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From Spirou: Alerte aux Zorkons (and a little follow-up in La face cachée du Z)

Warning: This post contains lots of bad grammar. The character's broken French is done on purpose, an editorial choice you can contest; the possible English mistakes in my description come from my being ESL. Please bear with it?

Lots of Spirou readers were so sorely disappointed with Aux sources du Z they ditched the series entirely. I won’t blame them. I almost did so myself. Fast forward a couple of years, I gave the new title a second chance and I was rewarded with…


Spirou and Fantasio come back to Champignac-en-Cambrousse to find the village turned into a demented jungle, in an even worse state than the Palombian Marsupilami’s jungle. Nobody, not even the Count, knows what happens.

Meet Astrid and Lena, two perky Swedish grad electronics & mechanics students, here on holidays.(Astrid is the butchy red-head, Lena the more feminine blonde.)

Stranded in the jungle, they face a big problem: between them and the Count’s laboratory, a horde of ‘Zorklutzes’, creatures born from this jungle and could out-stupid Lucky Luke’s Rantanplan and Madagascar’s Mort. In fact, they have so little brains it renders them immune to Zorglub’s brainwashing.


It gets worse when the army decides to just nuke the site to get rid of the problem. Having no mean to make their presence known they resolved to storm the Zorklutzes anyway and use Zorglub’s brainwashing waves to stop the bombing.


Ok, they’re out of energy to power the machine but Astrid and Lena’s abilities come in handy.


It works, the day is saved; see Zorglub and Fantasio get their hopes too high during the moment of euphoria following their victory.

(By the way, everything was caused by Zorglub’s klutziness, of course.)

Latter, everybody keeps on working hard to set things right annnd… Zorglub’s high-tech thingies still act as a geeky turn-on on Astrid and Lena and the three of them take a French leave, riding away to new adventures in a refurbished Zorglumobile.


Now you’re asking, but where’s the canon gay couple?

Open the next album, meet again with Zorglub.


Fantasio’s question: But I don’t see Lena or Astrid… Didn’t they come with you?
Zorglub’s answer: They didn’t meet up with my expectations so I sent them back to Sweden, where they got married.
It raises another question: Married? To whom?
The great answer: Married to each other!

I like to read between the lines and see it as “Zorglub asked them out but they both turned him down and left on their own accord and he’s just trying to keep face”. Whether they already were together before, or started dating after the adventure isn’t stated but I also like to think it’s the former.

Here we go. They weren’t real fleshed-out characters, it all happened behind the scenes and served mostly to make a joke out of Fantasio and Zorglub, but it did happen and it makes me ridiculously happy!
They’re cute, they’re geeky and they’re together. ♥