Russian Edition of Laika - April 2022

Russian Edition of Laika Coming April 2022

This is something I never thought would happen.

Thanks to Dmitry Lyashchenko, Laika will be published for the first time in Russian on 12th April 2021 - the national Cosmonautics Day.

Dmitry is author of a “How to Make Comics” book for the burgeoning comics scene in Russia, and he asked me to contribute an interview. During this, I remarked what a dream it would be for Laika to be published there. Dmitry then mentioned this to his publishers, Hobby World and everything came together.

Russia likes success, and while Laika is acknowledged as a trailblazer (there is a monument to her at Star City, the cosmonaut training facility not far from Moscow), the cosmodogs who tend to get most celebrated there are Belka and Strelka, the first to orbit the Earth and be brought back alive. It’s everywhere else that Laika is seen as a pioneer - the first earthling in space. For those reasons, I never thought that the book would be published in Russia, so for me, this is a wonderful thing.

It’s fitting that this Russian edition will be the fourteenth foreign edition for the Laika graphic novel (the fifteenth language overall). Laika has come home at last.