The journalists of Novaya Gazeta published the first issue of comics about the protests around the construction of landfill at station Shies on the border of Arkhangelsk Oblast and Komi within the Kafka Kodeks (‘Code’) special project. The release noted characters that resemble Russian politicians and ecoactivist Drevarkh Prosvetlyonnyi (‘The Enlightened’). This was reported on December 8 by the authors of the project.
The authors used the assumption that the protests against the landfill were initiated by creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and by Swedish schoolgirl and eco-activist Greta Thunberg as the basis of the legend of comics. The artists added two characters with superpowers into the plot — the Spirit of Shies and the Eco-Guard. The authors have made eco-activist Drevarkh Prosvetlyonnyi (Andrei Khristoforov) a shaman, who had actually summoned the Spirit of Shies, in the comics.
The artists played upon the episode when Drevarkh doused the construction guards with urine from a water pistol.
The authors described the plot of the comic book about Shies in the following way: "Russian mistique against Western technocrats." According to the artists, "this genre is ideal for describing the current political situation without directly pointing to specific characters."
Artists from Kafka Kodeks had published comics, for example, about human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov and his arrest for participating in an uncoordinated rally of support for political prisoners.
