Exlibrium () is an urban fantasy comic book series about the adventures of a young girl named Lilia Romanova, published by the Russian publishing house Bubble Comics. It ran from October 2014 to December 2018. The author of the comic, as well as the writer of most of the issues, was Natalia Devova. The art for the early issues was drawn by Andrey Rodin and Alina Erofeeva, and since November 2016, other artists began to work on the series: Konstantin Tarasov, Yulia Zhuravlyova and Marina Privalova.
The comics series is set in Moscow. The protagonist of the series, Lilia Romanova, a teenage girl fascinated by popular culture, accidentally enters the Order of Bookwizards. The main task of the Order is to protect the boundaries between the real world and the world of fiction. Lilia is trained in the Order, and eventually becomes a Bookwizard herself, mastering to the full her supernatural abilities: the ability to emit destructive rays from her eyes and mouth. In the Order, the girl meets other students; together they confront villains and deal with problems, mostly involving the escape of literary characters from books.
Critics received Exlibrium very favorably, welcomed the concept of the comic, including its elaborate world, the plot and the very idea of the "book magic", as well as the art of Andrei Rodin and Alina Erofeeva. However, they lamented the protractedness of the first issue's storyline and the overabundance of references to popular culture. The character of Lilia seemed ambiguous to reviewers, as some commentators noted that it would be easy for readers to associate themselves with the character, while others saw the heroine as a typical example of a "socio-phobic geek".
Story
Setting The story takes place in modern Moscow. The plot is spinning around the mysterious Order of Bookwizards, which is made by the first Bookwizards for protection of the borders between the real and the literary worlds. Their main duty is to catch literary characters who have escaped from their books and who are causing damage to the real world due to mutationsVol. 1, 2015 of their body, caused by their presence in our objective reality. Every ordinary person can become a bookwizard, after being infected by literary ink from revived books. However, the adepts of the Order firstly need to limit the movement of a person affected by the ink, because he begins to attract the attention of "mad" books that spit out everything they have inside into the real world. Next, the infected person must pass a test in the Bone House, which is an astral place, where shadow-like creatures live.Vol. 2, 2016. If the shadows take over, the ink absorbs the person and he becomes a Shadow of the Library (Russian: библиотень), a little phantom creature, serving the Bookwizards. The thing is that in that case he will be forgotten by anyone who ever knew him before transformation.Vol. 3, 2016. If the person takes over, then he gains the ability to control the ink inside of him. During the test, the ink color is also being defined, which affects the supernatural abilities that the newborn Bookwizard obtains. There are ten colors in total: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, dark blue, purple, gray, black, and white (the last two are called "monochrome colors" and are special and extremely rare) and their shades. With the help of the first 8 colors, Bookwizards can influence the subjective reality of books in various ways, while black and white let their owners control our reality, opening up perspectives to limitless possibilities (the abilities of both can only be used together with the opposite color, which means that two magicians are required to activate them; they can't be used separately). That's why the Order of Bookwizards is haunting after magicians of monochrome colors, whose fate in case of capture is death.
The Order of Bookwizards owns Libraries, which are headquarters, as well as training places for new magicians. In one of those Libraries, the Real Moscow Library, the most of Exlibriums story takes place. Every Library has its manager, who is similar to the school principal, and tutors. All Libraries obey the council of the Order, called the Circle. The Circle includes four people and an equal number of senior Shadows of the Library (a special kind, more intelligent and powerful than their smaller colleagues). Together, the participants of the Circle solve global problems of the Libraries crisis.
History The first story arc ...And The Door Will Open is about how the main character Lilia Romanova gets into the Order of Bookwizards. On the Order's instructions, two of its magicians - an ordinary Bookwizard, Alexander Alinovsky, along with a revived artificial character, Arthur, - pursue Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, who have escaped from the book, in an attempt to bring them back. On her way, Little Red Riding Hood bumps into a girl who was going to preparatory classes at the institute, Lilia, who unwillingly finds herself in the center of the story. Alexander and Arthur arrive just in time to save the girl from the Wolf, who already managed to eat Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother, who also got into our reality. Together they stopped the violent literary character and bring the fugitives back to their book.
Afterwards, Lilia had to go through the process of "closing", a ritual dedicated to removing the ink from the human's body, because of which books begin to attract to him (Bonehouse story arc). During the ritual, she gets into another reality, where a house of bones appears before her. Suddenly she is attacked by her own shadow. In the end, she managed to become conscious and remove the ink from her body. After that, Angelina Evgenievna, the head of Moscow Library (one of the headquarters of the Order), offers Lilia to study in the Order of Bookwizards, and the girl agrees.
Further Lilia participates in a task for the first time, catching the escaped characters of books, learns details of studying and working in the Order, and finds out that Shadows of the Library, harmless at the first sight, assistants of Bookwizards - were people that just didn't succeed in initiation of the Bone House (With Good Intentions story arc). Later, in the Among The Three Flames arc students of the Order help members of the Magic Emergency CommitteeA secret organization, dedicated to control magical activities. The abbreviation of MEC is also used in the comic books. to track down an unknown person in hood, who used the Hummer of Witches, the ancient and powerful folio, while attacking the headquarters of a friendly organization. After a fight with the ominous spirit of the inquisitor, trapped inside the book, Bookwizards get together for the trial of the earlier escaped characters of the book. Although Bookwizards managed to find out the information they were interested in, one of the characters became to transform due to a long stay outside of his book, and Yakov, one of the members of the Circle, eventually had to kill the mutant (The Trial arc).
The violent murder leaves an imprint on Lily's mind, and, to calm the girl down and explain how the things go, Alexander decides to tell her a sad story that happened to him six months ago (Insult To Injury arc). On New Years' Eve he bumped into the unusual character - a female warrior Agatha. She often left her book, understanding, that she is the character inside of it, just to walk around in another world. At first, Alex warned Agatha, explaining the need of returning her into the book and sealing it, due to what all her memories would vanish. The girl agreed, however, imbued with respect and sympathy for the character, who has to live her death in the book all over again and again, Alex tried to help her stay in the real world. The situation got out of control: woman started to mutate, and the attempt to return her into the story failed - the rest of the characters, also mutated, began to get out into the real world. At the end of everything, the invasion was stopped, but a friend of Alex died, as well as many others Bookwizards.
Except for the main story, the secondary one exists. It tells us about Kira, the wizard of monochrome and the owner of black ink; Nikita, the bookwizard with red ink; Lisa, a non-wizard, ordinary person; her uncle Nicolas; the other version of the book character Agatha and the bookwizard Vladimir, who killed Kira's brother Kai (Mono arc). The story begins with Nikita and Lisa, successfully finding and capturing Vladimir, delivering him to Nicolas' and Kira's house afterwards, and locking him there. As it turns out, Vladimir has been tracking and eliminating monochrome magicians; one of his victims was Kira's brother, Kai. As a prisoner, Vladimir was being interrogated in attempt to find out where he put white ink, that once belonged to Kai. After multiply unsuccessful attempts to get the truth out, Kira comes up with a plan to write a book that will allow her to sneak into Vladimir's memory. They were able to get inside of the story, and while Kira travels through Vladimir's memory, the characters of the book slowly begin to mutate. As soon as the needed information was revealed, Kira and her companions hurriedly quit the mutated story. As it turns out, Vladimir could transfer Kai's color to young Lilia Romanova, since he used to be her mentor (The Innocent Story arc).
These two storylines intersect farther, in the end of the series in the arcs The Fairy Tale Is Over, The Revolt, The Comeback, The Light Strip. After learning that Lilia can potentially be the owner of the white ink, Nikita and Lisa set up a trap, that, as a result, captured other Bookwizards. After a short fight, Bookwizards and Nikita die, and Lisa was the only one who stayed alive. Therefore, Kira decides to go another way - she breaks into the building of the Real Moscow Library, captivates all the Bookwizards and The Circle's heads, and arranges her own trial. It turns out that the famous Bone House is nothing else but the society of the Ancient Wizards - the first known Bookwizards ever. They needed energy of the ink, that is captured inside of infected people, to maintain their power, whereas Kira and Kai were used by Wizards to achieve the goal, because they could have a certain effect on people to get the desired ink color. Vladimir, who has been hunting Kira and gave Kai's ink color to Lilia, allied with Angelina Evgenievna. She set up Lilia's entry into the Order of Bookwizards to have the owner of white ink near herself. According to their plan, after the finding of the black ink, Vladimir and Angelina would use the power of monochrome to break out of the Circle's control. When everything becomes clear, Kira asks Lilia for help in destroying the Bone House, due to what everybody will lose their ink and superpowers. Lilia agrees and voluntarily gives Kira her white ink. Having accomplished what she started, Kira was attacked by Agatha. Agatha kills Kira and takes her ink among with superpowers. Since all the heroes with colored ink lost their abilities, the only one who retained superpowers, was Agatha. She appears before the ex-Bookwizards and announces that now she will be taking revenge on people for all the bad times that literary characters had to go through because of them.Vol. 8, 2019.Vol, 9, 2019.
Main characters
Lilia Romanova — the main character of the series, a pop-culture lover in every its manifestation. Studies in her first year with Alexander, Inga, and Matvey. Due to her parents' frequent moves from city to city, little girl didn't have a lot of friends, which strongly affected her social skills, and also became a basis for numerous complexes and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Even though at times she can fall into depression and close up, she is quite a brave girl and would not leave her friends in trouble. The color of her ink is yellow, which allows her to emit destructive rays from her eyes and mouth.