TvN's drama “Cheese in the Trap,” based on a webcomic of the same title, ended on March 1. Although it possessed a somewhat insufficient ending, it received a lot of attention due to the original webcomic’s popularity. Recently, derivative works based on webcomics have been receiving a lot of attention. YD Online’s mobile game, “God of High School,” has been performing well and has remained high in the Appstore’s ranking for a long time, which is anomalous since the game is based on a webcomic. The Argus looked into derivative works, one of the fastest growing types of content based on webcomics.

Dramas

tvN's drama Mi Saeng, or Incomplete Life, is an office drama showing the reality and sorrow of office workers. The drama ended in December 2014. It was stated to be a masterpiece that possessed popularity and good quality when derivative dramas of webcomics usually earn bad reviews. The drama was praised for maintaining the original webcomics atmosphere and message and for its empathetic story through the dramatization of the original characters and episodes. Its average viewership increased gradually from about two percent during the first episode to about eight percent for the last episode.

Cheese in the Trap is a campus drama showing various types of people at a university and is the only drama that became popular after Mi Saeng, but in the meantime, lots of derivative dramas of webcomics have been made. The reason why derivative dramas of webcomics are being steadily made even though they do not guarantee success is their implicit value. The drama Cheese in the Trap is praised for its detailed description of a university student's realistic position as it was made through a half pre-production system and recorded a high average number of viewers during its early episodes by borrowing from the original media's well-knit plot.

Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) started to broadcast the drama Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deul-ho (My Lawer, Mr. Joe) starring Park Shin-yang that is based on the Naver webcomic of the same title on March 23. Its story encouraged people to think about justice by showing the life of Mr. Joe, a lawyer. Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) planned to produce another drama, Shall We Have Dinner Tonight?, which is based on a Daum webcomic of the same title. It is a romance drama which depicts the relationships between man and woman with food as the focal point.

Games

The fantasy action webcomic God of High School (GOH) has been converted to mobile games by YD Online (YD) and NHN Entertainment (NHN), respectively. YD's mobile game God of High School, released in May 2015, has been producing abnormally good results as a mobile game based on the webcomic. YD made a profit by releasing the game and is now preparing to extend its service to Japan. Advance registration for the NHN game God of High School with Naver Webcomic recorded 500,000 participants in only ten days, and NHN is planning to release the game during the first half of 2016. The game will provide stories that are not used in the original webcomic and might reveal the original storyline in advance after a consultation with the webcomic's artist if it catches up the speed of story progression of original.

Glitter announced that they will develop a mobile game in the dating sim genre by using the intellectual property of the comic Cheese in the Trap. It will be based on the original story with new, additional characters and new episodes as supplementary story lines and will also use the original stills.

The city of Busan stated on March 1 that it plans to found the Global Webcomic Center. In addition, the Korean Webcomic Industry Association (KWIA) and the Korea Mobile Game Association (KMGA) signed memorandums of understanding to closely cooperate. The two associations agreed to begin by turning the comics Electronics GAUS and The Great Catsby into mobile games.

Musicals

The musical The Great Catsby RE:BOOT, based on the Daum webcomic of the same title, was performed from November 2015 to January 2016. The original was changed to a musical again after the musical The Great Catsby premiered in March 2007. It received an eight out of ten on Interpark and made audience members think about love by appropriately telling the original webcomic's difficult love story.

The musical Secretly Greatly, based on the Daum webcomic of the same title, was performed from February. 2016 to March on the same year. It received a grade for 9.3 out of ten on Interpark which sells musical tickets and was praised for its fast development based on the original story and musical songs. It is about North Korean agents who came to South Korea to accomplish a special mission.

Musicals based on webcomic are made with songs and choreography. Director Chu Jeong-hwa of the musical Secretly Greatly said, “After borrowing lines that show themes and deciding where the music will be, a songwriter composed the songs and the choreographer developed the choreography. It is the process in which songs and choreography were added to a webcomic's story.ˮ

Why do webcomics rise as a new source?

Big Fandoms
Derivative works based on webcomics are backed by the original media's popularity from the very start of the production. Just informing of the news that a webcomic has been converted to another format can have a large effect on advertising and can attract the attention of the readers of the original. The comic Cheese in the Trap has recorded 11 billion accumulated views and one million average daily views, and popular Naver webcomics receive over 10,000 comments each episode. The volume of readers is very large as it is easy to attract people through the accessibility of a free service. It does not mean that the volume of the users of services that charge is small either. Lezhin Comics reached their break-even point during their very first month when they started charging for their service and generated sales of 10.3 billion won in 2014.

Novelty and Variety
Webcomics have few limitations as the format of webcomics is like paper comics on the web. They reflect contemporary trends with various genres like action, romance, and horror and tell various stories. They also can easily have light themes and possess humor that books rarely have. Various themes are dealt with in webcomics as there are many webcomic artists and sites that service them. Thus, it is easy to find webcomics that already have a sense of completeness when producers look for specific material, which makes it possible to cover new material that they have not handled before that point. As you can see, webcomics are well positioned to be the source of derivative works.

Role as Storyboards
All the scenes of webcomics include lots of information, so they are feasible to convert. As they are so intuitive that you can easily grasp the character and space time background, it is easier to process them than convert text to images. A HUFS professor who teaches a class on understanding cartoons and animation said, “Webcomics have good conditions in that they include angles, lines, and sound effects and so on in each scene and are already colored, except for those that are black and white.”

What Limitations Do They Have?

Derivative works of webcomics today are usually dramas. Recently as the conversion to musicals and games has become a part of the trend the limitations have not really been exposed yet. The limitations that this article handles are about derivative dramas.

Undescribed Charm of the Original
The derivative works of webcomics always have to choose whether to use the intact contents of the original or maintain a totally different direction. It is important to decide the degree of adaptation considering the platform, story, and genre of the derivative works. The SBS drama Hyde, Jekyll, and Me, starring Hyun Bin, is based on the Daum webcomic Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde. The drama failed to decide whether its identity would be a romantic comedy or a thriller and recorded average view ratings of about five percent. It shows that derivative works can easily fail when they are not able to maintain the original source's charm and theme.

Unused Bi-direction of Webcomics
It is advantageous that artists and readers can communicate with each other and easily receive feedback for the webcomics. However, derivative works of webcomics these days do not use communication. They do not utilize readers and fandoms and have a one-way flow of production. Producers can communicate with readers through the production process, but until now, lots of producers of derivative works of webcomics only hope for readers' aid with the viewer ratings.

Webcomics have a big influence as they are already part of the cultural lives of people. According to a survey, the scale of the webcomic market was 295 billion won and the scale of the market that includes the derivative works was 420 billion won in 2015. As the city and associations are actively participating in the trend, the scale of the webcomic industry will continuously grow. Much attention is currently being paid towards webcomic adaptation to other formats and has given birth to a new huge success.