North American Practices of Comics Production and Contemporary Russian Comics Industry

Abstract

The article gives an overview of the current comics industry in Russia and its roots. Specifically, it focuses on the Russian popular comics in the light of their production and promotion strategy. The author argues that certain features of the comics published by Bubble, a leading Russian comics producer, have been borrowed from their US counterparts. Thus, the Bubble superheroes take after American Action Comics of the golden age: the former have supernatural capacities inaccessible to common people or act under unique circumstances. Besides, Bubble has created a shared universe, i.e. a fictional world inhabited by the same characters, a model that was first developed in North American comics. The shared universe strategy allows Bubble to make all the superheroes part of the same plot called a crossover, which is an efficient way to revive interest to a specific superhero or even reissue an old series. Another way to attract audience borrowed from across the Atlantic is a graphic novel. However, if American colleagues use hard cover editions to demonstrate their confidence in the product, Russian publishers do it because a book has traditionally higher value than other printed matter within Russian culture. Yet, despite all the aforementioned borrowings, Bubble comics are rooted in Russian culture and represent Russian reality.

Keywords

• comics
• Bubble
• crossover
• graphic novel
• shared universe.