Toon-Up: Dungeon Crawler Carl

There’s a new kid on the block crushing it in Webtoontown.

Currently, Dungeon Crawler Carl is sitting firmly in the Top 5 for Fantasy on Webtoons:

• Subscribers: Approximately 107,700

• Episode Likes: Episodes 1–5 average between 7,000 and 15,000 likes each

• Ranking: Debuted in the Top 5 for Fantasy, currently holding at #4 overall

• Views (carousel leaderboard snapshot): 53,646, highlighted as a “new” Fantasy title among recent top performers

That’s an extremely impressive showing for a series that debuted two weeks ago and hasn’t been heavily promoted. It’s the fastest-rising indie-based adaptation on Webtoons in recent memory.

The last title to break out this hard was Solo Leveling, but that one had a massive pre-debut advertising blitz. Its success was purchased.

Dungeon Crawler Carl, on the other hand, was not on gear. It was marketed with niche-targeted ads and good old-fashioned organic fan enthusiasm.

It’s worth noting this isn’t the IP’s debut—just its first appearance on Webtoons. In some ways, it’s a standard contemporary fantasy. But in others, it’s a fascinating deviation from both genre tropes and the usual business model.

The author is Matt Dinniman, as those of you familiar with Korean culture have worked out – this is not a Korean name. 

This is a little unusual for Webtoons. Not unheard of—Lore Olympus did exceptionally well. Instantmiso, Mongie, and a handful of other Western creators aren’t UFOs on that platform either. But the fact remains: notable exceptions are notable for a reason. It just isn’t common for a Westerner to break out, let alone knock it out of the park the way Dungeon Crawler Carl has.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and I’ll get into some of them in a bit.

Dungeon Crawler Carl opens right after the end of the world, you see—

Darklings: So it’s a LitRPG, and what’s left of the human race are now players in a game?

Uh, yeah...

Darklings: Okay, go on ahead.

Carl is a Coast Guard veteran who just broke up with his girlfriend. While she was on vacation, he saw a picture of her sitting on her “ex-boyfriend’s” lap. It’s the middle of the night during a blizzard in the Pacific Northwest. He’s stuck taking care of her cat until she gets back. The cat runs outside in the snow, and he chases after it—wearing only a leather jacket, T-shirt, boxers with Valentine hearts all over them, and Crocs that are way too small.

He finds the cat just as the world ends.

All interior spaces—houses, buildings, offices, vehicles—are instantly crushed flat. Everyone inside dies. A staircase opens in front of Carl as a standard-issue omnipotent voice explains just how screwed he is. His only hope of surviving the cold is to walk down the stairs—entering a dungeon and becoming a player in the game.

That premise isn’t particularly unique. What does make Dungeon Crawler Carl stand out is the pitch-black humor.

After surviving his first encounter, one of Carl’s rewards is a Legendary Pet Treat. It turns his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, sapient, gives her a voice, and some fairly impressive stats. Donut is immediately declared their party leader.

Being a championship show cat, Donut is a diva. But she’s not just a Douglas Adams–style gag—she delivers some genuinely deep emotional beats. As a newly sapient being with high intelligence, she’s still essentially a four-year-old trying to understand the world.

Carl and Donut’s relationship is the glue that holds this narrative together.

Carl’s defining trait is that he never gives up. Not just against the monsters trying to kill him—but against the dungeon itself. The system is millions of years ancient, amoral, and built to strip away his humanity layer by layer. His real struggle is staying human in a world designed to turn him into a monster.

The game exists to entertain an alien galactic audience. Which means the party of Her Royal Majesty Grand Champion of the Dungeon, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, has to be entertaining while slaughtering their way through each floor.

There are 18 dungeon levels. After a certain number of days, each level collapses. Leave too early and you won’t be strong enough to survive the next. Stay too long, and you’ll be crushed to death.

Donut is a natural at social media. Carl, less so. Fortunately (I guess) for him, the system AI has developed a disturbing obsession with his bare feet. His best combat buffs are all tied to staying unshod. He has to fight barefoot— for the clicks.

While the tone veers toward Douglas Adams, the emotional toll is real. This series delivers devastating consequences, moral dilemmas, and existential grief alongside the laughs.

There are Carl’s sworn enemies—a married couple who never wanted to become the monsters they’ve become. There are also the survivors of a nursing home who are clearly doomed. Helping them would be suicide. Carl and Donut help them anyway.

There’s a ton of stuff like that. Little moments and side arcs that elevate the material above the usual Lit RPG dungeon fare.

But here’s the big thing: there are lots of great stories like this that never gain traction on Webtoons. What made this one different?

Truthfully? Matt Dinniman’s business plan.

Most big webtoon and manga franchises of the last ten years started on platforms like Munpia (Korea) or Shōsetsuka ni Narō (Japan)—web novel sites that let you self-publish original fiction. If your story finds an audience, it gets licensed as a light novel, then adapted into manga or webtoon. If you're lucky, maybe even an anime.  Solo Leveling is skipping anime and heading straight to Japanese live action. (Though the anime is in the works too, naturally.)

Matt Dinniman launched Dungeon Crawler Carl on Royal Road in March 2020—perfect timing. In September, he took most of it down (Amazon’s rules) and self-published on Kindle Unlimited. He followed the rapid-release model: four books in under a year. Then he pivoted to annual releases.

Amazingly, it still sold.

Now he’s on a one-book-per-year schedule until the series wraps—likely in ten volumes, though he’s left room to stretch. The series has done very well Audible. He also monetizes via Patreon, which serves as a production funnel.

The Webtoons adaptation is being handled through Aethon Books. If the name sounds familiar, it’s the same indie publisher Larry Correia recently partnered with for his Academy of Outcasts LitRPG. Aethon handled the niche-targeted ad campaign for the Webtoons launch.

So far, this has been a win for everyone involved.

Darklings: Sensing a “but” here.

Yeah. Dinniman has been trying to launch other titles, and so far, none have stuck. This is the big problem with indie publishing. If you have a hit, it’s usually just one and done. Fans follow the story, not the author. When the story ends, the audience doesn’t stick around to see what the author is going to do next.

There are a lot of reasons for this.

All the platform algorithms—Royal Road, Amazon, Webtoons—strongly favor the series over the author. Readers click the next book, not the author profile. In traditional publishing, the author is the brand. In indie, fans are loyal to the genre and story, not the person behind it.

Regardless, in a sea of faceless content, Dinniman didn’t just build a story; he built loyalty. Carl and Donut are more than characters—they’re fixtures of the digital pulp renaissance. Readers didn’t find them because they were told to; they found them because they went looking.

And now, with Webtoons as the newest battlefield, Dungeon Crawler Carl is leveling up again. This is one of the most compelling titles on the platform, and one of the few that feels like it was written for readers, not designed

by committee.

The Dark Herald Recommends with Confidence.

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