Primordial #6
Everyone gets home in Primordial #6, by writer Jeff Lemire, artist Andrea Sorrentino, colorist Dave Stewart, and letterer Steve Wands. Primordial has been an unconventional book, and this ending matches that.
The simplest way to summarize this issue is this- as the ship crashes towards Earth, Yelena holds on to her life to meet them. As jets prepare to open fire again, Able, Laika, and Mrs. Baker realize why they were changed and perform their purpose. Laika and Yelena are reunited as everything changes.
As with previous issues, this one uses art to tell the story, and it’s lovely. Sorrentino and Stewart are at the top of their game. For example, there’s a lot of negative space in the book. Sometimes, this would seem lazy, as if the art team was cutting corners, but here it serves to draw the eye in the panels, focusing the reader’s attention on the art and the characters. The way a story is told is as important as the story itself, and this issue’s art focuses the readers on the characters and their emotions.
There are some beautiful double-page spreads in this issue as well. The spaceship looks fantastic, and Sorrentino and Stewart’s rendering of the animal is breathtaking. As with the previous chapters, this one changes up coloring styles throughout the book, giving each page a different feel. The last few pages are lovely, replete with emotion, and literally full of wonder as everything comes apart.
The ending of this book leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Lemire plays it all close to vest; he never explains the whys of things. We don’t know why the aliens changed the animals, but it’s almost unimportant because they discover it. The reader can infer that the timeline changed because of the space race differences, but there are no answers. The reader never really knows what happens at the end. It all fades to white, and that’s okay. Primordial was never written as a story about answers; it’s a story about going home and doing anything to get there. Readers get that, and it’s beautiful. The unanswered questions actually make the whole thing that much better in a lot of ways. It allowed the reader to come up with what they want and what it all means. The only concrete thing the reader knows is that Laika and Yelena are home together. That’s enough.
Primordial #6 is visual storytelling at its finest. There’s not a wasted image in the whole thing, and Sorrentino and Stewart are on fire throughout. Lemire makes the ending opaque, but that opacity sharpens the whole point of the book for what it really is- trying to get home. Everything else is just window dressing.
