're being taken care of.
I was reading through an old post of mine from 2007(!!!) about how I stopped going to my Local Comic Shop every Wednesday because I "needed" to get the latest issues immediately, and flipped a sort of mental switch where I would hit the shop most (but not all!) Wednesdays as a matter of ritual. That it was the act of knowing what I was going to do on my lunch hour once a week that provided a modicum of stability in a turbulent world. (And good grief, when I compare what I thought was turbulent in 2007 versus what I consider turbulent now... YOWZA!)

It might not be terribly surprising that my comics habits have changed considerably since 2007. When I moved up to the Chicago area in 2013, for example, I actually lived in several different places before finding and moving into a permanent residence. Because I kept moving, I wasn't able to establish my local comic shop. And unfortunately, once I did finally find a place, the physically closest comic shop is an unironic real-life version of Android's Dungeon.
Comic Book Guy and Stan Lee
It's cramped and dingy and dark and unorganized and the owner seems sketchy as hell. So I don't go in there very often.

Now, I certainly could go to any number of other comic shops. Chicago has a number of really good ones; many are closer to me now than one of my previous local comic shops was to me in Ohio. But by the time I had settled down from moving, and figured out where everything was... well, my buying habits had somewhat forcibly changed. At that point, I wasn't getting any ongoing titles any longer and the ones I was getting had been winding down anyway. Once I bought the last couple issues, I wasn't in the stores enough to see what new books might replace them. And I had plenty to still read thanks to webcomics. So between shop signings and sporadic conventions, I was still able to get all the new physical comics I wanted, with maybe an occasional order on Amazon for a good trade paperback I might hear about.

My comics ritual had dissolved entirely. It wasn't that it had changed or morphed a bit; it was just gone. I was still reading comics, but there was no ritual tied to the process at all. Whenever I had time. I started using a subscription service (Lone Star Comics' MyComicShop for those interested) when I was laid up for several months after my accident in 2018. This inadvertently created a new potential ritual for me -- receiving a package once a month with all my new comics. I could establish some new process for opening the box, checking the new issues, and reading them. Give myself a little much-needed stability to stabilize the super chaotic couple of years I've had.

But for some reason, I've never done that. Some months, the box would arrive when I was home, some months not. If I was home, the dog would usually alert me to the deliverer's presence so I could retrieve the package whenever it arrived (usually in the early afternoon) rather than always waiting until the end of the day or something. I could've set aside some special time to open each box and sort through the new issues. Also not done. I could recognize the boxes pretty much immediately, so there was no real surprise in what was in them, so they would sometimes sit on the kitchen table for a day or so before I could get to them. "Yup, I know what that is. Nothing that requires my immediate attention." Or maybe, "I won't be able to read these until the weekend, but it's garbage day tomorrow, so I can open it now and make sure the box gets in the recycling bin right away."

And that's all been... fine? I guess? I mean, I don't really miss the weekly trips to the comic shop, and I don't feel like things would necessarily better if I developed a ritual for how I read comics now. But given how stormy the waters have been -- and how we've collectively had very little stability for the past several eons, i.e. 2025 -- maybe I really should make a point of making my comic book reading a more ritualistic process. To provide a period of grounding that I can give myself once a week or so. An hour or two every week that I can count on, regardless of what the most recent dumpster fire that fills up my news feed is.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Don Martin, Animated
 
Kleefeld on Comics: What's the Impact of Comics Visuals?
 
Kleefeld on Comics: Comics in the Epstein Files
 
Kleefeld on Comics: Yow -- An Original Griffith!
 
Kleefeld on Comics: Onomatopoeia to End the Week
I've been forced to re-build my entire home network from the ground up over the past week. While I've appreciated the opportunity to start 'clean' as it were, and being able to structure things better, it's also been rough trying to do so in a fairly compressed timeframe in/around my day job. Because it's not just getting a new router online and hooking up my laptop; it's somewhere between 150-200 smart home devices that are all interconnected using a combination of wi-fi, bluetooth, zigbee, and z-wave. I don't mind telling you that it's been frustrating and exhausting, and I hate that I have to be my own IT department.

(I'm certainly not an IT specialist, but I do think I'm more adept with this kind of thing than most people and I seriously have no idea who aren't technically savvy manage to operate their homes any more. I mean, you can hardly find a new appliance that doesn't try forcing you to connect to the internet any more.)

In any event, since I started this week's blogging with Don Martin, I figure I'll end the week with him as well with just a small sample of his onomatopoeia representing what dealing with all this technology feels like...