Laika (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Abadzis, Nick

ARTIST: Nick Abadzis (illustrator); Hilary Sycamore (colorist)

PUBLISHER: First Second Books

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2007

Publication History

Though he first hit upon the idea in 2002, British comics creator Nick Abadzis did not complete his first outline of Laika until 2005, after doing as much historical research as he could. He then spent some time traveling in and around Moscow to get a visual feel of the locations, before drawing and coloring several test pages to promote the idea to various publishers. These first pages featured a somewhat more anthropomorphized Laika (which Abadzis quickly realized was a mistake after seeing it on paper) than is seen in the published version. First Second, an imprint of Roaring Book Press, expressed interest in the concept and requested additional pages with Abadzis’s more canine approach to the titular character. Abadzis obliged, and these slightly more refined pages sold First Second on the idea.

Abadzis continued researching as he wrote, making the novel as accurate as possible; he went as far as creating scale models of several of the period vehicles to ensure he did not miss any details. He completed his first full draft about eight months before he and First Second agreed the work should be finished, in order for publication to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Laika’s famous flight. The book was released just before the actual anniversary, and Abadzis promoted the book with a slide-show lecture at several locations, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Plot

A housekeeper is told to get rid of a litter of puppies from her employer’s dog. She is able to pass on all but one of them to local children. The last of them she gives to a friend, suggesting the responsibility might help discipline her son. The boy is outraged but reluctantly takes care of the dog, so as not to incur his father’s wrath. In a fit of protest and desperation, the boy takes the dog to the canal and throws her in. The dog survives and scrounges the alleyways as a stray, eventually finding some companionship with another unclaimed dog. The two are sometimes fed by a local butcher, but they are repeatedly forced to flee the dogcatchers.

The dogcatchers’ chase goes on for two years, until the butcher’s wife finally helps one of them. The catcher secures the smaller dog, but he takes out his frustration by killing the other. He is reprimanded by his superior for his actions, and, since the shelters are already overflowing, the small dog is taken to an air force center that requires dogs for testing purposes.

Oleg Gazenko takes the dog and, walking it down to the kennel, unintentionally interrupts his boss, Vladimir Yazdovsky, who is in the middle of hiring Yelena Dubrovsky as the new dog-training assistant. She takes an immediate liking to the small dog, naming her Kudryavka. As Yelena tends to Kudryavka, Yazdovsky apologizes to Gazenko for hiring her without consultation but talks up her qualifications.

As Yelena begins caring for Kudryavka and several other dogs, Oleg informs her that the dogs are being put through rigorous testing with the ultimate aim of sending one of them into space. For the next year, Yelena sees Kudryavka undergo often painful procedures, only to happily bound back into her arms. After the success of the Sputnik satellite, the space program is accelerated, and Kudryavka is selected as one of three final candidates for a space flight, though Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the space program, renames her Laika.

Oleg and Yelena then learn Laika’s trip is deliberately sacrificial, and she will not be returning alive. The two are both heartbroken, but they continue working on the project out of a sense of duty. The rocket launch, with Laika as its sole passenger, goes as planned, which Yelena watches sorrowfully. Within hours, Laika dies from the intense heat.

The news broadcasts all rave about Russia’s latest achievement, but the story of Laika’s death is distorted with claims that she was euthanized, which causes a fair amount of outrage from several sectors. As the project leaders toast the memory of Kudryavka, Yelena quits her job and walks home, while the dog’s space-faring coffin slowly descends into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Characters

•Laika, a.k.a. Kudryavka, is the small, loving dog on which the story is centered. While she is not anthropomorphized, she endears herself to many of the other characters with her unwavering trust and resilience to both emotional and physical duress. She greatly enjoys the company of her caregivers and remains steadfastly loyal to them.

•Sergei Korolev is the chief designer in charge of Russia’s space program. Having survived wrongful imprisonment in a Siberian gulag, he possesses an almost single-minded determination to overcome the slander he has endured by proving his worth professionally. He constantly pushes his staff to achieve notoriety for the Russian space program, but his dedication often causes others to find him cold and unemotional.

•Yelena Dubrovsky is the special assistant for the dog-training sessions and acts as the primary caretaker for the animals. She begins work on the same day Laika arrives and shares a unique bond with the dog. She is an extremely competent worker, but the emotional attachment she forms with the dogs continually weighs on her conscience as she learns more about the space program. Guilt about the fate of the animals she trains causes her to resign after Laika’s flight. Of the main characters, she was the only one not based on a real individual; however, after finalizing her look, Abadzis serendipitously discovered there was indeed a real dog trainer in the program who bears a close physical resemblance to his character.

•Oleg Gazenko is Yelena’s boss at the Institute for Biomedical Problems and acts as the liaison between the dog handlers and the space program. He tries to keep himself emotionally removed from the project, but his attempts at self-control result in more pronounced outbursts as the project continues, forcing him to remain absent from the climactic launch.

•Vladimir Yazdovsky is the air force officer in charge of the animal training and testing and is Oleg’s superior. Beneath the chief designer in rank, he is the most knowledgeable in the strategic decisions that are being made about the space program. While his work precludes him from working with and thereby growing attached to any of the dogs, he still shows an appreciation for Laika and, ultimately, her memory.

Artistic Style

Abadzis’s illustration style seems fairly loose, but this perception belies a deliberate precision. With Laika, he wrote the entire book several times, focusing and tightening his story with each pass. The earliest drafts, in fact, were little more than dialogue with an occasional amorphous shape nearby. He followed this with thumbnail layouts, before drawing out full pencils. Though the pencils remained loose by many artists’ standards, Abadzis’s inking of his own work allowed him to work at a greater speed by continuing to refine aspects of the story at the inking stage.

Abadzis’s figures are fairly simply drawn, but each retains more than enough unique features such that the reader never has any difficulty identifying and distinguishing the characters. The characters resemble the real persons they are intended to represent, but they are not caricatures, as a loose, cartoonlike style such as Abadzis’s might suggest. Indeed, Abadzis’s figures are considerably more detailed than his earlier work on Hugo Tate (1993), where he honed his style, showing a more obvious stylistic progression.

Abadzis created a font specifically for the book, based on his own hand lettering. The text was laid over scans of the pencil art and then printed out; the printouts were then used on a light box as guides while he inked the project. Abadzis shaded minimally at this stage, preferring to focus on his line work and let colorist Hilary Sycamore delineate figures and shapes. Though Sycamore generally used local color based on what Abadzis called “endless exhaustive notes from me” and focused on a slightly muted palette, she helped establish the mood of each scene.

Themes

Abadzis’s aim is not only to detail the history of Laika and her space flight but also to make the story emotional and engaging, honoring the dog’s sacrifice. Abadzis takes extra care to give all of the characters a great deal of depth, an aspect that is often absent from simple histories. The space race is frequently remembered for the events themselves or the public heroes who took part in the events, but Abadzis ensures that all of the characters in his graphic text are represented as real people with desires and drives that propel their work and, by extension, the story.

Interpersonal bonds play a key role in the story. Most of the characters presented are based on real individuals who actually worked with Laika. Abadzis’s research included learning about both the personalities and professional responsibilities of the people involved. The characters relate to each other on both professional and personal levels. Their interactions are not only those of superior and subordinate but also of friends of varying levels of intimacy.

Even though Laika is portrayed as a regular dog, she is given a distinct personality. The harsh treatment she received as a puppy led to her constant yearning for affection; her desires encourage her to be docile and obedient, which help her to be chosen as the first animal sent into space. Her endearing qualities coupled with the humanity depicted in the other characters produce some particularly emotional scenes, thus making the entire story more memorable.

Impact

Laika was released only a few months after James Vining’s First in Space, detailing a similarly historic story about Ham, the first chimpanzee launched into space in 1961. Both books capitalized on the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the space race and, together, they paint a fascinating picture of how the approaches of the two superpowers differed. Though they both focus on the actual work being done in the respective programs, there are brief allusions to the competitive aspect at a national level, with occasional references to contemporary news reports.

Of the two graphic texts, Laika is perhaps more noteworthy because, in the United States, focus is frequently on American efforts, often downplaying the significance and importance of Russian achievements. Much of what is commonly known about the Russian program is based on inaccurate information or propaganda (both American and Russian), so Abadzis’s exhaustive research provides both an unusual point of view and a decidedly more authentic story. It provides a non-Western perspective of the space race, which had largely been examined through the prism of the Cold War.

Reviews of Laika were almost unanimously positive, the educational aspect to the story was particularly well received, and many of the book’s honors highlighted the fact that the story targeted a young demographic. In 2008, Laika earned an Eisner Award for Best Publication for Teens, and the Young Adult Library Services Association named it one of its Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens.

Further Reading

Abadzis, Nick. The Trial of the Sober Dog (2008).

Ottaviani, Jim, Zander Cannon, and Kevin Cannon. T-Minus: The Race to the Moon (2009).

Vining, James, Douglas Sherwood, and Guy Major. First in Space (2007).

Bibliography

Dubbs, Chris. Space Dogs: Pioneers of Space Travel. New York: Writer’s Showcase, 2003.

Harford, James J. Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon. New York: Wiley, 1999.

Siddiqi, Asif A. Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.