Most of my early comics work was in black and white. I was a finalist in the last UK and Ireland Rising Stars of Manga back in... yeesh, it must have been 2007 or something? and did a lot of stuff with UK small press, all in black and white, often with screentones. My very early attempts at webcomics were black and white too because I was hugely influenced by Megatokyo.

But when I started seriously trying to build an audience, I switched to colour, pretty much because it's been common wisdom since even back in the 00s that it's easier to catch people's eye and to look finished in colour.

I do enjoy working in black and white. There's a lot of really interesting compositional stuff you can do in black and white that doesn't necessarily work in colour, and I think a lot of developing creators ought to try making a comic where they limit themselves to just "black, white and one mid tone" on a short comic to learn to better use light and dark in their compositions and character designs. I still think "Above the Clouds", my entry that placed in the '09 Manga Jiman competition, is one of the best comics I've ever made, and it's aged a lot better than my colour work from that time:

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That said, I often don't like black and white webcomics because...er... a lot of people use greyscale really badly. They fill everything in with a bunch of mid-grey tones as if it's just a colour image that's been desaturated, and it becomes muddy and hard to read. If somebody doesn't have a really strong grasp of how to use black and white effectively to block out light and shadow in a scene or draw the eye where it needs to be or show depth, I feel like they really ought to just use colour. I particularly get boggled when I see somebody filling in every part of their panels with a lot of mid greys and then saying "I use black and white because it's faster!"... I don't really get how that's faster; everything's filled in and with different tones, which to me is indistinguishable from filling everything with different colours.

I have a lot of fun using colour for Errant, because there's a lot of fun things to do with colour too, like glowy magical effects, or associating colours with characters to add an extra layer of meaning in places, using clashing colours to show discomfort, or soft ones to create a Romantic mood... it can be a really fun tool to use! Like on this page, where the overall room is in shades of Gold, associated with the terrible King Urien, so you feel like he dominates the scene even when he's not there, and the yellow almost creates a deathly, sickly feeling or one of dust and decay, and then when she's thinking about Sarin Aoki, looking at her chair, the background is blue; her associated colour, to emphasise what's on Rekki's mind.

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Colour can be used badly too though, like sometimes I see bad, garish, patchy fills of over-saturated, unnatural colours and I'm just thinking "ugh, this would have looked better left as the line art".

Basically, I like both, but I think creators need to commit to really using whichever one they pick to maximum effect.

Artistically speaking: If your art is strong without color then color will do nothing to enhance it. If you need color to get over that finish line, you should use it.

Cognisantly speaking: The public expects color and are often openly hostile towards not having it. Companies hold the same views. If you want any hope of, say, Naver Webtoon plucking your comic out of their lineup and selling it to Korean Netflix color is a must have.

Black and white comics have a different aesthetic which I really like.
The same like comics which are only colored with just one color or a very limited
color palette, it has something really stylish and I believe that limited options can
be a good tool to make strong and impactful creative decisions. It´s the same like
in music, I like really stripped down arrangements with minimal instruments, recorded
live. The decisions you have to make are very similiar

I´m a big fan of Will Eisner, Jordi Bernet and other black and white artists.
The art looks beautiful without colors, they put out some colored comics with
Jordi Bernet´s linework and it didn´t work at all, it lost the touch

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Oh man, I love B&W! My old attempt at a comic was just ink work on 11" x 14" bristol, it was so easy and quick compared to color. I feel like my characters were also a lot more expressive without color, but that might just be because I had time to have fun with it. As Darthmongoose said it can look really muddy and indistinguishable when you don't know how to use it, also another downside is a lot of readers don't like it. I used to get the occasional comment asking me to switch to color, or they would keep reading if it were in color, which sucks. Not gonna lie though, I was kinda in the muddy camp, had too much fun with hatching so I went a little overboard.

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That being said, I probably would have done my current comic the same way (Hopefully with better understanding of storytelling shading.), but the story work best with color so that's what I'm doing. Unfortunately I guess I'm just a muddy bitch because my coloring is also just as muddy, but it's fun in it's own way. I like blue, and it shows, it's also a good challenge since there's a lot more that needs to be considered. Like, color composition, lighting and such are way more difficult with color imo. You can also play around with mood in color, B&W is very limited in that aspect. (Which I'm not very good at since I tend to forget ton a lot. But I'm slowly improving! Lol) As well as do color picking for certain scenes and whatnot.

I grew up reading newspaper comics which were in b/w with screentoning. This was done because it is cheaper to print b/w for newspapers. Tho now that digital comics are growing in popularity, newspaper comics will have a b/w for print and a color version for digital.

This is also similar to manga. Manga are usually released first in magazine that are printed on newsprint. Having them in B/W reduces the cost of the publication and also allows that artists to finish their work within the deadline which is sometimes a week.

I do like B/W comics but a lot of readers prefer color. I think the reason why is because similar to digital strips, digital comics don't have to worry about printing costs. A benefit to color comics is allowing to use color as a plot point. I remember as a kid thinking Gaara from Naruto was blonde because I didn't really have any color reference to work off of. I know people have the anime to look at but at the time, that wasn't really a thing that existed yet.

Strictly talking from a reading perspective, color can indicate more moods than grayscale. Desaturated art can make you feel the dread, tension, or whatever emotion the artist wants to convey. Vibrant colors can also make viewers feel lively, happy, etc.
On the other hand, B/W comics can give you an entirely different set of feelings. You often don't have the wide range of emotions to visualize when working with grayscale, but depending on your fundamental art style, you can still create some different moods. Techniques can also enhance B/W comics, like subtle crosshatching, grayscale effects, etc.

I grew up reading manga, so yeah I’m more drawn to black and white comics not to say I hate colours or anything, not at all, there’s just something I find aesthetically pleasing about Japanese comics. Also, I prefer making black and white comics. I tend to overthink a lot when coloring so it stresses me out a bit, but when I’m working with screentones it’s more relaxing for me and I get pages done quicker, y’know?

Still working on paper with no intent to switch, greyscales with markers are cheap and easy. So much to my highflying artistic thoughts. XD

Black And White:
Pros:
-Has the potential to be more moody (Although, not always)
-Higher contrast on average
-Useful for a 'manga style'
-Often way faster, unless you REALLY want to make a masterpiece every panel
-Saves you from having to spend a lot of time learning to master color.. except for the cover, I guess.
Cons:
-No color.. which is obvious, but if color is important to your story, you'll have to obviously spell it out to the audience sometimes...
-No color.. so the usual tapas/webtoon reader might be taken back a bit. Nothing wrong with that.
-More focus on lineart, so you can't really hide a below average lineart job with a bunch of pretty colors.. However, it'll help you to get way better at lineart because of that!
-Can cause confusion if your composition isn't in tip-top shape. Despite the quality of the art, some black and white manga like Berserk fall victim to this sometimes.

Color:
Pros:
-Beautiful color, so your audience will fully and truly know that yes, your main characters hair is turquoise.
-Color tricks.. not so sure what the name of it is. You know how the colored version of JoJo changes colors for mood? You can do that. And, you can use color in text and speech, to varying levels of success.
-The "expected" style. Readers on webtoon and tapas come to expect color from most webcomics, so they'll feel right at home if it's in color. Scroll format too.
-Its easier to make things look "clearer" because your audience can see the separation between objects with both color and values.
Cons:
-Takes WAY longer unless you're really rushing. And, you have to think about color and not just values. Oof.
-An extra craft that has to be mastered, along with all the other parts of comic creation.

My preference is black and white, mostly because coloring takes me way to long and I love that black and white comic style. Personally, I believe you shouldn't really care about which one nets more viewers and you should just pick whichever is more fun to you.

You have to consider your public and what platform(site)/form (digital or printed) the comic was created for.

Manga are mostly B/W but they include lots of details, depicting lots of action. They were meant to be printed and read in a book style. That's why you read it from right to left.

Manga were done in B/W mainly because artists lacked time to color it each week (weekly jump).

Now comics like DC/Marvel had more time to get printed so they took their time to do it with color.
Unlike manga western comics didn't really share the space in their printed version with other authors.

Moving on to webcomics, they were greatly influenced by manhwa and manhua.
Both of this comics were designed to be read in a cellphone vertically.
That being said manhwa influenced webcomics more than manhua. Mainly in art style.
Manhua have more details but are way shorter than manhwa (in general).
Manhwa gets updated weekly but characters usually have less details allowing authors to make a longer comic than a manhua.
Manhwa episodes are still short allowing them to be published weekly.
A huge difference between manhwa author's and manga author's is that the former can take a break to prepare for the next season to keep a schedule while the latter can only take breaks during japanese holidays or when they get sick.

Knowing the history of how comics have evolved we can say B/W is not better than color and vice versa.
They are just practiced that way for different reasons.

If you want tl draw lots of details with a very limited time then B/W is a better option. But if you want to draw adding almost no details then you should use color.

Another thing you have to take into consideration is where you are uploading your comic. If it is a platform meant to be read up to down then you should use a manhwa/manhua style comic (with this logic your comic should be in color with short episodes and few details).

If the platform doesn't allow you to read up to down and instead you have to press next to see the next image then you should use a traditional comic/manga style be it in B/W or in color it all depends on the amount of time you have between each episode being made public.

Having said that, tapas' main attraction are korean manhwa. So you should consider that most people join for that korean Manhwa style since they want to read from their phone.

Webtoons is also a platform that has adopted this style. That's why all their serialized comics are done like manhwa but with more details and longer episodes (not by much) than a traditional manhwa.

Having said that it doesn't mean people won't like manga style art. But it will be far less popular due to the nature of said platforms.

If you want to publish a more traditional manga style comic in B/W I recommend using platforms like MangaPlus Creators. These platforms/sites are made for creators with this iconic style.

P.S. Western comics were also limited by their printers. If I recall correctly the hulk was originally supposed to be gray but got changed to green since the printer was having trouble with the gray version.
Comic history regarding color/B&W is very interesting and long.

My story is kind of like a webcomic/manga, I think it depends on what kind of feel you want it to have. Color can help differentiate certain scenes (sometimes I can't tell what I'm looking at in a manga).