After six years and over 400 titles (comics), VORTEX247.COM is going offline. In its place, Vortex is betting on SKROL, an AI-powered storytelling platform, while quietly closing its long-dormant interactive division.
There is a particular kind of Tuesday night that belonged to VORTEX247.COM. Data was low, WiFi was worse, and yet somehow the page still loaded, panel by panel, the way its founder always insisted it should, never a vertical scroll like the American apps, but a proper page-turn, the closest thing to holding a physical book that a Nigerian data plan could afford. That was where a generation of African comic readers first met Strike Guard, the Lagos crimefighter carrying a Yoruba deity inside him. It was where Moon Girls found an audience long before its creator picked up a Nommo Award nomination, where Land of the Gods built a mythology deep enough to travel as far as Brazil, and where a small, stubborn platform out of Lagos quietly tried to become Africa’s answer to Comixology.
That platform is now closing. VORTEX247.COM will shut down on 31 December 2026, bringing to an end a run that began on 15 October 2015, when founder Somto Ajuluchukwu launched it under the internal nickname “Ragnorak II”, a portal meant to gather every scattered Vortex title, cartoon and piece of merchandise into one tidy home rather than making fans “turn the web upside down” to find them. In the years since, it grew from a modest 71 titles and roughly 1,500 subscribers into a catalogue of more than 400 comics from over 60 creators across 23 countries, one of the longest continuous runs any African digital comics platform has managed.
TheACE reached out to Vortex’s founder, Somto Ajuluchukwu, months ago, after we got tipped off about the platform’s uncertain future, sending across a set of questions about the decision, its timing and what it meant for the community that had formed around the site. The response came only recently, and it confirmed the closure, though without addressing most of what was asked.
What it did confirm is that VORTEX247.COM’s shutdown is not simply a retirement. It is a migration. The site’s entire catalogue, more than 20,000 panels once published page by page in Vortex’s own house style, is being converted into Webtoon-format strips for exclusive release on SKROL, a new AI-native storytelling platform built by GENER8 Labs, described as Vortex’s AI division. Rather than archiving six years of work behind a domain that will soon go dark, Vortex is folding it into whatever SKROL becomes next.
VX Animation, the studio’s animation arm, is making the same move. Its fully produced catalogue, around 122 minutes of finished animation, is relocating to SKROL, including its most anticipated project: Black Rain, a 12-part hand-drawn micro-series due to premiere this December, now positioned as a SKROL exclusive rather than a standalone release. Notably, the platform shift does not touch how the work gets made. VX Animation says it will keep producing entirely through its traditional, frame-by-frame 2D pipeline, the same process behind its ongoing 30-minute TV special, a South African co-production backed by the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission. What is being retired is the studio’s 3D pipeline, which it describes as never having been an area of real expertise.
The quieter casualty in all this is VX Interactive, Vortex’s gaming and interactive media division, which closes with immediate effect. In six years, it never shipped a single published game or public demo, and yet its most visible work was arguably one of Vortex’s most ambitious undertakings: the digital hub installation for the 2025 FELA Afrobeat Exhibition, a three-month showcase spanning VR film, an augmented reality exhibition, an interactive animated film and an AI art desk, backed by the French Embassy, the Dutch Embassy, the Stimuleringsfonds, and Ecobank. That a division closes on the back of that scale of collaboration, without ever finding a commercial release to its name, says something familiar about the gap between institutional-grade execution and a viable path to market across Africa’s digital creative industries.
What remains, once the site itself is gone, is a question the community will be asking long after 31 December: whether SKROL can hold what VORTEX247.COM built, the page-turn ritual, the mythologies, the six years of “made in Africa, for Africa” storytelling, or whether something gets lost in translation from a domain fans knew by heart to a platform none of them have used yet. TheACE has asked Vortex for further comment on the fate of the site’s archive and what the transition means for creators still active on it, and will update this story if a response follows.
Update: Hours after this story was first published, Somto Ajuluchukwu responded directly to TheACE’s original questions. He confirmed that VORTEX247.COM will go offline entirely, with its content relocating rather than remaining archived. He clarified that the migration covers 400 published comics rather than 400 titles, the majority of which Vortex holds exclusive rights to. A firm closure date beyond “December” has not yet been set. Creators currently working with the platform have already received formal communication about the migration, which Vortex describes as seamless. Notably, no IP is being discontinued: VX Comics will continue digital publishing in Webtoon format exclusively, while print publication of its classic titles continues unaffected. The full catalogue conversion for SKROL now stands at over 19,000 panels, drawn from more than 400 comics.
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