Review - Laika by Nick Abadzis
You can’t argue with a nice little comic and Nick Abadzis’ “Laika” is as nice as they come — gentle and humane, it’s almost so low key that I can barely believe it’s a comic, let alone one about the Russian space program. And yet this tale of the first dog in outer space reveals within an oppressive bureaucracy shy people, strong in spirit but soft in emotion, facing a moment in history in the only way they can — from their small vantage point.
It’s nice, indeed, but that doesn’t mean that it ignores the darkness implicit in the story he has chosen to tell — nor the human complexity.
Abadzis finds several small vantage points from which to allow his tale to spring, all converging to some grim overview of the Soviet reality. Korolev, the future chief designer of the Russian space program, walks away from the belittling oppression of the gulags to promise himself greatness. Kudryavka the dog is a runt who can charm some, but can’t get any sort of break in life — a survivor of all the cruelty that Soviet self-loathing can conjure, Kudryavka will one day be Laika, the Russian dog that was sent into orbit.
These two sorry lives turned towards greatness converge in the space program — and with their associations with Yelena, the lab technician who nurtures the mutts and runts that have been gathered in order to go through competitive training to be that first canine in space. Yelena, considered possibly too soft in the beginning, proves to be publicly solid if privately filled with hear — so much so that she warms that of Gazenko, who quietly creeps through the Russian system of bureaucratic oppression, attempting to do his best within a process where the is no room for personal pride, everything is done for the state.
Abadzis has crafted a warm tale about the march of history, focusing on a small incident with big implications that was borne of the passages of myriad lives and personalities — not just workers in the space program, but various children and adults living normal lives in Russia against whom the various players brush in crucial and emotional ways. In this way, Abadzis dissects the parts that build to an event and unearths the complexity of any given historical moment.
It’s a low key work and Abadzis takes his time to let the themes unfold — you’re almost unaware that they exist until the final moments in the book, when everything that has come before drifts up out of the pages and the scope of it all is contained — still as ever before — in the little moments of the little lives of ordinary souls.
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