Laika: graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog

Nick Abadzis's graphic novel "Laika" is a haunting, sweet biography of Laika, the first dog in space, who died five hours after she was launched on Sputnik II. Laika was a victim of the political vicissitudes of the Kruschev regime and its desire to push the propaganda war against the USA by elaborating on the triumph of Sputnik by launching a living organism into space.

The book walks a fine line between fancy and faithfulness to the historical facts of Laika's life, populated with exhaustively researched, fleshed-out characters who are charming, complex and frustrating. There's Sergei Pavlovich, the head of the program, whom we meet as he is walking out of one of Stalin's gulags, whence he had been banished in the great purges, and who becomes a driven monster, forever scarred by Siberia. There's Yelena Dubrovksy, the space medicine program's animal handler, who has a preternatural ability to connect with the space-dogs, but who is also a scientist and Party member who is clear-eyed in confronting their eventual fate. There's Oleg Gerogivitch, who runs space medicine, and who understands the realpolitik of working for a driven semi-madman like Pavlovich.

In addition, there's a host of fictionalized and fictional characters -- the families who interact with Laika as a puppy, the cruel dog-catchers, the spear-carriers and hangers on who conjure up a world of space madness, cruelty, noblesse and vision.

Abadzis's artistic style put me in mind of Tin Tin -- the little doggy with the curly tail didn't hurt -- a childlike, cartoony line that is nevertheless expressive and expansive. It nicely complements the subject matter, contributing much to the sweetness of the story, and serving as counterpoint to the exhaustive research. Link

• [OM]

  “My guess is that the spin doctors in the US used the event to cast the Russians as cruel dog killers, when the truth is they were just pissed that they didn’t do it first.”

  …If you mean by “pissed because they didn’t orbit *anything* first”, perhaps. But if you’re referring to the fact that the Ruskies launched a *dog* before the US did…No, it wasn’t *that* simple or even anywhere near black and white. The US never had any intention of sending a dog up. That’s because sending either a monkey, a rodent or a pig actually delivers scientific results closer to relative to human requirements.

  …And on a side note, the ASCPA was raising unmitigated hell about Kudryavka’s demise almost immediately after the announcement was made by TASS and reported over in the West. The State Department and NASA didn’t make any derogatory observations of the same until after the Soviets announced the end of the mission.

  Remember, kids, this was a Cold *War*. Sacrifices are made during wartime.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Cefeida: very true.

• [Anonymous]

  If you like Laika, try ‘First in Space’ – http://www.onipress.com/display.php?type=bk&id=252
  from Oni Press.

  That’s actually how I heard about Laika, was through this graphic novel (they’re pretty closely related)

• [Samurai Gratz]

  The art in this book caused the opposite reaction in me – I thought it was ugly. Perhaps it was purposefully so, but I disliked it – and the story – so much that I abandoned this book part way through.

• [Anonymous]

  You should check out the video for Danish techno wonder Trentemøller’s song Moan. The video is about Laike and just wonderful, dreamy and sad. Vocals by Ane Trolle
  http://youtube.com/watch?v=6G5UGybYN-E

• [OM]

  …#7 – “Anonymous” – made the point I was going to make for me about the patronymic usage here. As for public opinion of Laika and the mission, there’s always been two camps: Those who saw her sacrifice as being necessary at the time, and those who felt it was a total waste and an atrocity to boot. The one thing in common that surprises both sides is that *neither* side wanted the mission to end with Laika’s death. But due to the Politburo’s need for continued “stunt flights” for propaganda purposes in as rapid-fire a succession as possible, the only thing to top Sputnik I was a flight containing a live specimen. As the Soviet program wasn’t geared for chimps – there’s some interesting reasons behind that – rodents and dogs were the primary

  …On a side note, just to put it all in the proper perspective, let us also note that one of the early Mercury test flight proposals was to send up not a monkey, but a pig. Pigs were eliminated as Little Joe flight test subjects when studies disclosed that they could not survive long periods of time on their backs. However, McDonnell Douglas did use a pig, ‘Gentle Bess,’ to test the impact crushable support, and the test was successful. No one has ever admitted whether the story was true that Bess was cooked and eaten at a celbratory party a few weeks later, tho.

  …But hindsight isn’t always 20/20. It’s always easy for the victor to rewrite history and make the loser more of a loser than he/she/it really was. Where Laika’s concerned, SPK tends to get that sort of misinterpretation. If you want to get the clearest picture of the “Chief Designer” and “Father of the Integral”, I recommend three books:

  1) Yaroslav Golovanov’s 1994 book, which was the first *real* bio of SPK, which was really only possible after the fall of the Evil Soviet Empire and the opening of the floodgates of data from the various rocket groups behind the Iron Curtain. The book’s very hard to find translated to English, and the one I read had been hand-translated by a former Rossia Yazik professor and was only loaned to me for a short while back in ’95.

  2) James Hartford’s 1998 bio, which is now considered the standard reference for trying to understand SPK for the man he was, and all the shit he went through during the Stalin tyranny. Sadly, he doesn’t address the one story about SPK’s death – the one where the doctor who refused to “operate on a dead man” when he saw the state of SPK’s cancer instead of the hernia he was supposed to be fixing, who supposedly was taken to a wall outside the hospital shortly after SPK expired, explained just who he’d let die, and then had his brains blown out on the wall for “costing the Rodina their chance to beat the Americans to the Moon!”

  3) SPK’s daughter, Natalya, wrote her own bio of her father in 2002, and while this one hasn’t made it into English, it reportedly has a TON of never-before-seen photos from behind the scenes of the Soviet program. Those who’ve seen it say it *has* to be a good read, if only they’d translate the damn thing!

  …Also, there’s a plethora of sites out there that discuss SPK and the program that explain the truth without really pulling any punches. Mark Wade’s Encyclopedia Astronomica and Anatoly Zak’s Russian Space Web are great resources for those wanting to understand what really went on during that particular phase of the Cold War.

  Bottom Line: Before you condemn SPK for what happened to Laika, do a little research. There was more to the mission than some Stalinist monster picking up a poor dog off the street and sending her to certain doom. This novel actually tells you that if you read the lines *AND* what’s between them.

• [LB]

  I read this book last week, and honestly, I didn’t see Pavlovich as a monster. He’s really just another guy mixed up in the same mess as all the rest.

  “Driven semi-madman,” however, I will not disagree with.

• [Anonymous]

  Short story: “The Dog” by Vassily Grossman
  http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7738

• [Anonymous]

  I was just thinking of Laika yesterday and wondering if there were any photos of her later converted to socialist realist poster art.
  Cool.
  -Nikolai

• [SAE Miller]

  That is the nature of the Aerospace business. Madness. :)

• [tim]

  Some years ago the BBC broadcast a really nice radio play (actually I think it was a n-short pieces in one program sort of playlet thing) about Laika. It was terribly sad in a lovely sort of way, made me cry.

  Wish I could find a reference for you but no luck so far.

• [ethanol]

  Does the book mention that her name wasn’t “Laika”? It was Kudryavka; Laika is the name of her breed.

  I only recently learned this from an old space-geek friend of mine, who suggested that the problem might have arisen from the absence of definite articles in the Russian language. (Russian scientist: “Ve put laika into space!” Western reporters: *scribble scribble scribble*) Hey, it’s a theory.

• [Anonymous]

  There was a subtitled Swedish movie: My Life as a Dog. A boy compared his life to that of Laika. It was very moving.

• [Cefeida]

  The front cover reminds me of the illustration style in books I used to read as a child. I guess that means the author got something right- I grew up in Poland in the early eighties, so influences from the soviet bloc were not scarce.

  It’s funny, the short recap of the story here on Boing Boing is so much different in tone from what I learned about Laika as a child. She was mentioned as a hero, a brave creature who sacrificed herself for science. I read the passage over and over, wondering what it was like to die so far away from home, with no hope of rescue. Even though it wasn’t hard to figure out that Laika probably didn’t volunteer to suffer the gruesome death, it’s very difficult for me not to continue to think of her as a hero, and of the whole endeavour as mankind’s courageous attempt to reach the stars.

  Mind, we do grow up with the idea that dogs are loyal, good creatures and best friends to man. I don’t think anyone cares about all the lab rats who perished in space station experiments.

• [LB]

  #4 Ethanol:

  Yes, the dog’s name for most of the novel is Kudryavka.

• [Anonymous]

  A quick note: Sergei Pavlovich is probably meant to be S.P. Korolev, so referring to him by his patronymic middle name alone is imprecise (or at least very old-fashioned, like calling a young man “master” in the US). The book might use the full first-and-middle name throughout, but this is an acceptable form of address in Russian.

• [Kobie]

  Not to mention the millions who died in gulag camps industrialising the USSR to the point where it could start sending dogs into space.

  I doubt any nation would have passed up the chance to be the first to put a living creature into space. My guess is that the spin doctors in the US used the event to cast the Russians as cruel dog killers, when the truth is they were just pissed that they didn’t do it first.

• [chris_nelson]

  There’s a song about Laika that they used to sing in Poland:

  Łajka nie żyje, zabili ją Sowieci,
  Kto teraz w kosmos rakietÄ… poleci?
  (Laika is dead, the soviets killed her
  Who now will fly in space in a rocket?)

  Łajka nie żyje, zabili ją Sowieci,
  Nad naszym ziemią, psie ścierwo leci.
  (Laika is dead, the soviets killed her
  Above our earth, a dog’s corpse is flying.)

  It’s very mock-serious – sounds like a funeral march – but is actually full of dark communist-era humour and irony.

  Not sure if there was a Russian version too.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Cefeida, one can grow quite attached to a rodent.

• [Cefeida]

  #9 Theresa, I know, I’m rather fond of them myself. Their suffering is just more easily dismissed than a dog’s. People love dogs almost by default.

  I wasn’t trying to make a point, it was just a thought on how we need something to hit close to home to make us care.