by Matt Dube

In Laika, Nick Abadzis uses his tiny boxes to render the structured and centralized atmosphere of 1950s Russia—a nation that struggled to best the United States and be the first to launch first a satellite (Sputnik) and then, approximately a month later, a living organism into space. Other writers have pointed to Laika’s density and length to stress how this asks to be read more as novel than long comic book. But for me, it’s the mature exploration of the pleasures and demands of duty that makes it notable as a more adult work than almost any of its contemporaries.

Adult, I mean, in the way that it isn’t invested in a sense of escapism that otherwise seems warp and woof of most comic-related work; no character in the book who works to launch Laika into orbit seeks to follow that dog into adventure. Instead, they all operate, more or less, with the interests of the society in mind and tally up the sacrifices that are to be made—personal and otherwise—in terms of the best possible outcome for the society. For example, Yelena’s story is one of complicity in this society: it is the state that gives her the opportunity to work out her passion and calling with the dogs, just as it’s the state that rushes Laika up in a rocket knowing he won’t be brought back alive. Gazenko, the closest thing to a male lead in this book, tries to balance the demands of the people he sees every day with the results he knows he must produce if his lab is to be funded. Alongside this, he might sometimes wish for a little domestic, sexual affection. Laika isn’t a story about swinging from rooftops, though Laika’s launch into space certainly qualifies as spectacular and rousing; instead, it is the story of what it took to get the dog into orbit and how a more sober approach to the science and a more responsible pace might have made it possible to get Laika back down.

Of course, my reading of Laika ignores the self-concept of Korolev, the Chief Engineer of the Soviet space program responsible for developing the Russian space program and the character with whom the book begins. Korolev does have the traditional comic protagonist’s outsized view of his own importance and is a man who believes himself possessed of a grand destiny. He certainly has all the hallmarks of the self-involved characters we know and love from other comic narratives, whether Bone or Blankets. In a lengthy interview with Tom Spurgeon, Abadzis even suggested that it was the conflict between Korolev’s sense of self and the demand to think larger than that in Soviet Russia that sent him to the Gulag in the first place and kept him jumping when he was released. But Korolev’s role in the book is surprisingly small: he focalizes the book’s first chapter and periodically reappears, but by the third chapter, when the book finds its focus, Korolev is mostly offstage. His womanizing, what we might see as a tragic flaw and which looms at one point as a possible central conflict, isn’t even dramatized; instead, we learn of it second-hand.

Asked to defend the way the book starts with Korolev—instead of with one of the characters like Yelena or Gazenko, who fit more neatly into the book’s thematic movement toward resolution—I’d  point to the starry vistas of Korolev’s journey and how they contrast with the crowded interiors of the Soviet beaurocracy of science (page 5: panel 2 and page 123: panel 3). As narrative, as theme, I think the first two chapters don’t really work. I recognize the desire to establish Korolev’s obsessive, heroic journey, and Abadzis wants to establish Laika as a dog with a destiny by highlighting the near-misses the canine overcomes to find itself in the labs. But in the end, I think these pages sacrifice something for all their drama: the sense of the quotidian hopes and dreams that necessarily conflict with the all-consuming needs of the Soviet propaganda machine. The book’s best moments, and there are many, show they way characters struggle to find what they need without directly challenging those forces which control them.

There’s a breathtakingly great moment when Korolev renames the dog Kudryavka (translated as “curly-tail”) into the Laika (“barker”) we know today when the dog barks in a manner out of character for it (p. 127: panel 4). All in a rush, the dog is swept up into history, its identity remade completely. Abadzis doesn’t rush this scene, but doesn’t linger on it either; it’s simply another piece of his developing story. His skills as a visual artist are on display in a two page sequence (p. 82-3: panel 1), in which Laika is tested in a centrifuge: Abadzis lets the technology dominate his long panels and uses the short of pan around the room for reactions. The progress through the testing sequence is then measured, with the surprisingly climax of Laika’s condition, covered in his own vomit, withheld till just the right moment. It sounds nasty, but it’s a perfect visual storytelling pay-off for the scene.

I’ve already mentioned the small boxes that demonstrate the way Soviet bureaucracy forces people into constricted spaces; it’s reminiscent of Matthew Weiner’s explanation, in interviews he’s given about the TV show Mad Men, that he wanted to show the ceilings of the offices where the action was set to demonstrate the lid on the box that is so rarely seen. Like with Weiner, Abadzis’ sense of design is elemental to the story’s emotional landscape. He is deft at capturing characters in unguarded moments, when their responses are opaque: repeatedly in the book, our access to the inner lives is restricted at a crucial moment and we don’t know quite what a character is thinking. Consider this series of panels and ask yourself, what is Yelena feeling (p. 159: panel 5)? Loss? Pride in accomplishment? A willing submission to a higher authority?  This could be a problem for the reader, but I felt more invested in her situation as I asked myself, how would I feel in a similar circumstance. I felt immersed in her world in a way I would not were I able to gauge immediately what she felt. It also reinforced for me the complexity of the decisions and situations in which the characters found themselves, where there was at least the sense that making other decisions just wasn’t possible. The book’s epigraph—wherein Dr. Gazenko concedes that had they asked different questions, had they thought differently about the animals they tested on and the work they were doing, they might have arrived at different conclusions—speaks volumes. Some of the things that were done in the name of science were unnecessary and were inexcusable in terms of their propaganda value. But that’s a hard decision to make in the moment, for any adult, and Abadzis’ graphic novel catches us in the same net as his characters, pushing us to ask ourselves difficult questions without the guidance of hindsight.