‘Z stands for Russian war crimes, bombed cities, thousands of murdered Ukrainians.’ This was tweeted this week by Dmitro Koeleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister. He therefore demands that the use of the Z symbol be criminalized in all countries. That will be a job, because how do you forbid the world population to use a certain letter?
In February, it was first reported that many Russian tanks along the border of Ukraine had a Z painted, although that letter is indicated in the Cyrillic script as a 3. The precise meaning of the Z, which is the symbol, is speculated. of the ‘military operation’.
Comics connoisseurs refer on social media to two famous albums that suddenly seem to have taken on a prophetic character. The last letter of the alphabet also plays a major role in two comic books in the Belgian Spirou and Kwabbernoot series: ‘Z’ from Swindle (1961) and The Shadow of ‘Z’ (1962). They were drawn by Franquin and written by Greg.
‘Under the sign of Z’
They contain elements that you could indeed ascribe a prophetic character. The evil genius in both comic books is the inventor Zwendel, who in French is called Zorglub (pronounced: zzor-gloep), which not coincidentally has an Eastern European sound. After all, it was Cold War. Scam is out for total power and wants to place all planets in the solar system ‘under the sign of Z’.
To do that, he developed the Scam Wave, which allows him to paralyze and hypnotize people from a distance. He calls himself ‘an electronic dictator’ who can hack into radio frequencies to brainwash the population – a precursor to hacking. Scams have even managed to get remote controlled cars to drive. To illustrate this, Franquin drew a Citroën DS in which only two leather gloves operate the steering wheel, which is reminiscent of today’s self-driving Tesla.
Nice gadget, but the dictator also invented a Scam, with which he turns people into zombies who do everything he says. These Scammen wear a uniform with a big Z on it and pronounce everything in reverse order. This systematic distortion of the language is now also familiar to us: according to Russian President Putin, the real aggression comes from the West.
The lust for power turns out to be commercial rather than military. Like an Elon Musk avant la lettre, he sends rockets into space to paint an ad on the moon, after declaring, “I admit, my Scam Wave is affecting the public…but isn’t that the purpose of all advertising?”
The plan fails miserably, as his brainwashed Swindlers turn everything around. So high in the sky is: acoC-aloC.