Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

Russia's Geek Girl Comic, Exlibrium, Needs The Help Of American Capitalists

Anna Sheveleva writes,

You might be surprised to discover Russia has its very own comic book culture. Its biggest representative is BUBBLE Comics – the largest publishing house in Eastern Europe, which had been releasing comic books since 2011 and currently produces 6 monthly original non-franchised comic book series. You could spot them taking part in SDCC last year and just last week BUBBLE Comics launched their first Kickstarter campaign to publish an English version of Exlibrium – one of Russia's most popular, successful and critically acclaimed series.

Exlibrium tells the story of a geeky girl Lilia Romanova, who is an ordinary Moscow teenager. She loves books, movies and videogames, prepares for the university after school and faces the usual challenges of communication with new people.

But her life drastically changes when Lilia meets the book characters who have escaped from books into our world.

Lilia unveils the secrets of the mysterious bookwizard order whose members have been trying to hold the balance between book worlds and our reality with the help of magic stamp Exlibrium…

This is a comic book for almost everyone. On the one hand there are no bombshells or pumped-up superheroes. The screenwriter Natalia Devova doesn't use common comic series methods to grab the readers' attention. However the thoughts of the main character and dialogues full of pure irony and will make you feel like you use to know these characters for a very long time already and sympathize them.
Exlibrium is an amazing cocktail mixing magic, humor, horror, fairytales and even references to books, videogames and TV shows.

It is worth noting that the unique and beautiful style of drawing by artists Andrey Ozich Rodin and Alina Meissdes Erofeeva adds a lot to the picture. There's the classic American style combining with Japanese manga and birthing a unique style of Russian comics.

As being said earlier, Exlibrium is one of the most popular comic books in Russia. But why Kickstarter?

"First of all, we want publicity. We want people to know that Russia exports not only vodka and Kalashnikovs. And, of course, our partnership with major US publishers and production studios would be nice for developing Russian comic book culture. Hell, we're counting on it." explained Artem Gabrelyanov, CEO of BUBBLE.

"I've been reading a lot of comic books my entire life and still I admit that I've never read something even close to what we're doing with Exlibrium" says Roman Kotkov, editor-in-chief of BUBBLE Comics. "Russian audiences have already loved it and now it's time to go global. Hope we would be able to get enough support on Kickstarter to bring the unique atmosphere of Russian comic book world to everybody."

Special offer for Bleeding Cool readers: add any amount of pledge to the Exlibrium Kickstarter campaign, leave a message with promo code "BLEEDINGCOOL", and you will receive digital 1st issues of BUBBLE Comics FOR FREE!

Note that this offer lasts only 48 hours, starting from the moment of this publication.

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