Naver Webtoons 'Lore Olympus' and 'Everything Is Fine' Nominated for US Harvey Awards

Naver Webtoon 'Everything Is Fine'

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver Webtoon is raising its international stature in the U.S. market.

Naver Webtoon announced on the 2nd that its webtoons "Lore Olympus" and "Everything Is Fine" have been nominated for the 2022 U.S. Harvey Awards in the 'Digital Book of the Year' category.

The Harvey Awards, established in 1988 to honor the achievements of American cartoonist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, are recognized worldwide alongside the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards as prestigious comic awards. A total of five works were nominated for the 2022 Harvey Awards 'Digital Book of the Year' category, of which two are original works serialized on Naver Webtoon's English service 'WEBTOON'.

The nominated "Lore Olympus" and "Everything Is Fine" are works by creators from Naver Webtoon's 'Canvas'. Canvas is an amateur creative platform that applies the industry's first user-created content (UCC) comic board 'Challenge Comics', developed by Naver Webtoon, to the global market, fostering a large-scale global creative ecosystem.

"Lore Olympus" by Rachel Smythe was nominated again this year following its Harvey Award win last year. It is a popular work with a global cumulative view count of 1.2 billion and attracted attention by winning the Best Webcomic category at the U.S. Eisner Awards, a leading comic award ceremony, in July this year.

"Everything Is Fine" by Mike Verkul is also a webtoon loved by readers worldwide. It is a horror story depicting strange daily life between a couple living in an ordinary neighborhood. It began serialization in English in 2021 and is currently being actively serialized overseas, translated into Spanish, French, German, and other languages.

In addition to the Harvey Awards, Naver Webtoon has nominated four works, including "Lore Olympus," for the Best Webcomic category at this year's Ringo Awards.

The company explained that these achievements are the result of about ten years of investment by Naver Webtoon to build a global webtoon ecosystem. Currently, more than 60% of approximately 570 Korean works officially serialized on the Naver Webtoon platform are reaching global readers in languages other than Korean.

Lee Shin-ok, Head of Content for Naver Webtoon's North American business, said, "This nomination is the result of Naver Webtoon's consistent efforts to elevate 'WEBTOON' as a global content," adding, "As a pioneer who has opened up the webtoon creative ecosystem worldwide, we will continue to do our best to widely promote the value of webtoons."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.