Best New K-Comics to Read: December 2024

It’s the holiday season, that inescapable time of year when you can’t avoid their mention even if you don’t participate in the major festivals! For some of us, that means it’s the perfect time to snuggle in and do some reading. Luckily for everyone, the major webtoon platforms bring out new series every month, so since this is a time when we’re all likely to get a little time off, let’s take a look at what Webtoon, Manta, Tapas, and Lezhin have to offer. These are all based on the first three to five chapters (typically what you can read for free), and as a note, I’m not including Tappytoon in this because they don’t put specific release dates on their titles, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of good stories to read there, too.

While the holiday season means “family” for a lot of folks in the West, in the East, it’s just as likely the time for romance. Unsurprisingly, many, if not most, of the December releases fall under that heading, though they’re all very different once you get past the genre. Among the absolute sweetest is Yeonwoo’s Innocence on Webtoon. Written and drawn by Esol, there’s a reason this is currently the top title on the site. Set in high school, it follows Yeonwoo, a shy boy with feminine features who’s had a crush on Haesol for roughly two years. He’s been trying to get his courage up to talk to her (equally aided and hindered by his best friend Junhyeok) but has had no luck so far. He finally gets his chance when Haesol lends him an umbrella, but then he discovers something horrifying: Haesol thinks he’s a girl and that he’s dating Junhyeok. Now he’s got to overcome his shyness and that misunderstanding, but thus far, the story is unfolding without even a hint of meanness. Haesol may be tall, strong, and popular, but she’s also kind underneath that, and it’s clear that she’s trying to think of ways to make Yeonwoo more comfortable. While this is an easy recommendation for those who like their heroines physically larger than their heroes (she’s significantly taller than him), it’s also got the makings of a sweet high school love story about someone learning that it’s okay to be himself.

Also on the sweeter side is The Path to You by Eibe, available on Manta. This one’s for the yuri fans – Hong is absolutely gobsmacked when she bumps into a gorgeous girl in an unfamiliar uniform on her way to school. She’s mooning over her when she gets to class, and she can’t believe it when the girl turns out to be Yeseul, the new transfer student. Since Hong is out, her friends are more than happy to try to organize ways for her to interact with Yeseul, although they’re also all careful not to make any assumptions about Yeseul’s sexuality. If she’s also a lesbian, awesome. If not, they’ll comfort Hong through her unrequited crush. Each member of the cast is well-defined and very much her own person (it’s an almost exclusively female cast), and there are hints that each girl is dealing with her own issues; friend Eunji is clearly coping with something the others aren’t aware of. The entire cast is a major draw here, but Hong really shines, and this has oodles of potential and a good translation to boot.

Sticking with the queer romance, Gig of the Day by Danbi is also on Manta. This is Danbi’s second series in English, with No Love Zone available on both Manta and Lezhin, with Seven Seas releasing the series in print. While Gig of the Day is also BL, it’s not an office romance like No Love Zone, instead taking for its protagonist down-on-his-luck college student Yeomin. Yeomin is drowning in debt from his family and is working myriad jobs in an attempt to make ends meet while still paying it all off. When he first bumps into romantic interest Yeon, he’s certain that the imposing older man is one of the thugs sent to make sure he pays up. Yeon isn’t, but he’s sure that Yeomin is a paparazzo trying to snap pics of him. Since the two keep meeting by coincidence, their assumptions keep looking correct, and it isn’t until they actually talk that they realize how wrong they were. Yeon is, of course, in a position to help Yeomin – paparazzo don’t stalk random guys in suits, after all, and this is what sets the stage for the romance to develop. Like No Love Zone, this stands to have a power imbalance between the romantic leads, but it’s also gearing up to be a lot of fun. Danbi’s art isn’t amazing, but it’s still more than up to the task, so BL fans may want to check it out.

But what if tortured yearning across time is more your thing? Fear not, Lezhin has OMI, geumnayo, and Sada’s Acacia waiting for you. This one actually strongly reminded me of NG Life from the creator of Yona of the Dawn – thousands of years ago, in a place that’s in no way Ancient Egypt (I swear!), a princess is captured by a ruler with an eye to making her his lover. His current lover isn’t pleased with this and wants to kill the beautiful princess, all uncaring that the princess already has a fiancé she’s in love with, the prince of a third nation. Flash forward to modern Korea, where all of the players have been reborn and, for plot reasons, gone into the entertainment industry. Only Acacia herself doesn’t seem aware of their past lives, setting the stage for a tale of love, rivalry, and thwarted passions thousands of years in the making. The art is beautiful, especially during the past chapters, and the plot is interesting, if familiar. I admit to being a total sucker for stories with an across-time element, but if you enjoyed NG Life, I really can’t urge you strongly enough to at least give Acacia a chance.

All of these stand to be relatively innocent (although I’m sure Gig of the Day will get racy later on), but don’t worry if you’re looking for something a little…naughtier. Lezhin, in general, does a good job of localizing raunchy webtoons, but The Hate Trap is, shall we say, a cut above most of what I’ve read there. The easiest way to describe it is, “If you’re a fan of Villains are Destined to Die but wished it had explicit sex scenes and libido meters, this is the series for you.” Our heroine, Yoo Sera, is a player of the in-world smutty otome game Who Trapped Our Lady?, and when she finishes playing it on easy mode, she wakes up in the game on hard mode – as the villainess, Sera Ebott. She gets notifications like “Engage in sexual intercourse with the character of each floor in order to unlock the next floor” and “Should you fail to keep your libido in check, your Sexual Frustration will increase until you enter into a Sexual Hysteria.” Basically, Sera has to screw her way out of a bad ending, and by chapter three, she’s learning that she can also seduce the NPCs, including her well-endowed butler, Alberto. I don’t think it’s meant to be funny, but it absolutely is anyway, as it twists the villainess isekai (otome game variant) into something a little different. It’s very much an 18+ title, but for ridiculous brain candy, you can’t do much better than The Hate Trap.

Danger is also a major piece of gakim and TK’s Cloth and Dagger, a spy story available on Manta. Set in Russia, it features Korean intelligence agent Sijun Ha going undercover in Russia as Catholic priest Father Francisco. What he’s doing there isn’t fully clear yet, but he’s been stationed at a Catholic orphanage that has three Korean children in its care, and his focus is very much on Anna, who is technically an adult and just living there. She refuses to leave her “siblings,” despite the fact that one of the Church’s major donors’ son has predatory designs on her. There’s probably a past link between Anna and Sijun; we know that in the past, he jeopardized a mission when the enemy was using a child hostage and that, even further back, he saved a baby when he was a child himself. Evidently, his interests are a bit conflicted, and there’s a deep sense of mystery saturating the entire setup. This is one that I want to go back to and read more of. It doesn’t hurt that the art is solid as well; no priest should look as good as “Father Francisco.”

There are plenty of secrets in Nari’s From Rain and Ash, as well. Available on Lezhin, this historical fantasy set in the Joseon era opens with a non-explicit sex scene but doesn’t feel like a romance. Yeon is the sole survivor of a fire that took her family, and with the death of her nanny, she’s now alone in the world, trying desperately to evade the clutches of Magistrate Byeon, who wants her to be his mistress. The combination of her refusing the most powerful man in the village and the deaths of her parents make her a much-maligned figure, and most people have nothing good to say about her. Thus, Yeon spends most of her time alone, subsisting on what she can forage from the forest…until one day, she spots a child being attacked by a giant snake. Yeon saves the little boy and brings him home, naming him Bibi after the chirping sounds she heard when she first saw him. Bibi is almost certainly not human, but he’s also all alone in the world, and together, he and Yeon could make a life together…if Magistrate Byeon wasn’t there, pressing his suit even harder. There’s something a little awkward about the art for the bodies in this one, but faces and clothing are very appealing, and if I’m a little concerned that the man in the sex scene that opens the story is Bibi all grown up, well, he’s not human and probably not an actual child. In any event, this is intriguing and worth a chance.

But if you want to keep any potential romance out of your stories with children, I Found Myself a Crazy Stepdad on Tapas might be a better fit. Based on the novel by Cheon hyerang and comicalized by Spooncomics, the story features a five-year-old protagonist desperate to save her mother. It’s not entirely clear if she’s been looping through time, failing to prevent her mother’s death at the hands of her uncle, the throne-usurping king, but poor Bebe is unquestionably at her wits’ end when she finally manages to create a magic circle that transports she and her unconscious mom out of the castle and into the manor of the astoundingly named Xenox Ablant. Xenox is a powerful widower with a few children of his own, and Bebe hopes to heal her mother and protect them both from her uncle. The best thing about this story is how Bebe herself is written. She’s more mature than the average five-year-old, but she’s also got the wariness of someone who has been mistreated and doesn’t trust people to do as they say. Xenox isn’t great at getting past her barriers (and may not want to), but at least one of his sons is willing to try. This story has enough darkness to keep it interesting, even if “Xenox Ablant” sounds like he belongs in a Star Wars spinoff rather than a fantasy story.

And speaking of fantasy stories, the creator of True Beauty, Yeongyi, is working on one! Available on Webtoon, Return Your Soul features the most gorgeous art of any story on this list and a story that may be more appealing to some readers than True Beauty. Ryeong Cheon is the daughter of a clan of great exorcists who can see ghosts but do not actually do any exorcising, which means that her aunt (her parents are dead) doesn’t see why she should put up with the girl. Ryeong amuses herself in town with the local street kids, but all of that changes when she bumps into a ghost possessing the body of a (gorgeous) young man. He says his name is Yuseong Kang, and he’s been in the village for what may well be hundreds of years, unable to leave. When the owner of his present body begged for ghostly intervention to save him from what appears to be good old-fashioned consumption (tuberculosis; never good, but a standard in 19th-century fiction), the ghost was happy to oblige, as having a physical form allows him freedom. He wants Ryeong to help him recover his memories, which almost certainly tie into the village legend of a savior god-snake. Ryeong agrees, but only if she’s allowed to join the martial arts school the body’s original owner is heir to, thus escaping her aunt. There’s a chance for bittersweetness, but Ryeong’s a firecracker of a heroine, and at the risk of stressing it too much, the art really is exquisite. Even if you didn’t like True Beauty (and I didn’t), this is worth giving a chance.

Like Acacia reminded me of NG Life, The Heavenly Demon Doesn’t want to Level Up on Tapas gives real Solo Leveling vibes. Written by Shainak and drawn by Prodefy Studios, the story is a mix of murim (wuxia) and dungeon delving. Jin Yuseong, a deposed prince of Goryeo, has risen to become the top of his martial arts sect, and there’s nothing left for him to do. When a strange foreigner tells him about “gates” powered by mana, Yuseong is intrigued, but after a subordinate vanishes through one and never returns, he begins to despair. Well, sort of – he manages to power one up himself (though to be impossible), and when he steps through…he’s in Seoul. But not our Seoul, but one gripped by the sudden appearance of Gates and gamespeak-like levels, skills, and whatnot. Everything is managed by the SG Office, with “SG” standing for “Safe Gate,” and Yuseong is basically the hero they’ve been waiting for. He doesn’t really have a clue what’s going on, and everything thinks he’s a harmless lunatic, but let’s just say that if you enter a Gate, there are worse things than having a murim lord on your team.

Our final title is one that proves that old tropes can still be fun. Available on Webtoon, Hiding a Warehouse During the Apocalypse, adapted by Jaedeok Wang from the novel by Goochee and illustrated by Saint Nine, sounds like something we’ve read or watched before. And it kind of is – hero Jeong-Gyeom is granted a special skill that allows him to store one item in his pocket dimension. He doesn’t believe it at first. After all, he’d just gotten out of the army, and the only job he could get was at an Amazonesque warehouse, where he got locked in a storeroom by accident. But while he’s in there, the apocalypse happens, and suddenly, a game screen is telling him, “You Have Been Chosen,” and detailing his power. Thinking he’s just lost his mind after three days in a storage room, Jeong-Gyeom chooses the entire warehouse as his “one item.” To his shock, it works, and the next thing he knows, he’s outside, and there are orcs and wyverns. Luckily for him (and the plot), Jeong-Gyeom was a Black Beret (special forces) during his army stint, and now he can, to quote the story, take down a wyvern with an axe while riding a bicycle. It’s overpowered and revels in it. Jeong-Gyeom’s plan is to get back to his parents and sisters rather than make himself a slave harem or something, which makes it more palatable. But mostly, this is just exciting and a whole lot of post-apocalyptic fun, and if you read just one thing from this article, I feel like this should be it.

This is only a small sampling of what’s new in December or otherwise, so go explore the webtoon sites and see what you can find! Winter is a great time for reading, so be sure to share any favorites in the forum.