DARK HORSE COMICS/Berger Books – @DarkHorseComics #bergerbooks
[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]
STORY: Nnedi Okorafor
ART: Tana Ford
COLORS: James Devlin
LETTERS: Sal Cipriano
EDITOR: Karen Berger – @karenpberger
28pp, B&W, $3.99 U.S. (February 2018)
Mature Readers
Chapter 1: “Homecoming”
LaGuardia is a new science fiction comic book series from writer Nnedi Okorafor and artist Tana Ford. The series is set in an alternate world in which multiple alien species have come to Earth and have integrated into society – to the chagrin of some. Colorist James Devlin and letterer Sal Cipriano complete the creative team for this four-issue miniseries.
LaGuardia #1 (“Homecoming”) introduces Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka, a pregnant Nigerian-American doctor returns to New York City under mysterious conditions. She smuggles an illegal alien plant through LaGuardia International and Interstellar Airport customs and security. Now, at her grandmother's tenement, the New Hope Apartments in the South Bronx, she has secrets to reveal. Back in Lagos, Nigeria, Professor Citizen Nwabara, a friend of Future's, is dealing with multiple alien issues.
LaGuardia #1 is so flavorful, so different. It is like an alien thing. I love the imagination of Nnedi Okorafor's story, and her afterword, “Coming and Going,” is so personal, yet so defines this age of fear. I don't know how she kept from punching the TSA officer who was pawing over her scalp; perhaps, it was her expansive worldview as a world traveler and as a child of immigrants that gives her the patience of adaptation. In fact, LaGuardia's Afrofuturism is about adaptation, and that connects the United States and Nigeria as if they were supposed to be connected all along.
This first issue, however, I want to give special attention to illustrator Tana Ford. It is Ford who takes Okorafor's fresh and innovative concept and turns into a graphical story that truly seems like something alien. Ford's art here reminds me of Eric Vincent's art on the late, lamented science fiction comic book, Alien Fire. The difference is that Vincent's comic book art was published in black and white (by Kitchen Sink Press and Dark Horse Comics), and he did not have the benefit of the kind of otherworldly coloring that James Devlin gives LaGuardia. Ford and Devlin are a collabo that should keep going on and on.
LaGuardia #1 shows that Karen Berger is not making Berger Books into some kind of Vertigo 2.0. Instead, Berger Books is exploring new worlds of storytelling, like the world of LaGuardia.
8.5 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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