Kalyber Joe is a Hungarian comic book series created by Roland Pilcz with five books already published in Hungary by Factory Creative Studio.

The author is now pursuing publishing opportunities for Kalyber Joe in the United States and other foreign countries.

While Kalyber Joe is an original Hungarian product, the story predominantly takes place in the US and portrays an ‘international’ visual language that does not specifically connect to any nation.

The author uses imaginary places as well as real locations, like the little imaginary schooltown of ‘Headstone’, as an idillic starting place of the adventures, and later New York as an iconic place, an analogy of the
great city.

The books aim to appeal to the widest scale of audience, with a main goal to entertain, but in an unusual and original way.

All the characters have a soul, but nobody is black or white. Each character has its own strength and weakness, so do the protagonists.

The author wanted to create a warm-hearted, but frequently more lifelike story than in a usual "cartoon-style" comic book, and this becomes more and more evident through the consecutive issues.

The story

The humor/drama based story focuses on many of the common dilemmas that youth faces; love, friendship, disappointments, emergence, discovering one’s own goals and motivations in life, and so on.

The main character, Kalyber Joe is balancing between living an ordinary or a special life. He’s basically an ‘average-Joe’ who just goes to school and draws comics for the university newspaper, but at the same time finds himself in more and more adventurous situations.

The issues in Kalyber’s life also reflect this balance.
In the first act, we meet the life of common college students. Kalyber has to deal to being a student and a practicing teacher at the same time. It creates a rich ground for comical situations. Of course the love soon comes up and muddles up our hero's easygoing life...

Later, we find ourselves in a more mysterious scenery as the two friends travel to New York in the second part, to find Joe's love and save her from a grave danger caused by him. This second book deals with a darker and rainy atmosphere. Our heroes find themselves alone in this great city.

Everything is a bit shady. We meet a couple of new characters, including a French hypochondriac, a millionaire boss of a secret covenant, and his 'right hand man', Yorn Kayrah Xemovrah (a.k.a. Kay), a badass one-eyed biker, but nobody really knows who is to be trusted. This episode also ends with a shocking revelation...

In the third book, everything is more ordinary again. Melancholy and disappointment fill the air. Kalyber wants to start a new life and forget his wounds (caused by the unhappy ending of the second adventure), but these wounds are deeper than he realized and cannot be easily healed. He wants to finally publish his comic-book. But he soon realizes that it won't be as easy as he first thought. Meanwhile he has to work in a cafe with more or less success. (Mostly the latter.)

But in a strange, rainy afternoon everything immediately changes again, as he’s got the chance to face the past when Kay, whom he thought he accidentally killed, asks for his help to be his partner in creating and opening a club in Manhattan.

After these events, in the fourth adventure, our heroes are once again going to find their luck, as they travel to Africa in order to quest the mysterious treasure of the Monkey King, with the help of a map which they found while working at the pub earlier on.

But nothing is like a fairytale in real life. The desert is not nearly as fun as the sandpit was in the kindergarten. Kalyber now has to deal with his inner doubts, as he can’t really decide whether he’s an average guy or a wannabe adventure hero... The desert will sure give him the answers at the end of this story!

And the story countinues...

See more details, excerpts and pictures on each part in the episodes section!