Ahhhh, Webtoons. Despite your greed and your dedication to ruining a perfectly good UI, you remain my favorite source of schlocky media. After all, how would I ever live without my weekly dose of regression power revenge-fantasy soap opera romance to soothe the stress of my daily life? Your plots are thin, your main characters egregiously overpowered, and your stepsisters malevolently blonde and incompetent. Despite this, I must admit you carry a certain charm. This holds doubly so when, every once in a while, you manage to deliver on a genuinely good story. Rare as it might be, these occasional gems are truly worth treasuring.
A good webtoon delivers a perfectly paced story in bite-sized pieces, perfect to consume on your morning commute or as a break in between tasks. For these five webtoons, I tried to find those amongst my favorites that best fit the Halloween vibe! Since webtoons are released in a weekly serialized format, there aren’t many that revolve around a specific holiday, so instead, I focused on those that were horrors, thrillers, or which matched the Halloween aesthetics we’re all familiar with. Each of these stories is beautifully executed and wonderfully unique, so I hope that you’ll check some out this October.
- High Spirits Neoma by oroor0
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The story of a teenage medium and her family, High Spirits Neoma is the perfect balance of spookiness and heart. Neoma is the cursed daughter of a family who have dedicated their whole lives to putting spirits to rest. Having spent her childhood moving from place to place, their duty now brings them to a small town with an abnormally high spiritual activity. Now, together with her new friend Mateo, she must get to the root of why everything seems to be going wrong, and hopefully find a way to control her increasingly unstable powers. However, her family’s business seems to hold far more secrets than she ever expected to uncover.
Photo by @oroor0 High Spirits Neoma is a lovely little story about family and belonging, but don’t be fooled by its cute exterior. I’m not usually very fond of YA type stories, but I found High Spirits Neoma to be surprisingly heavy for a comic I thought was simply going to be a cute romance underlaid by ghost shenanigans. While Neoma and Mateo’s relationship is one of the main aspects of the story, it doesn’t concern itself with a will-they-won’t-they plot. Instead, the majority of the plot revolves around Neoma and the mysterious past of her ever-critical grandfather, Antonio, who very explicitly sees her as a failure.
Another wonderful aspect is the beautiful art and character design. Neoma in particular is rendered with so much love for both her and her fashion sense, which is particularly noteworthy as she’s one of the few Black webtoon leading ladies. It’s not often that I find a comic where I genuinely adore the main character’s outfits as much as I do Neoma’s. They’re never commented on much, but the fact that her hair and clothes change constantly really works to sell her as a teenage girl who is putting a lot of effort into her appearance. It also helps that each outfit is genuinely gorgeous and fashionable, ensuring that Neoma always looks adorable in all of her appearances.
- Phantom Whispers by moonkyoung kim
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Noa is rich, beautiful, adored by her family, and insane. At least, that’s what she’s been told all her life. Sane people don’t hear voices after all, but when a series of grisly murders rock her town, she must team up with the ghosts she’s been hearing to find the culprit. However, the mysterious criminal is always a step ahead of her, and the further the whole thing goes on, the more Noa realizes this killer might have it out for her in particular. As the situation grows more dire, Noa finds herself increasingly isolated and mistrusted by those she holds most dear.
Getting into the solidly horror picks, Phantom Whispers is a fantastic horror-thriller to pick up this October. Don’t let the ghosts and murder distract you though, because this is one of those “the real evil is people” sort of stories. Well, ok, the murderer is clearly people too, but I’m talking about people who don’t have the supernatural on their side. Yes, he stalks Noa and peels his victims’ faces off, but honestly, Noa really doesn’t need him to stay miserable, since the people around her are doing a great job of that all on their own, no killing necessary. A good deal of the horror elements come from Noa’s increasingly tattered mental health, keeping the tension high even when the Big Bad isn’t currently tormenting her. I won’t say any more to prevent spoilers, so I’ll leave it at this: trust no one.
- Nevermore by Kate Flynn and Kit Trace
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Did you develop an Edgar Allan Poe phase after reading The Tell-Tale Heart in English class? Do you enjoy stories with large ensemble casts of developed, dynamic characters? Are you a fan of scheming, manipulative, and possibly evil women who also happen to be incredibly attractive? Say no more, because Nevermore is the Webtoon for you.
Photo by @rednflynn After washing up on the shores of a mysterious school with a woman named Annabel Lee, Lenore is shocked to discover that they’re both dead. What’s more, neither of them can remember how it happened, or much of anything really. Now, they must both compete against the other students for the chance to be revived, but things are never quite as straightforward as a deathmatch competition. With the two of them cast as the leaders of opposing student factions, Lenore must find a way to protect her newfound friends while keeping her relationship with Annabel a secret, and hopefully find a loophole that allows them all to escape from the wretched school.
Nevermore is a fantastic comic. From the very beginning, the art is beautiful and expressive, with a dark and grim color palette accentuated by bold colors that really sells the Poe mood. The main concept of dead-people-who-have-lost-their-memories is the perfect set up for character backstory reveals, especially since regaining the memory of how they died is tied to them awakening their superpowered ghost forms. These short flashbacks can drastically alter the way the audience would otherwise interpret the characters. After all, there’s no moment where someone is more vulnerable than at their time of death.
Our protagonists, too, are exciting to follow. Lenore is suave and charming, almost roguish. With her band of misfits, she is determined to cause trouble, but she is also deeply sentimental and driven by the need to keep her loved ones safe. Unluckily for her, one of her loved ones is Annabel Lee. Annabel is perfect, a posh princess who is always level-headed, and she is the first to unlock her memories and thus her ghost form, cementing her immediately as a force to be reckoned with.
However, her immaculate appearance and polite demeanor hide a reality altogether quite different from Lenore’s. She is cold and calculating, frequently even cruel in her actions towards her group of so-called friends. It’s Annabel, who, upon seeing how Lenore is flocked to by the class underdogs, decides to gather up the top-dogs herself. As she explains to Lenore, this will ensure that the two of them have complete control over what unfurls. Still, despite her disregard for others and her manipulative tendencies (she is, and I must emphasize, truly the worst) she cares deeply only for Lenore, who won her heart long before they died. If it’s not obvious, Annabel is my favorite character in Nevermore, and if you, too, are an ardent supporter of women’s wrongs, I believe you will love her as well.
- Everything is Fine by Mike Birchall
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In this cute comic about cat-headed people, we follow regular American couple Sam and Maggie’s life in their perfect suburban neighborhood. They have a lovely dog named Winston, although he’s not very active anymore, and get along smashingly with their neighbors. Pay no attention to any inconsistencies, as they don’t really mean anything. Everything is fine.
Anyways, Everything is Fine is a dystopian horror webtoon that explores the relationship between Sam and Maggie in a world that presents them with increasingly harder choices to make. With the fear of the worst happening always on their minds, they must navigate government surveillance, untrustworthy acquaintances, and the knowledge that doing the right thing is almost certainly a death sentence for the person they each love the most.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter by YIDAHM
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Last, but certainly not least, I give you Like Mother, Like Daughter. Out of all the webtoons I’ve written about today, I consider this one to be the best of the bunch.
This psychological thriller follows Somyung Gil, a bright girl with a missing father and a dead brother. However, not all is bad. Her mother, who is a professor at a local university, adores her and strives to give her all the material comforts her wealth can buy. Still, Somyung has a terrible suspicion: her perfect mother may have killed her own son because he wasn’t good enough. Now, she must find a way to take down her mother while remaining perfect enough to avoid meeting her brother’s fate.
Like any good thriller, this webtoon is chock-full of masterfully executed twists and turns. If you’re a fan of mind games and manipulation, you will find plenty to enjoy in this story. The main question of the comic lies within the implication of the title: Will Somyung manage to expose her mother without becoming a monster herself?
What I particularly enjoy about this webtoon is seeing how the author explores Somyung’s increasingly frayed mental state as she fights to keep herself together in the face of overwhelming terror. Her desperation to protect the people around her from her mother, acts as a counterpoint to the petty school drama she is surrounded by, and this contrast sets the perfect stage for her eventual mental breakdown.
Despite how Webtoon lacks content directly aimed towards the Halloween fanatics, this platform still features many options for those who wish to consume more scary content each October. Each of the stories I’ve shared here today can be binged in only a few hours, making them a great choice to unwind after the worst horror of them all: midterms. Over the past few years, all of these webtoons have consistently been something I look forward to every week, and I only hope you all will enjoy them as much as I have. Happy Halloween!