SPEECH BALLOONGATE!

Kremlin behind Viz Comic hack

NOT satisfied with fixing the American election and Brexit referendum votes, Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN has now gone one step further by HACKING into the last issue of Britain’s favourite toilet grin mag and TAMPERING with a cartoon. Eagle-eyed readers of the strip Jimbo’s Robo

Beauty Pageant in Viz 276 spotted that the words in one of the speech balloons had been obscured by a solid purple block. And now the magazine’s boss has laid the blame for the outrage firmly at the door of the Kremlin. “For some reason, it seems that the KGB were desperate to make it appear that Viz is a shambolic, badly run magazine,” said editor Hampton Doubleday. “They clearly hacked into our computer system and altered the cartoon after Viz’s extensive and exhaustive quality control process had been completed.”

“It made it look as though our proof-reading procedure consists of merely giving the magazine a cursory and half-arsed once-over just before it goes to press,” he continued. “Whereas, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Do your worst!”~ Defiant editor hits out at Putin

But in a sinister twist, Doubleday also believes that the Kremlin has recently upped the ante and made an attempt on his own life. He said: “On the run-up to the last deadline, I popped into my local for a couple of fortifying shandies after feeling thirsty due to my intense editing schedule.”

soiled “The Russian secret service must have targeted me in the pub and spiked one of my drinks with Novichok or Polonium, because the next thing I remember is waking up in an alley. I had been sick and soiled myself, which almost never happens. I could only conclude that I had been targeted and poisoned with deadly nerve agent by Kremlin goons,” Doubleday continued.

“Frankly, I was lucky to survive. My head was pounding until late in the afternoon,” he said.

Last night, the defiant editor had these words for Putin’s hitmen: “If you think your actions have damaged Britain’s third or fourth funniest magazine, you’ve got another think coming,” he said. “We will not be silenced. It’s business as usual at Viz.”