Zygii

The Zygii (Greek: Ζυγοί/Zygoi) or Zygians, were described by Strabo as a nation to the north of Colchis. He wrote:

And on the sea lies the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, or the Syndic territory. After this latter, one comes to the Achaei and the Zygii and the Heniochi, and also the Cercetae and the Macropogones. And above these are situated the narrow passes of the Phtheirophagi (Phthirophagi); and after the Heniochi the Colchian country, which lies at the foot of the Caucasian, or Moschian, Mountains. (Strabo, Geographica 11.2)

William Smith observes that "they were partly nomad shepherds, partly brigands and pirates, for which latter vocation they had ships specially adapted". They inhabited the region known as Zyx, which is on the northern slopes of the Caucasus east of Elbrus. To the east were the Avars, and to the west were the Circassians. To the north was Sarmatian territory, and to the south lay the part of Colchis inhabited by the Svans (Soanes of Strabo and Pliny the Elder).

Zyx (cartoonist)

Jacques Hurtubise (November 1950 – 11 December 2015) was a French-Canadian cartoonist and publisher. He was one of the founders of Croc magazine and is considered one of the most prominent figures in Quebec comics of the 1970s and 1980s.

He was born in Ottawa. Hurtubise's earliest work appeared in his first attempt at a comics magazine was L'Hydrocéphale Illustré in November 1971, in collaboration with Gilles Desjardins and Françoise Barrette. It was not a success. Following it, he founded a group of young Canadian artists called the Coopérative des Petits Dessins. Throughout the 1970s he produced over 200 comic strips for the newspaper Le Jour. In these strips appeared the characters le Sombre Vilain and his sidekick Bill, the gluttonous boa constrictor who loved to eat pizza delivery men. These adventures continued in the humorous magazine Croc, which he founded in 1979 with Hélène Fleury and Roch Côté.

Hurtubise is one of only two Québécois cartoonists, with Albert Chartier, to appear in Le Dictionnaire mondial de la Bande Dessinée and The World Encyclopedia of Comics. In 2007 he won the Joe Shuster Award, an award for Canadian cartoonists. His works and letters are kept in the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

ZYX

ZYX (ジックス, Jikkusu, pronounced zicks) was a short-lived Japanese pop group made up of five Hello! Project Kids members led by Mari Yaguchi of Morning Musume. Yaguchi acted as a mentor and the group released two singles. ZYX is important in that it is the first unit that Hello! Project Kids officially joined with the second being Aa! formed in 2003, the third being Berryz Kobo in 2004, and the fourth being Cute] in 2005. As Saki Shimizu and Momoko Tsugunaga were selected to become members of Berryz Kobo in 2004, the activity of ZYX ended.

History

The name ZYX is a kind of acronym using a somewhat intricate play in notation. "Z" and "Y" are taken from the phrase Zettai Yume o Bai ni (絶対、夢を倍に, Definitely double your dreams) "Bai ni," meaning "double in size," is represented not as "B" but as a multiplication sign "×" which was then represented by the letter "X." Also, the letters ZYX are the last letters of the English alphabet in reverse order. In Hello! Project, this inverted order naming is followed by the groups "W" created in 2004, "v-u-den" in 2005, "The Possible" in 2006, and SI☆NA in 2008. This line-up of groups continues the reverse alphabetical naming (ZYX-W-VU-T-S).