I feel like I might not be incredibly qualified to compare. I only used Tapas, Webtoon and Newgrounds. I’m not the greatest artist and y’all may have more experience with things I haven’t even considered.
That said, I feel tempted to play devil’s advocate here. I genuinely prefer reading comics Webtoon. At least with using the mobile versions of the sites (I’m too paranoid to download the apps).
Don’t get me wrong, Webtoon haven’t exactly provided basic quality of life stuff for creators, much of which Tapas provides. The same goes with the handling of “mature” content. Most of the stuff I do read on Tapas are comics I found on Webtoon that publicly addressed censorship issues. Also, I’ve obviously spent a lot of time on the forums.
But on Webtoon, I click on the canvas button and I see that it not only remembers the last genre I was browsing, but is also set to sort by the latest updates. Sucks that the episode descriptions are now links to the creator profile page. But There’s nothing off about scrolling through the actual comics themselves.
As for Tapas, after dealing with the extra second of hassle, I’m greeted to comics that were designed to fill my phone’s tiny screen getting sandwiched between two wide, white borders. Unless it’s marked as mature. Then the “continue” button on the content warning box acts as a “enlarge comic to ideal size” button. (This will not work if you turned those warnings off.)
At least Tapas let’s me pinch the screen to zoom in. Though it’s never perfect.
It’s worth it for reading stuff that’s been screwed over by Webtoon.
That being said, it’s hard to appreciate the more robust dashboard knowing that Tapas is the last place I would encourage people to read my stuff. So it seems a lot to ask of my 25 Webtoon subs (who almost never comment) to flock to the same thing on the less ideal website. I’d rather just follow the cryptic, inconsistently prudish content guidelines.
As for the third site I listed, no one will be surprised to know that it was not designed with comics in mind. Even Tom Fulp (the site’s founder) has admitted this and has expressed interest improving it... one day.
However...
It is extremely easy to upload art posts. There’s still the issue of borders but they’re a heck of a lot thinner. There is also the issue of the site assuming any post (art, news, forum, etc) isn’t a long form, vertical scrolling thing. But I have had the foresight to keep my posts either within the confines of a single image, or had a plan with how the image was sliced.
Also, the site is just fun. Partly because of the content, but it just feels good to use. Even as someone who mainly uses it to look at art on a phone.
TLDR: Webtoon is just the most realistic time investment for me personally (unless you count getting a real job). NG is more for hobbyists but that’s why I wish it was my job. Tapas... I must be missing something (even as someone who has picked up on it having the tightest community of comic artists of the 3).
