On July 24, global storytelling platform, publisher, and pioneer in webcomics, WEBTOON, made an exciting announcement at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 that is bound to thrill readers worldwide. As The Game of Nerds’ representative for SDCC this year, I had a front row seat for this exciting announcement that took place during the From Page to Pixel: Legendary Comics for a New Generation on WEBTOON panel. For an hour, present panelists Quinn Sonsa-Spears (WEBTOON executive producer), Bixie Mathieu (IDW Publishing associate editor), Cara O’Neil (Dark Horse Comics VP of Marketing), and Whyt Manga (Saturday AM co-owner and creator) discussed the fruits of their partnerships and how together they are redefining iconic stories for the digital age. As a long-time consumer of WEBTOON webcomics, I was eager to learn what was in store. And let me be the first to tell you, this news will not disappoint.
For context, WEBTOON announced earlier this year that their partnerships with award-winning publishers IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics, and Saturday AM will reformat and launch fan-favorite series to their English-language platform with the intent to reach new audiences worldwide. This extraordinary partnership between publishers arguably reflects a major shift in the comics industry, with traditional publishers initially experimenting with webcomics to fully embracing them as an essential part of the medium’s future in entertainment. With WEBTOON, traditionally published comics and graphic novels will be easily accessible and digitally distributed to a global audience, allowing readers to consume a much larger expansion of original storytelling.
WEBTOON and IDW Publishing, for example, partnered to bring a selection of beloved IDW books to a globally accessible digital platform. Examples of digitally adapted IDW titles include Godzilla: Unnatural Disasters, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. Last month at Comic-Con, WEBTOON announced that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin will be the latest IDW title to be reformatted and launched as a scroll comic on its digital platform.
Originally a five-issue miniseries published by IDW Publishing between October 2020 and April 2022, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin follows the youngest turtle, Michelangelo “Mikey”, in an alternative future, where he has outlived his brothers and Master Splinter and has sworn vengeance against the Foot Clan and its leader, Hiroto Oroku, the grandson of Shredder. Featuring alternative versions of characters from the TMNT franchise, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin will be reformatted to fit WEBTOON’s vertical scroll format, allowing TMNT fans to enjoy the miniseries from the convenience of their phones. Readers can expect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin to launch on the WEBTOON digital platform, available to read on the official mobile app or WEBTOON website, on August 23, 2025.
As part of its collaboration with Dark Horse Comics, WEBTOON also announced at Comic-Con that fans can look forward to Cyberpunk 2077 being reformatted as a scroll comic and launched on their digital platform. Based on American roleplaying, board, and video game designer Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk tabletop game series, Cyberpunk 2077 was widely known as an open-world action role-playing game released in December 2020 and celebrated by game critics and players for its unique narrative, setting, and graphics. However, Dark Horse Comics officially published the first issue of the Cyberpunk 2077 comic book series months before the video game was released, and published several other comics set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe years later. Readers can expect Cyberpunk 2077 to launch on the WEBTOON digital platform, available to read on the official mobile app or WEBTOON website, on August 8, 2025.
If you, too, are a WEBTOON fan and excited by this news, stay tuned for more! More original comics and graphic novels are bound to be adapted for digital distribution, and it is our job as eager readers to see that these stories are accessible to everyone with a deep love for elaborate worldbuilding, cleverly designed characters, and more!
