As reported earlier, the first Webtoon/DC collaboration debuted this morning, and unsurprisingly, it’s Batman. Specifically Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, by CRC Payne, Maria Li, Lan Ma, Starbite, Jean Kim and Keilamel Sibal.
The strip has already created a lot of buzz on social media…and on the Webtoon app, where it has nearly 70,000 subscriptions after less than three hours live on the Webtoon app and site.
The first episode already has more than 11,000 likes.
Your humble reporter already zipped through the three strips on the browser version, and it was the first Batman comic I finished reading in…several years. The story involves Duke “The Signal” Thomas arriving at Wayne Manor to begin living with the nest of lunatics known as the Batman family — Tim, Jason, Damian, Stephanie…Alfred…the whole dysfunctional gang is here and I know that because every time a character was introduced, there was a helpful ID caption explaining everything about them.
The ID Caption is a familiar technique from webcomics, but little used in print comics, where I usually find myself flipping back and forth trying to figure out who’s who, based on their hair color. Admittedly that draws you in to a story, but sometime I you throw the comic across the room and go back to playing Marvel Strike Force.
In short, as far as I can tell from my advanced age, it’s an excellent introduction to the world of Batman with lots of humor while still being true to the feeling of the world. And the jokes are funnier than the whole run of Powerless.
While Webtoon’s sub and like numbers are indicative of nothing more than a click, with no money exchanging hands, it’s still a pretty strong debut for the partnership.
BTW, the creators of the strip — all 10 of them — may not be household names for DC fans, but they are hardly new to the game. We couldn’t find any internet history for CRC Payne, leading us to guess that it could be a pseudonym — maybe it’s Olivia Jaymes?
The rest of the team is all on Twitter. Artist Prince Canary aka StarBite has more than 300K followers on instagram. Layout/concept artist Maria Li is a storyboard artist at Webtoon, and was excited about the new project:
https://twitter.com/rowannox/status/1435654346503426048
They posted some of their concept art:
https://twitter.com/rowannox/status/1435659659562475525
Background artist Lan Ma already had a great touch for the Bat family:
Letterer Keilamel Siebel also has some Batman in their past. Colorists CM Cameron, Camille Cruz and Jean Kim are relative newcomers, according to Twitter. Producer Susan Cheng is a Webtoon veteran, as is associate producer Wil Kennedy.
So yeah, a lot of people to turn out a very well crafted product that adapts legacy characters for a whole new audience. Here we go!
