Lutea Arts

When you first opened up tapas's site, it used to have the big indie comics front and center, and they didn't push you to post in scroll format. Indie comics aren't even obviously placed anymore. You have to go under the "community" tab to even see actual indie comics... even though tapas only did well BECAUSE of indie artists.

And they are so annoying with the corporate manwha! Its gotten to the point that they flood your notifications on site with adverts for manwhas! You think your comic is getting popular only to find out its just a bunch of ads for comis you WON'T flooding your messages. They only recently started advertising community comics in messages and they are few and far in-between.

NO YOU CAN'T TURN THEN OFF, YOU THANK TAPAS FOR THAT!

I use tapas as a minor site now but it doesn't fee like home. It doesn't feel like a place I can grow anymore. It feels like a chore to post there now. Ans no, I still don't use its fuwkazz app. I'm not paying a dsmn thing after they gutted all the reasons I used to use the site.

Never touched webtoons and I'm all the happier for it.

Now I tend to avoid apps in general. If I can use it on web, mobile browser, or on desktop mode in mobile browser -im going to use that long before I touch the app.

The way a lot of companies and sites MAKE their web experience to be absolute shit to try and FORCE you use their shitty little apps has not gone unnoticed by me. Its actually been really damn annoying.

My suggestion to any and everyone else, use the mobile browser versions of sites more. You can use Instagram on mobile web for most things . Tiktok too. I use YouTube on Firefox browser WITH the adblocks and its been swell. Facebook can be used on mobile browser. And so can tapas, webtoon , and comic fury. If it gives you some issue, switch it to desk mode in the hamburger/ three dot menu.

"-they didn't seem to grasp why using ChatGPT to alter our work was bad" is going to be a theme that pops up later. 

This was when I noticed Global comix's ai stance get called more into question (publicly.) oh, she never got an apology for this by the way. Three weeks later in a follow up post she point how she still hadn't received an apology nor a cleaer ai stance from global. 

Post is here: https://bsky.app/profile/tenacity-comic.bsky.social/post/3m5n2vgmehs2p

Then there was Comic Yeti's jounalism.(link above.)

The aforementioned forbes link comic yeti gives: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2026/03/18/globalcomix-closes-13m-round-acquires-inkr-and-names-henrik-rydberg-new-ceo/

Please read before going further. The article , in simple terms,  discusses how Global comix received a 13 million investments well as inkr and a new ceo by the name of Henrik Rydberg.

As far as inkr is concerned,Ill quote the article, "Rydberg says the addition of INKR enables GlobalComix to implement a suite of technologies that he characterized as “Figma for comics”: collaborative, AI-assisted tools for translating, formatting and distributing IP globally, overcoming some of the cost and timing issues related to localization." - Rob Salkowitz, Senior Contributor. Mar 18, 2026 (Forbes.com)

which more or less confirms the inclusion of gen ai "tools"( services) to global comix. Do you understand my frustration? Once again there si more information in the article. 

Ai translations remind me of the really bad English dub animations anime had back in the 1980's and 90s... only 100 worse. You thought those sucked, listen to the amazon ai dub of "Banana fish" then you'll get an idea of what I mean. But more on inkr in the q and A. speaking of which. 

Global comix's ai policy as of march 20, 2026: https://globalcomix.com/ai-policy

I highly advice reading it through. It's basically  " We won't allow ai comics* , but we will allow ai comics." 

Their q and A the same day: https://ellipsus.com/read/Tbh5qPiS1Uo9TkThEcd83/Global-comix-q-and-a-notes-March-102026

 I was in their 1 and a and let me say I am dissatisfied. I made some trash notes for discussion points as it was kinda hard to follow here and there and I honestly felt kinda gaslit here and there (and god I wish I brought up the Paige incident but I was more concerned with our comics being fed into global's potential database and the investment fund that also invested in the military. )

I need to remind people that work made with generative ai has no copyright protection nor ownership, you are putting what work you mix with it in danger. Only the work you actually made by hand (from scratch not ai "aided") is what you own. The rest is public domain. 

There is probably more, I know I've seen some people bring up previous incidents concerning Global comix and it's ai fuckery (or other fuckery). this was just my breaking point. I've left platforms I adored for LESS. 

I loved globalcomix:

When I tell you I loved globalcomix , I LOVED global comix. I absolutely adored it. None of what I say comes from a place of ungratefulness. It was one of the few indie comic places I knew of that let you monetize your comics immediately, and even let you sell prints through their system. Many of the users were nice and it had an varied comics from a myriad of creators, of every race and creed. It let me upload my comics at full size no issue! (unlike tapas and some other places which make you size them down to phone screen quality. was hard to get used to when you had as much space as deviant used to allot.) I love the UI it had. I loved its comic upload system and how you can make issues or upload and you could save it all in drafts. adjusting as you please. my favorite aspect was that you can monetize the comic for a certain amount of time before allowing ot to be free. and you could still sell pdfs of the comic, all on the same site!  It was damn near perfect.

Then, unfortunately,  they started advertising industry  comics like marvel, dc , and darkhorse... which have their own comic sights. and disney, who owns marvel, signed an ai deal a short while ago so it makes even less sense to me. It was pretty much the same thing webtoons and tapas did when they pushed the indie creators over for copy-paste manwha their companies employ. How many reincarnated villainous stories with the same art styles do we need? Only webtoons and tapas knows.  Only benefit from this was that, unlike tapas that puts payment behind a watcher amount, Global still let you monetize your comic. I personally don't care for a lot of corporate comics, especially from marvel and dc. (I do like darkhorse though but my point still stands, they have their own site.)  Not trying to be a hipster or anything but I am a pretty big supporter of independent comics and manga. they have a completely different feel and I like when the creator has more control and ownership of their work. Among other things that aren't as prevalent in industry comics. So naturally when Globalcomix did this 180, it irked me as both a comic creator AND a reader. 

Then I noticed the ai comics, because of course it was ai generated comics on there. At least they had an off button to stop seeing MOST of them. (Even if some posers refused to label their slop.) But why were they allowed there in the first place, I will never know. 

Year or so later, Paige's situation happened. Then there was a slight argument/altercation in a different discord server for webcomics because page DARED to speak about her experiences only to have one of the globalcomix devs CONFRONT her in that server- then we confronted him.  Cus ain't know fuckin way. And that's when I stopped uploading on global. I needed to see what happened.How they would respond. A q and a was promised, then they claimed they would make an an announcement.  But all we got was promises of something , then it got pushed back because someone was in the airport at the time. they then went to the hospital. Then silence. Silence for MONTHS. Five to be exact. Only to have it broken when someone shared the Comic Yeti's post. but I'm getting a tad redundant here. 

People need to stop sticking with one site and spread out more: Things like this have been happening for a while. And people get rightfully upset but stay because they aren't used to or never bothered to learn other sites or ecosystems to function in. And that's what a lot of companies bet on when they make these terrible and disruptive decisions. That's a huge reason why a lot of people stay on webtoons despite it sucking for users and creators. or how many still stay on Meta products like facebook and insta despite them being trash. reach and accessibility stop being good reasons to stay if the site stops giving you reach and accessibility.

Go to other sites, use search engines in browsers to look at other ones. There are other comic places to read on : comic fury , Itch.io (they let you sell yoru comcis) , gumroad (they also let you sell comics and graphic novels), tapas , spider forest, Namicomi, comic one, comic cleric (upcoming,) all of these allow independent creators to upload their comics for readers access.

What now?(conclusion) :

Paige really was our warning. Among a few others . I gotta admit I'm kinda hurt and I feel really dumb. I make it a point to not to trust companies because at the end of the day they are out to make money in this capitalistic hellscape we call life in 'Murca. But I digress. I had the delusion of hope, that you could have a sustainable business that worked with integrity and didn't throw its creatives , workers, and users under the bus for a quick buck. Those who thought in the long term instead of the short term. One should not find themselves too trusting with any company (or trust at all really) and should always be ready to detach. No business is your friend.

I have no trust for any company trying to push, encourage , use , nor overlook generative ai in its current, unregulated, environmentally destructive, theft ridden state. We brought up how it can only function off plagiarism and we were ignored. We brought up our discomfort and were told we didn't have to use it but it would be implemented anyway. We , the users and creators, were not considered for this decision but we are expected to use it anyway. None of this is for us and its obvious. 

I want to point out that I am being so nice right now. So undeniably cordial both for how I typically am and what is deserved. the anguish I feel right now is almost tangible. Doesn't matter if my or other people's comics weren't that popular and didn't make much money for it- we provided globalcomix free labor and we still brought people to them.My friend put in WORK to get me on there, without her i wouldn't have ever touched global. My friend is disgusted, she lamented to me that she encourage so many people including me to use global comix. I have NO blame to her , she was right and it was great while it lasted, I just feel bad for her cus she feels guilty for something out of her control. How was she supposed to know we'd get sold out?( we aren't physic.)

(But how surprised can I be over a site that doesn't even have a block button after 2+ years...)

I want to point out that I UNDERSTAND that this is a business and people need to be paid. (Again , capitalistic hellscape where money and private property is more important than people and humanity. Yada Yada.) They need money to run. sites and bandwidth are expensive. But looking at other comic sites and indie places, I know there were better ways to make money and get support. You know, without selling out the creators who helped build the site. 

They KNEW much of their userbase was anti-ai. I need to explain the ABSURDITY of continually trying to normalize gen ai to independent artists and comic lovers. That's like trying to sell saltwater to fresh water fish. that's like trying to gift chocolate to dogs. Trying to load mousetraps to mice. 

Its wolves bane  to werewolves. 

Its garlic to vampires. 

Its like... well its just an insult at this point. Comparable to a slap in the face, in my eyes. Like if Global comix hated its users just say that. 

my only comfort is that I data poisoned most of my comic pages, might not do much but its a small act of spite. 

For those of you who follow my comics and come across this, I am in the slow process of mirroring my other comics on my other sites. (i have some up already but not all of them.) I have a comic fury (main), a tapas (thin ice.), and a namicomi (new). I'm looking onto others as well, and I'd like to set up a neocites for my comics.I've built the habit of spreading myself thin rather than focus on one place. thank devaintart eclipse for that, was a hash lesson. I no longer feel comfortable leaving my work on global comix at this time nor the foreseeable future. 

I'm going to throw my last three dollars at comic fury and if possible comic cleric