Tapas Media, the webcomics portal has signed with the talent agency APA for representation, it was announced today. Tapas has over 2 million monthly active users worldwide, with 3 billion episode views of its library of 50,000+ titles from over 35,000 independent comic book creators.
Tapas houses such poplar comics as They Say I Was Born a King’s Daughter by Legna Kim and Bi Chu, which has over 4 million views. You can see more of their popular comics on their “popular comics” page, which includes likes and views. Metrics!
Tapas is managed by THE|MACHINE and has partnered with Asian entertainment companies including Tencent, Kakao and U17.com, and publishing houses Hachette and Penguin Random House.
“We are excited to sign with APA, a formidable and iconic force in the entertainment community,” said Chang Kim, Founder & CEO of Tapas Media. “This is yet another important milestone for Tapas as we look to expand and build new opportunities for our community of storytellers and some of the most top performing content and IP on our platform.”
Added Michael Son, Editor in Chief of Tapas Media: “We’ve been strategically and methodically building out our abilities in the original content space with our creator community in mind; adding APA to our representation team alongside our management team at THE|MACHINE affords us the ability to pursue even more exciting and ambitious projects, as well as brings new opportunities to our creator community.”
Like other webcomic sites, Tapas has gotten into the celebrity comics game of late, signing “Love In Time” from creator-writers Ki Hong Lee (Maze Runner, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Chris Dinh (Single By 30, Crush The Skull), and James Chen (Wendy’s LookBook, Studio71). They’ve also partnered with Red Kraken Apps to develop and launch a Dungeon Construction Co. mobile puzzle game.
Where is the movile comics industry going? I’ve had a lot of convos about that of late, and Tapas – which has had many different iterations, incusing launching as Tapastic – is definitely part of that.