The Cold War was an interesting time for popular culture and storytelling. On one hand, it was an age that had new and exciting things happening all the time and comic book superheroes like the Flash and Green Lantern were getting groovy new sci fi reboots while a little known comic book company called Marvel would create modern heroes for a modern audience. It was a time for new ideas, new products, and a new world order that was going to fix everything.
On the other hand, it was a time filled with paranoia and fear that it could all come crashing down in an instant. While the great war in human history had been fought and won, we had new enemies with terrible weapons that could end the world in the blink of an eye and they were everywhere. They were in our homes, in our country, and in the halls of power. There were even possible enemies out in the stars that had unknown motives and strange tools that could do things we could never imagine.
Here’s a comic that takes all that early Cold War paranoia and ratchets it up to eleven.
Written by Jeff LemireCover by: Andrea Sorrentino
Illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Steve Wands
Mind-bending sci-fi collides with Cold War thriller in this six-issue miniseries by the bestselling and Eisner-winning creative team behind GIDEON FALLS!
In 1957, the USSR launched the dog, Laika, into Earth’s orbit. Two years later, the USA responded with two monkeys, Able and Baker. These animals never returned. But, unbeknownst to everyone, they did not die in orbit…they were taken. And now they are coming home.
“Primordial” #1 is set in a world that is both very familiar and very strange at the same time. On one hand, we have the space program, all the tension and paranoia that the early years of the Cold War helped foster, and good old fashioned American racism. On the other hand, this is a world where Nixon won in the election against Kennedy in the election of 1960, Nixon has proceeded to send American troops to Hungary instead of the Soviets, and the space program has been put on permanent hold after the United States sent two chimpanzees up into space only to have them die before re entry. Into this soup of historical retelling steps Doctor Pembrook, a genius African American MIT graduate who has been tasked with dismantling Mission Control for anything useful and ending the space program once and for all.
However, Dr. Pembrook discovers something that wasn’t supposed to be uncovered. It turned out that all the animals who had been sent into space hadn’t died, that they had been picked up by some unknown force, and now there’s a conspiracy for Dr. Pembrook to unravel before it kills him.
“Primordial” #1 is written by Jeff Lemire, who at this point is basically his own sub genre of comics. Lemire knows how to be efficient with his storytelling and it’s nice to see a nerdy dreamer like Doctor Pembrook introduced with very little fanfare and in a way that feels natural and effective. Everything we need to know about the Doctor and his place in the story is laid out in a few panels that allows the audience to connect the dots on their own, and it’s very refreshing to see that.
If the script for “Primordial” #1 has any problems, it’s that this is a story that we’ve seen before and there’s nothing really new about it. Cold War stories where the space program is really just a cover up for aliens or some other unexplained phenomena is very well trod ground in comic book circles, and there really isn’t a whole lot at face value that makes the story feel new or interesting. What makes the story engaging is that Lemire knows how to leave the story on a massive cliff hanger that is going to make readers want more. Maybe there will be more to the story once it gets going, but for now it’s just a standard tale about an unassuming main character who gets in way over their head.
Continued belowWhile the story of “Primordial” #1 may feel a bit boilerplate, the artwork is completely bonkers. Artist Andrea Sorrentino and Dave Stewart reunite with Lemire to provide artwork that is weird, abstract, and wholly unique. Sorrentino provides artwork with almost no lines to separate the backgrounds from the characters and makes heavy use of shadow and old fashioned benday dots–coupled with Stewart’s use of muted blocks of color and random splashes of brightness–to give the book a style that looks like 1960’s pop art mixed with a student film from the 90’s.
And that’s just the scenes with regular people in them.
There are moments where Pembrook starts having weird visions about the monkeys that went into space, and that’s where Sorrentino and Stewart really start bending the conventions of comic book art and go absolutely insane with weird shapes and colors. All of this continues right up until the very end where Sorrentino suddenly switches from abstract to a style that looks like something so hyper realistic and muted that looks like something Frank Quietly drew.
If all of this sounds overwhelming and a bit off putting, that’s perfectly alright. “Primordial” #1 has an art style that does take some getting used to–and if you can’t figure out what’s going on and decide to not read the book because of that, it’s perfectly alright–but it’s fascinating to see an artistic team take these sorts of risks and push artistic boundaries in ways that are fascinating to witness and beautiful to look at.
“Primordial” #1 is a solid first issue with the standard first act of every good conspiracy story that is either elevated or destroyed by a gloriously insane art style that doesn’t hold back and provides a new and interesting way to think about comic book art and how it can engage the reader.
Final Verdict: 8.5- If you’ve read any Cold War conspiracy story you’ve read this, but the real make or break moment will come from what you think of the artwork.
