Few names spark as a lot pleasure within the manhwa world as Carnby Kim and Youngchan Hwang, whose work on Webtoon’s Thriller class speaks volumes. Praised because the duo behind Bastard and the apocalyptic horror thriller masterpiece Sweet Home, their names reappearing on Webtoon’s Prime Picks for You part on April 14, 2026, was a welcome sight for followers of the style. Typically divergent from different manhwa authors with a agency grip on what makes a thriller addicting, intelligent, and deeply subversive, Kim’s particular person works on the platform alone embody different hits like Shotgun and Pigpen, the latter of which is subsequent in line to get a Okay-drama from Studio N.
However now, the duo behind among the most chilling, ominous horror and thriller masterpieces within the medium returns with Copycat, a collection a couple of Suchan Kim, a struggling artwork teacher who abruptly finds himself inextricably linked to a serial killer. The killer, overtly staging his kills as elaborate artwork installations, dismembering, reassembling and posing corpses on show, used Suchan’s failed 2020 artwork exhibit as inspiration whereas promoting his paintings for ungodly sums of cash. However Suchan’s largest downside is not the horrific homicide: it is that the killer plagiarized his work.
Carnby Kim and Youngchan Hwang Return for Copycat Manhwa on Webtoon
Eagerly anticipated by followers for months, Copycat dropped 10 brand-new chapters as of its April 14, 2026 debut, with new installments promised each Wednesday on Webtoon. The collection focuses on a grounded but horrifying premise of a killer recognized solely as Jahak, a Korean phrase for self-destruction, wherein the our bodies are staged like grotesque mannequins, indefinitely stored in a cooled show. Every kill is posed as if the sufferer is being murdered by one other model of themselves, with its heinous assassin sitting properly alongside different Carnby Kim creations like Pigpen and Bastard’s villains.
Suchan is a characteristically flawed protagonist, wrapped up in his personal failings in life, disrespected as teacher on the Dragon Artwork Academy with payments piling up. His large break was imagined to occur six years in the past at an elaborate artwork exhibit utilizing stay fashions for his artwork installations, however the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak killed all hope of the occasion’s success, with solely 32 company attending. However now, as Suchan hears information of an “artwork serial killer” dubbed Jahak with an eerily acquainted MO, he seems to be into it solely to seek out his kills blatantly and grotesquely mimic Suchan’s work featured on the gallery, whereas boldly promoting them on the darkish net and backroom auctions for tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
Suchan, as an alternative of being horrified that his work is inspiring murders with no sign of ending, is livid at this would-be artist who stole his concepts. He units out to trace down and confront this “plagiarist”, beginning together with his main lead, names from his guestbook of the attendees at his gallery who’d have seen his work. With such a collection, it is not laborious to see the commentary all through thus far.
Copycat’s Thriller Premise Makes Plagiarism the Villain
Jahak has but to be recognized apart from shady, surreal glimpses of a slender, shrouded determine hanging their dismembered victims to empty their blood like an avant-garde Ice Truck Killer. With information shortly reaching Suchan about how this work is continuous and profiting enormously, it is not laborious to see a number of connections that may be drawn by the reader, particularly with Webtoon’s recent plagiarism scandal regarding its Wind Breaker series.
Whether or not or not this connection is intentional, or the potential, extra refined interpretation of Kim and Hwang placing generative AI within the crosshairs because it equally emerged to prominence after the pandemic, is as much as readers’ interpretation for now. To warp the idea of artwork plagiarism into grisly homicide tableaux is ideal for a Carnby Kim thriller manhwa. As Suchan continues to analyze his leads, although, he finds a circle of pals who, whereas generally both grossly flawed people or deeply traumatized, could current as extremely plausible Jahak suspects till confirmed harmless.
However investigating Jahak in Copycat, Suchan finds himself risking his life with out the assistance of police, on his obsessive quest to confront the killer not for justice, however for his personal self-centered causes. Not solely that, however as Suchan dives into the lives of those that attended his gallery, he finds a number of of them have hermetic alibis, whereas incessantly drawing suspicion on himself as a consequence of Jahak’s unlucky inspiration. Whereas Suchan exhibits potential to empathize with outdated classmates and connections, particularly as they wrestle with problems with their very own, it will be fascinating simply how deep into the abyss he searches whereas searching for Jahak on this darkish new thriller on Webtoon.
