The Game (Russian: Игра) is a 2014-2015 story-arc in the Major Grom comic series. It ran for nine issues (#25—#33) and was written by Artyom Gabrelyanov, with art from Anastasia Kim, Margarita Kablukova, and Natalya Zaidova.
Years ago, Major Igor Grom arrested Sergey Razumovsky: a twisted serial-murdering billionaire who hid behind a Plague Doctor's mask. Now, with the help of his childhood friend and mercenary, Oleg Volkov, Razumovsky escapes from prison and plans to get revenge on Grom. He places bombs all over St. Petersburg, and challenges Igor to defuse them. In addition, he kidnaps Grom's loved ones and sends the major a photograph of them in his captivity; in order to save the people he loves, Grom must play Razumovsky in a deadly game that will push his skills, and his resolve, to the breaking point.
The Game provides examples of:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Sergey Razumovsky is broken out of prison on Igor's birthday, and has Oleg leave the major a threatening gift: a burner phone, which he uses to send the message, "Hello, missed me?" (superimposed over the Plague Doctor's personal logo).
- Affably Evil: Razumovsky is a gracious host towards his hostages, and (aside from grabbing Yulia and forcing her to take a selfie with him) treats them as "guests" in his castle, forbidding his guards from harming any of them. Then the chess game begins....
- Aren't You Forgetting Someone?: Prokopenko compliments Yulia on managing to invite all of Igor's friends for the party — and then wonders where Dima Dubin is. Cut to Dima sitting in his apartment, stewing with resentment.
- Bait-and-Switch: In Issue #25, Igor returns home to find Yulia waiting for him in a sexy, low-cut white dress. She saunters towards him and exclaims, "Happy Birthday, darling!" As they kiss passionately, she tells him that she has a surprise for him, and slips a blindfold over his eyes...before leading him into the next room, where his friends and co-workers have thrown him a birthday party.
- Speaking of Yulia's white dress in the first issue, her wardrobe—alongside that of Sasha, who wears a Little Black Dress—appears to foreshadow their designations as the White Queen and Black Queen, respectively, in Sergey's chess game. Igor also believes this to be the case, albeit because Yulia is his current girlfriend (and thus his "true love") and Sasha is his ex-girlfriend. Sergey doesn't agree, and makes Yulia the Black Queen because, unlike Sasha, Grom never directly told her "I love you". Grom discovers this when he sacrifices the Black Queen and Yulia's bomb collar, rather than Sasha's, detonates.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: In Part 4, Sergey has a dream where he's confronted by Black Bird in his own Mental World; there's no real battle, as Bird basically curb-stomps Sergey for attempting to defy and banish him. When he has Sergey laid out on the ground, bleeding and nearly unconscious, Kutkh appears in a swirl of ravens and promises to kill Bird — and the real battle begins. It ends with Bird's own sword driven through his chest, and Kutkh departing, with the promise that he will return.
- Big Fancy House: Sergey Razumovsky purchases a lavishly decorated palace for himself and Oleg in Venice while they carry out his revenge plan. Oleg is awestruck by such luxury, while Sergey is nonplussed (or at least, pretends to be).Oleg: (touring castle) Wow! Oh, boy! This...this is incredible!Sergey: (shrugs) It'll do, for starters.
- Bird People: Razumovsky's evil alter ego, The Bird, takes the form of an evil-looking version of Sergey with a black-feathered body giant, wings, clawed hands, and golden eyes.
- Body Horror: After hallucinating The Bird emerging from a mirror and attacking him, Sergey takes medication in an attempt to banish his alter ego; the result
recalls The Thing (1982): Bird melts into a bleeding mess of blisters, sprouts extra faces and limbs, and his primary skull splits open into an organic plague doctor's mask full of jagged teeth (and even more faces). - Burner Phones: Sergey gifts Igor a burner phone, which he uses to communicate with him during the first phase of his revenge plot. It's rigged to only send and receive text messages (and deliver a nasty shock if you try to make an outgoing call).
- Call-Back: Dima Dubin is still looking after Sergey's pet raven, Margo (who fell into his custody after the events of Plague Doctor).
- Before he orders a mercenary to detonate the explosives on the Hero City Leningrad Obelisk, Sergey quips, "Let me show you this little magic trick!" (referencing the nightmare Igor had during "Just Like A Fairy Tale", in which Sergey appeared as an emcee presenting a fatal magic act).
- Character Death: Not everyone makes it out of Sergey and Igor's chess game alive: Yulia, Alexey, and three unnamed friends of Igor die when their bomb collars detonate, Konstantin is shot in the head point blank, and Oleg is shot in the chest five times by Sergey after The Bird takes over.
- Chess Motifs: Chess games are a recurring theme in the arc.
- Conspicuous Consumption: Sergey indulges in this throughout the arc. He charters a private plane (and later a private boat) for himself and Oleg, buys a fully furnished Venetian castle on a whim, and treats himself to finely tailored suits, piles of junk food, and fine wine — not to mention acquiring custom uniforms for Oleg and all of his men.
- Crossover: In Issue #29, Joshua Donato (Red Fury) appears in the background of the photo of Oleg Volkov.
- In that same issue, the art museum features paintings of (among other things) Alena Kuznetsova and Ziggy (from Metora), the eye of Balor (Demonslayer), and Grey Wolf from Friar (who also appears as a museum guest). Other museum guests include The Nightingale and Alexander Alinovsky from Exlibrium.
- In Issue #30, Dima reads a copy of Maxim magazine with Nika Chaikina on the front cover and Jessie Rodriguez (both from Red Fury) on the back.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Sergey's hostages are killed with bomb collars.
- Enemy Within: In Part 4 ("The Omen"), Sergey wrestles with Black Bird, his malevolent Split Personality. This culminates in a hallucinatory sequence where Bird drags him through a mirror and onto a desolate wasteland, where he forces him to choose between The Bird and The Rag.
- Gender-Blender Name: Yulia assumes that the person listed as "Sasha" in Igor's contacts is a man, only for "him" to be revealed as Igor's ex-girlfriend; an understandable mistake, as "Sasha" is a gender neutral diminutive of both Alexander and Alexandra.
- Gilligan Cut: After Prokopenko notes that Yulia managed to invite all of Grom's friends, except Dima Dubin:Igor: By the way, where exactly is Dima?Yulia: (stares in horror) Oh my God, DIMA!(Cut to Dima sitting in his apartment, eating ice cream in his sweats while Margo pecks at his houseplants.)
- Hallucinations: As Sergey's mental health deteriorates (and his alter ego, The Bird, grows stronger) Sergey imagines Bird appearing more and more frequently: stalking the room beside him, speaking for him, appearing in and attacking him through the mirror, and (in one horrifying instance) turning into a mass of limbs and blistered, melted flesh under the influence of Sergey's medication.
- Human Chess: In the final act, Razumovsky equips his hostages — twenty of Grom's friends and loved ones — with bomb collars that correspond to pieces on a chess board; he demands that Igor, a former chess champion, play a game to secure their freedom, explaining that each of Grom's pieces taken by his opponent equals the death of one captive. When Igor refuses to play, Sergey forces his hand by killing off the three "extras" (people not assigned a chess piece) right away.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: In Part 4, Sergey argues with Black Bird, his evil alter ego, in a giant, ornate mirror in his castle. Sergey smashes the mirror with a vase, which not only fails to banish Bird, but causes him to appear in the room and torment Sergey in person. Sergey finally gets rid of him by taking his medication, wakes up, and looks into the now-empty mirror...only for Bird to-reappear as soon as his back is turned and drag him into the mirror. (At which point he wakes up for real.)
- Mental World: In "The Omen" segment of Part 4, Sergey has a nightmare where he is transported into the landscape of his mind, portrayed as a barren plane where he is utterly at the mercy of Black Bird..that is, until Kutkh appears.
- The Missus and the Ex: Yulia sends out Igor's birthday invites by texting everyone in his phone contacts. The only person who doesn't show is "Sasha"—who appears just as her name is mentioned, revealing herself to be Igor's ex-girlfriend. Yulia is not happy about this, and irritably demands to know why she wasn't told about Sasha, asking Igor what he ever saw in her. Igor pacifies Yulia by telling her that his relationship with Sasha was "the past", and Yulia is his present. This conflict ends up playing a major part in Sergey's plan, as he puts the two women in opposing positions on the chess board and forces Igor to choose between protecting one and sacrificing the other.
- Nightmare Sequence: The arc features several, all of which involve Razumovsky and Kutkh:
- Part 4 ends with Sergey having a nightmare in which he's trapped in his own mind with The Bird. Bird forces him at sword-point to choose between himself and The Rag (represented, respectively, by a black door and a white door); the former means staying with Bird forever, while the latter means his death. Sergey steps through the white door, and promptly falls off a cliff...with Bird waiting for him at the bottom. Bird tells Sergey that he failed his "test", and beats him for his defiance—only to be interrupted by Kutkh. The Raven God fights Bird, tricks him into stabbing himself, and departs with an ominous warning: "I'll kill you...and this human will be mine."
- Part 5 opens with yet another of Sergey's nightmares. This one involves a white-clad Sergey swimming through a sea of black ribbons to a beautiful woman made of black ichor, who caresses his face...before ensnaring him with her ribbons and turning into Kutkh. The ichor covers Sergey's face, causing it to morph into [[spoilers: Kutkh's]]. He wakes up in a cold sweat.
- Rage Against the Reflection: In Part 4, Sergey attacks a mirror in his bedroom, throwing a vase at it and even punching it with his bare hands in an attempt to get rid of Black Bird (whom he imagines in the mirror). All he gets for his trouble is some horrifying hallucinations—and hands full of glass shards.
- Right Under Their Noses: Oleg — the partner of Grom's greatest enemy — attends Igor's birthday party, and is able to slip past Igor, leave a package on the gift table, and slip out of the room without anyone noticing. It's completely justified, as no one at the party actually knows Oleg, and anyone who would normally have noticed a suspicious-looking man lurking about is either distracted (Igor, Yulia, Prokopenko) or completely absent (Dima).
- Sadistic Choice: Igor reluctantly uses the "Grom-Kapustin" move — in which the player sacrifices one of their pieces for the sake of a win — to try to end the game, knowing that someone will die regardless of his choice. He allows the Black Queen, whom he believes to be Alexandra Filipenko, to be sacrificed. To his horror, the bomb collar on Yulia's neck detonates instead; Sergey had chosen Alexandra as the White Queen—and Igor's One True Love—because Igor told her "I love you" while they were dating (whereas he never said the words directly to Yulia).
- Shout-Out: While meeting with The Gambler, Dima uses a cover story about wanting to get Oleg Volkov for his new head of security; when told that "Oleg's busy", Dima replies, "I'm sure we can make him an offer he can't refuse".
- Later in the same issue, Igor visits an art museum to follow through on Sergey's tip; one of the museum guests is Nightingale — who has The Comedian's smiley face pin button on his bag.
- In Issue #30, Dima reads a copy of '"Maxim'' magazine.
- Slouch of Villainy: Sergey has a lavish red and gold chair in his palace, and uses it accordingly.
- Split-Personality Takeover: The Bird — the personality representing Sergey's malicious, vengeful tendencies — influences Sergey's actions throughout the arc, before taking over Sergey completely in the third act.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Sergey rigs bombs to go off at key landmarks in the city.
- Surprise Party: Near the start of the arc, Yulia throws Igor a surprise birthday party, inviting all of the friends listed in his phone contacts.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Sasha, who is a boisterous, overtly sexual ladette is the tomboy to demure, ladylike Yulia's girly girl.
