Spoilers for all BUBBLE Universe properties through the end of the First Wave will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Igor Grom is here to solve crimes and shoot you in the face.
Major Grom (Russian: Майор Гром) is a comic book action adventure series published by BUBBLE Comics. It was among the first titles created for the Bubble line, running from 2012 to 2016. Most issues were written by Artyom Gabrelyanov and Evgeniy Fedotov. Artists who contributed to the series include Konstantin Tarasov, Anastasia "Phobs" Kim, Yulia Zhuravleva, and Anna Rud. With the exception of issues 9, 13 and 14, the age rating was "16+".
Major Grom was part of the BUBBLE Universe of comics, taking place in the same continuity as Demonslayer, Red Fury, Friar, Meteora, and Exlibris. It frequently referenced the events of the other comic lines, and towards the end of its run contributed four issues to the Time of the Raven Global Event. The main characters of the listed series' interact directly in the crossover arc.
Most of the series takes place in Saint Petersburg and follows the eponymous Igor Grom — a second generation police investigator — in both the investigations he conducts, and his personal life. A respected crimefighter, Grom is known for his incredible analytical mind and personal integrity, as well as his athleticism and his unique eyebrows (which are shaped like lightning bolts). Grom has a partner, Dmitri "Dima" Dubin, a journalist girlfriend named Yulia Pchyolkina, and an archenemy nicknamed The Plague Doctor.
In January 2016, as part of the Second Wind event, the series ended and was replaced with Igor Grom, which serves as a sequel to Major Grom. In 2021, Igor Grom also ended and was followed by the next series, Major Igor Grom, which saw Igor officially return to police work. The series also generated the spinoff series Plague Doctor, which focuses on Grom's former antagonist and his associates.
Major Grom story arcs include:
- Major Grom #1–3 and #5-10: Plague Doctor
- Major Grom #11–18: Saint Patrick's Day
- Major Grom #19–24: Just Like A Fairy Tale
- Major Grom #25–33: The Game
- Major Grom #34–37: The Voices
- Major Grom #38–41: In The Heart Of Darkness
- Major Grom #42–44: The Riddle Of The Sphinx
- Major Grom #45–50: The Last Case
Tropes present in Major Grom in general:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: In "The Game", Razumovsky initiates his plan of revenge on Igor Grom's birthday by having his team of mercenaries infiltrate Igor's birthday party, leave a burner phone for Igor, and take stock of the guests (with plans to abduct them later).
- The Ace: Despite his sometimes unorthodox (and often overly aggressive) approach to law enforcement, Igor is recognized as the city's foremost criminal investigator, and is highly respected in his field. If there's a crime being committed in Saint Petersburg, Grom will solve it.
- Ambiguous Situation: Several examples:
- Was Sergey Razumovsky sexually assaulted in the detention center? While
the writers have stated that he wasn't (and that it isn't "that kind of story"), the evidence seems to suggest otherwise: in Issue #10, Sergey is roughly manhandled by a larger male prisoner, who looks at him with a heart symbol in his speech bubble, calls him "pretty" and "sugar", and asks if he's been "claimed" yet — stating that he will be "first in line"; when Sergey tries to fight him off, the prisoner gives him a beating and hauls him to his feet, declaring, "I'm not finished with you!"; when next we see Sergey, he's disheveled and sports a bruised face, a split and bleeding lip, and rage-filled eyes. That Black Bird emerges after this and takes control for the first time lends further credence to the theory.note Sergey, for his part, only makes a vague mention of enduring "hardships" behind bars, with no further details provided. - To further complicate matters, the origins of Bird (and, by extension, Rag) aren't entirely clear, either:
- Is Bird an imaginary friend Sergey created as a child to reflect aspects of his own personality? A Split Personality created by the trauma Sergey suffered at the detention center? An imaginary friend who later became a split personality? What, if anything, did Rubenstein's drugs have to do with it? Or could Bird be something else entirely — perhaps some kind of demon or other entity, or even a shard of Kutkh himself, sharing Sergey's body? It's been stated multiple times that Sergey's condition isn't your ordinary Dissociative Identity Disorder: Rubenstein says that it's unlike anything he's ever encountered before, and standard medication seems to have little effect on suppressing Bird. To make things even stranger, Kutkh appears to kill off Bird in "Time of the Raven", yet in the spin-off Plague Doctor series there are hints that Bird still exists in some form — and it's further revealed that he could be seen by Rubenstein while Sergey was in the hospital.
- Is Rag a separate personality, or just the parts of Sergey's psyche not claimed by Bird? In '"Plague Doctor'', Sergey tells Lera that when he's scared, Rag takes over, hinting at the former.
- Was Sergey Razumovsky sexually assaulted in the detention center? While
- Black-Tie Infiltration: Being a detective series, this naturally happens from time to time:
- During "Plague Doctor", Igor and Dima don tuxedos and attend Deputy Mayor Kemenny's birthday gala together (believing that The Citizen will crash the social event). Amusingly, they end up running into Yulia, who is carrying out her own infiltration (as part of her ongoing investigation into Kemenny's crooked dealings).
- Later in the same arc, after he's Taken Off the Case, Igor attends the Vmeste Orphanage charity gala with Yulia for similar reasons. Conveniently, he donated money to the cause half a year earlier, which puts him on the guest list.
- Bank Robbery: Happens multiple times over the course of the series:
- During the "Plague Doctor" arc, a gang of the Plague Doctor's followers try to rob a bank in Saint Petersburg.
- "Just Like A Fairy Tale" follows a gang of female bank robbers known as the Three Princesses who target Ros-Garant Banks.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Amongst the main heroes of the series, Igor has dark brown hair, Dima has blonde hair, and Yulia has bright, apple-red hair.
- Breather Episode: Issue #4, which is set in the middle of the "Plague Doctor" arc and contains two unrelated Prequel stories: one about Igor Grom, and one about Dima Dubin ("Butterflies In The Stomach").
- Issue #41, "The Perfect Day" (which takes place in the middle of the "Raven Time" event) seems to be another flashback-based comic, with Igor — fresh off Razumovsky's arrest — going on a wonderful date with Yulia and then joining his friends and co-workers at a bar for a police academy reunion. However, Igor is struck by repeated pangs of sadness and the feeling that something isn't right; then reality begins to fall apart, revealing that Igor is still in Siberia — and trapped in one of Kutkh's illusions.
- Bury Your Gays: There are only two confirmed LGBTQ characters in the series. In the "Just Like A Fairy Tale" storyline, one of them dies a slow, painful death from a gunshot to the stomach while her girlfriend watches; said girlfriend later commits suicide out of grief.
- Cowboy Cop: Igor Grom possesses most of the usual traits of this trope: he's obsessed with getting his man, works off the books, is disdainful of rules, and is partial to beating information out of suspects. Simultaneously, he breaks the mold by also being a brilliant analyst and strategist and having no issue with working with others — not to mention a very strong moral code and a heart of gold.
- Distressed Damsel: Yulia ends up kidnapped or incapacitated in every story arc where she isn't pushed aside — right up to "The Game", when she's murdered by Sergey Razumovsky.
- Distressed Dude: Igor suffers this in nearly every arc:
- In "Plague Doctor", he's captured, stripped naked, drugged, and then forced to navigate a death maze where he must avoid pits of spikes, swinging blades, explosions, swarms of vicious corvids, and horrifying hallucinations.
- In "Saint Patrick's Day", he's strung up and tortured by an IRA member; he escapes, only to be arrested under false charges and beaten by Dirty Cop (who is secretly an IRA member himself); once he gets out of that predicament, he gets tied up, interrogated, and beaten unconscious by an MI6 agent. Yeesh.
- In "The Game", he's taken prisoner and fitted with a collar bomb. Dima is also abducted and knocked out during the arc, but spared any further torment by virtue of the fact that he has to look after Razumovsky's pet raven, Margo.
- In The Time of the Raven crossover event, Grom's also captured by Kutkh's cultists and imprisoned (as a "White Crow"). Later, he gets incapacitated, turned into a ghoul, transformed into the avatar of Kutkh's light side, and trapped in a hallucinatory fantasy by Kutkh himself.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Dima Dubin and his sister Mira Dubin, both of whom are good-hearted, kind, and morally upstanding.
- The Infiltration: In "Plague Doctor", Igor poses as a customer so he can infiltrate a brothel and question Kirill Gretchkin's favorite escort. Unfortunately, he gets a little too aggressive and is thrown out before he can get any answers (after he's already beaten up security and the owner).
- He attempts something similar in "Saint Patrick's Day" after Yulia is abducted and forced into a brothel.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Major Grom is, up until "The Game", firmly grounded in reality — which makes the few situations that seem otherwise that much more notable (and debatable).
- "Plague Doctor": Is Igor's nightmare about Black Bird causing the Great London Fire just a dream, or is it an actual supernatural vision of the past? The dream does reveal the existence (and physical appearance) of Black Bird—neither of which Igor has any way of knowing—and accurately predicts Sergey's plans for the city note However, Grom is a skilled detective, and he knows that the Plague Doctor is an expert on the Middle Ages who wears a corvid-esque mask, and recently targeted the London Mall, so it's entirely possible that the dream was just his mind's attempt to sort out the facts.
- Meaningful Name: While "Igor" is a fairly common male name in Russia, "Grom" (Гром) is the Russian word for "Thunder"; rather fitting, for a man who is both a prizefighter and an uncompromising crimefighter.
- Sergey Razumovsky's surname is derived from razum, the word for "mind"; this is an appropriate name for a genius and a criminal mastermind — and an ironic one for a man who loses his mind.
- Renaissance Man: Igor Grom excels at nearly everything he puts his hand to. He graduated at the head of his class (both in academics and at the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior), is a crime scene analyst, a chess champion, and a master of multiple fighting and self defense techniques, including karate, boxing, kickboxing, sambo, wrestling, and judo (having participated in competitions for all of the above, and won many of them). Note that he began mastering all of these skills when he was a child.
- Sergey Razumovsky is a tech guru, businessman, entrepreneur (he singlehandedly designed the Vmeste social media network and founded the company in his early 20s — making him the world's youngest billionaire), amateur historian, and a well-known philanthropist. He's also a criminal mastermind, with an extensive knowledge of art, world history, chemistry, explosives, engineering, computer hacking, and various forms of human torture and execution, as well as being a decent marksman — and deadly skilled with a knife to boot.
- To a lesser degree, Oleg Volkov also qualifies: a former soldier (and current mercenary and bodyguard), he is an expert tracker, spy, and weapons master, and highly proficient in fire team tactics, urban survival (including parkour), and just about every form of hand-to-hand combat imaginable. He can operate nearly any vehicle, possesses minor first aid and engineering skills, and is knowledgeable about economics (having studied the subject in college before joining the military). He's also an excellent chef, with superb cooking and baking skills (which he is always looking to expand).
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: This is Igor's general mindset when it comes to law enforcement. (However, he draws the line at killing people.)
- Wham Episode: "The Game" is regarded as one for the series: it kills Yulia, turns Igor into a vengeful Broken Ace, and reveals that Kutkh has chosen Sergey as his vessel on Earth.
