The Conquest of the Cosmos is a nicely formatted, minimalist graphic novel, with big end leaves that can be used as bookmarks, as long as you don’t mind folding up the cover too much. It’s made up of little boxes, maybe ten or twenty per page, depending on the story being told, with two basic colours – shades of red and blue, along with the darkness of space. There are just the tiniest differences between the panels as we are taken from year to year in the last century, in writer Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau and illustrator Francis Desharnais’s satirical take on the beginnings of the Space Race. 

We begin in the late 1950s, with the launch of the Soviet space shuttle Sputnik. The name means “co-traveller,” which makes sense, except that in this case it’s a tiny tin can all alone up there. The same goes for poor little Laika, who was the first living being to be sent into orbit (aside from a few miscellaneous mice and other small creatures). She’s just a dog, and the scientists haven’t figured out a way of getting her back down to earth, so she just perishes up there. I don’t even think she had a window to look out of, unlike what’s shown in the book. As she puts it: “woof?”

The scientists who comment on the action are a row of men along the bottom of their respective panels. They have moustaches and beards, and little bald heads. They stand in front of a bank of screens, or look into little boxes. No women in the picture. The story is told in dialogue which is slightly hipster-sardonic. Lots of “mans” and “dudes.” 

Most people reading know the basic story of the Space Race. It was supposed to be a “final frontier,” but when all is said and done, there’s nothing to really do out there except float around, or play golf, or drop off the bottoms of ladders. Not that there’s any air out there, or gravity. The Space Race is kind of a disappointment, really, after all of the science fiction tales, and the promises made on TV in the 1960s and ’70s when rocket launches first happened. Not to give away any spoilers, but the mood in this book fits just how humdrum space exploration has gotten. No aliens or ray guns out in the void. Just a bunch of rocks to pick up, and maybe an opportunity to burn up and perish on re-entry.

The present work captures that sort of mood very well. No big drama takes place. The reader is looking at just rows of boxes or dots, with people speaking to an unknown audience. Merely characters on a page. I guess sometimes we can all feel like that. You’re indoors, looking at a tiny screen, while outside there’s this whole world which can be a little overwhelming. At times it’s difficult just trying to cross the street. 

Congratulations to the creators of this book for echoing that feeling. Simple figures, hard angles, and very few variations in colour all come together to create a mood. It’s great reading for a slow afternoon, or a time spent drinking coffee in some lonely shop, and watching people walk by. Certainly easier than listening to the news and hearing about wars and chaos and explosions. It is, almost, all just a joke. And with a few gentle smiles, and not too many words, this book manages to achieve its objective. mRb