#exlibrium

I’ve read “Exlibrium” “Between Three Fires” (issues 15-18) + the ending from the Epilogue of “The Time of The Raven”. The people of the library united with MEC managed to catch a person, who kept the “The Hammer of Witches”, to do so they had to fight a flaming inquisitor – the author of the book. They brought the book back to the library, one of the heads of the circle opened the book for them and all the students go there, distribute their roles – who are going to attack the inquisitor, who are going to protect and heal their pears, and Lilya and Mathew are trying to remove the Stone of Force from inside of the book, because it was giving the inquisitor his powers but it doesn’t work, so Inga (the hottest head of the company) had to get out of the book and literally bite the stone of the front cover so that people inside the book could finally defeat the burning man and leave him for the mercy of his former victims. Everybody returned, more or less safe, the wounded had been cured, but the directress didn’t get the chance to relax: the Magister (the guy who started all that mess) appeared in her cabinet and started “negotiating” for the stone. The head of the circle gave him this stone for the price of neutrality of the Book Order. Not the best decision. So, I’ve finally read the whole first phase of “Bubble Comics” up to “The Time of The Raven”, except for “Legends of Bubble”.

Since I decided to make a pause in watching cartoons, I decided to finally read the last “Bubble” series up to “The Time of The Raven”, so, I’ve read “Exlibrium” “With Good Intentions” (issues 11-14). If you remember (I bet you don’t) the previous issue ended with all those library kids hanging out and a panicking librarian (from a regular library) rushing out of the city with a bunch of books and weird characters. Well, the whole issue Lilya and Inga are fighting a crocodile, that has eaten the Sun (yes, it’s a real character from on Soviet book for children by Chukovsky). Lilya tries to make the book “eat” the crocodile from the inside and falls inside him. Then, she realized that she has to use her powers, makes herself angry (by listing things that irritate her, for example, Nicolas Cage movies), so she just burns the crocodile from the inside and faints. In the next issue we see how Angelina (the directress of the library) and Nightingale (everybody says that he’s “her character” – which means that he’s a character from a book she wrote) are “in the circle” in which some “elders” (or something like this) at first rebuke them, but then let Angeline cure Arthur’s hand. He’s afraid that she’ll let him there, as she did many years ago (there’s some dark story, we don’t know yet), but she comes back and his hand is okay now. In the next issue, they come back and find out that there are two more monsters out and that students aren’t able to fight them. So, Angelina and Nightingale do it themselves only to find that the books were not only missing characters, they also had some intruders, so now students have to find and bring them out of the books. They find Baron Munchausen, who starts saying that people of the library restrict his freedom. While Students were in the books, the shadows were searching for a child (all the books were for children), who probably helped the characters to move and they find a boy, ill and all covered in ink stains. Arthur, Sasha and Lilya try to lead him through the Bone House, but it doesn’t work and he becomes a shadow himself. Now the real “heads” of the Circle: a man – “a militarist”, and a woman – “a liberal”, even though they are labelled as different parties them seem to be in total agreement and work together. They are listing the misdeeds of the people of the library (we get to know a little about some horrible evens – a war between librarian and mages out of the spectre, accidents – in first Sasha barely survived and the second he was a cause of and seven people died in; we also find out that when somebody becomes a shadow, all the memories about them are erased, but all the physical objects remain, so they are to be removed, which requires resources) and then say that they can be forgiven, if they help with one book – “The Hammer of Witches” – here’s the connection to the other series – the Magister (from the “Enoch” series) and “The Time of the Raven” is coming. The issue ends with the arrival of Magical Extraordinary Commission (no, not like is “Star vs The Forces of Evil”, like in USSR). This post wasn’t intended to be so long, there were just so much events in just four issues!

Hell, you guys must hate me for how long I’ve made you scroll through that post, but those comics are just so pretty!