Primordial #5 Review

Writer: Jeff Lemire / Artist: Andrea Sorrentino / Image The penultimate issue of Primordial does exactly what you would expect a penultimate issue from Lemire and Sorrentino to do: utterly disorient us with a sudden influx of emotions and information, slowly integrate it into our preexisting framework of the situation, and then carry on with the story. Primordial #4 dealt a lot with the animal crew’s journey back to earth and Yelena and Penbrook’s endeavors on earth during their transit. Primordial #5 deals with the final approach. We take a brief break from the trippy cosmic horror energy of the joint endeavors of Laika, Able, and Baker and find ourselves on Earth in 2024 as we’re following an older Yelena going about her day. And then of course, we jump back to space animal crew as they see their origin from space and things only get weirder from there.

Lemire is incredibly economical and efficient with his dialog. The fact remains that Lemire only needs about an average of five words to utterly decimate any emotional barrier you have up, and he understand that Sorrentino’s artwork is enough to carry the bulk of the story. This is a book where the visual storytelling is paramount, and Sorrentino constantly delivers with the set pieces and characters. With Primordial #5 out, that means there’s only one more issue on the docket. It’s going to be quite the spectacle seeing the fallout from the animals’ return. Lemire and Sorrentino have taken us through quite the odysse…