Cartoonist extraordinaire Jim Rugg recently launched a successful Kickstarter for a fluorescent blacklight comic book about a Russian Outlaw superhero called Octobriana. Check out samples and how to buy here.
This project began when Rugg made a blacklight screen print in 2014 with Telegraph Art & Comics. In the process, he wondered why no one had made a comic book using vivid, fluorescent inks. It would look spectacular. So he decided to make one himself.
The story is set in the 1970s, the period when blacklight posters were most popular (also the period of Rugg's graphic novel, Afrodisiac). In 1971, the west learned about Octobriana – the outlaw Russian superhero comic in Petr Sadecky's expose, Octobriana and the Russian Underground. Octobriana is part Barbarella, part Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. She's an unusual cult character with a storied history. David Bowie tried to make a movie about her. Billy Idol has her likeness tattooed on his arm. As a child of the Cold War and fan of underground comix, Rugg identified Octobriana as the perfect character for his psychedelic outlaw comic!
The concept of Mtsyry: Octobriana 1976 is that underground American cartoonists made their own Octobriana comic book after reading Sadecky's book. It was an effort to show solidarity with their Russian cartoonist comrades. Robot Stalin's got a new doomsday bomb! Can the Devil-Woman stop him before he destroys us all? Siberian labor camps, PPP secret orgies, motorcycle gunship train chases – this one has it all! Samizdat gone wild – a cross between 70s psychedelia and Soviet constructivism!?!
Mtsyry: Octobriana 1976 will appeal to fans of comic books as well as fans of design, unique printed matter, and 70s counterculture. It features humor and action and you've NEVER seen a comic book that looks like this! Revolution forever, bitch.
Jim Rugg is an award-winning cartoonist. His books include The PLAIN Janes, Street Angel, Afrodisiac, and Notebook Drawings. He's also the co-creator of YouTube's Cartoonist Kayfabe comics channel and an instructor at the School of Visual Arts.
