Who Is The Author And Artist Of Stop Smoking Manhwa?

I must admit that, in my desperation to find the short Korean webcomic ‘Stop Smoking’ that I remembered reading a while back, I was sent on a wild goose chase around my bookshelves and online bookmarks. It seems that while ‘Stop Smoking’ is the title of one short work of manhwa, there are in fact many, many other short works – web-based and independent – that have been published under the same title (in Korean, ‘금연’) by many different creators, sometimes working alone, sometimes in pairs. Scanlations and other, unofficial, online versions of manhwa often fail to credit creators at all, and sometimes even alter the work that they are publishing. The only places where you are likely to find complete and accurate information about the creators of a webtoon or a work of manhwa published in book form is on the first and last pages of the work itself, or on the website of the publisher of a printed version.

But of course, in trying to find information about this difficult-to-find comic, I discovered that there is no sole ‘Stop Smoking’ manhwa – other comics of similar titles exist, even by different artists! So although I couldn’t find the exact author and artist of ‘Stop Smoking’, I did learn some useful things about finding information about less well-known comics. First, look on the official webtoon sites; next, search for the comic on comic-aggregator sites, where the authors and artists are usually listed; and finally, check the ISBN number and publisher of printed versions of the comic for more information. It can be tedious at times, but I enjoy the challenge of tracking down the information, even if it is a hard-to-find comic.

My amateur forays into fanlists and library catalogs led me to the conclusion that "Stop Smoking" is the title of several short comics, so it is not easily ascribable to a single author-artist pair. However, if you ever actually need to know this, it’s usually pretty easy to look up on the original publication page (legal webtoon platforms and publishers include the creators of a work on the main page for that work; printed books include the author and artist on the copyright page or in the ISBN entry for that book).

Even a less-than-wonderful discovery of a new creator is fun, and new trails to follow even more so. Chasing the credits of a title this floaty can lead to all sorts of interesting characters. Follow your heart, and re-read the story with new eyes and appreciation.

For this post, I assume you are aware of the usual comic creation roles (i.e. writer, artist, etc.). Also, I will assume that you are looking for the original creator of the work and not some secondary adaptation. I generally keep a mental catalog of the creators whose work I enjoy as well as a few physical zines that I love. So when I saw that ‘Stop Smoking’ was being published as a comic and short stories (all in Korean and English), I flipped into “librarian” mode to figure out how many comics and short stories there were with that title and what work(s) they were.

In some cases, titles get translated and re-titled (Stop Smoking is a notorious example of this) and if one has looked up the title online in other places, one would find totally different names credited for what seems to be the exact same work. I verify against the creators’ and publishers’ official pages and databases and compare against the title in the publishers’ catalogs (print volumes have ISBNs and the cover typically says creators’ names in very small print) – more often than not, I am able to figure out who the ‘real’ writers and artists are for a given work. It’s actually kind of fun to uncover the true creators for a given work.