Advanced Review: Laguardia #1

Sometimes, as a writer, you have to be prescient in order to be timely. Nnedi Okorafor“s “Laguardia,”“ an afrofuturist tale about a world re-centered around Nigeria reimagines our global politics on immigration in a future where alien life has come to earth. Subtitled “A Very Modern Story of Immigration,”“ Okorafor“s “Laguardia”“ is one of the only airports in the world that permits intergalactic travel and as such she has taken the national fear mongering about immigration and projected it into an interstellar context. She achieves this without losing any sense of the mundane tyranny of invasive searches and racialized invective that are an everyday feature of our real-world immigration policy.

“Laguardia“s”“ protagonist, Future, is a Nigerian American woman who is traveling from Nigeria ”“ where alien life has been tentatively accepted ”“ to New York City. She is escaping something ”“ or maybe someone, but these details are not fully revealed in the first issue. There are several mysteries teased in the early going. Future is leaving ”“ maybe even fleeing Nigeria. She leaves behind, Citizen who may be her lover/partner and may be the father of her unborn child. As she makes her way through customs ”“ the intergalactic version ”“ she is able to smuggle something through Laguardia because of the custom agent“s regressive emphasis on older ways of thinking about race, nation, and immigration.

In so many ways Okorafor is surgical in her critical takedown of our immigration malaise. On the Nigerian side of the “border”“ Okorafor deploys the longstanding civil tensions from Nigeria“s post-colonial history to reframe the Biafra movement, pitting it against the aliens that have been accepted into Nigeria. And yet alien immigration in Nigeria has helped the nation to become one of the most advanced in the world. At the American border, Future is still subject to the white racial gaze even as she stands on-line in customs with other worldly beings. Our concept of “illegal aliens”“ simply cannot hold in a world where aliens exist and Okorafor is deliberate in her effort to disabuse us of our xenophobic lexicon.

She couldn“t have known ”“ whenever she scripted this issue ”“ that an American president would be signaling his desire to revise the US constitution in order to end birthright citizenship. Or maybe she did. Maybe “Laguardia”“ is proof that Nnedi Okorafor can see into the future. Future“s baby“s future is just one more mystery in this comic“s complex tapestry of race, gender, immigration, and our social construction of borders ”“ real and imagined.

With each foray into the world of comics, Okorafor continues to establish herself as one of the boldest, most imaginative writers in any genre. Her visual collaborators have all been good thus far, but no one has captured the world-building skills of Okorafor“s imagination as well as Tana Ford and James Devlin. The art in “Laguardia”“ is vivid with explosive coloring. Ford is somehow able to give readers ”“ local, national, global and galactic perspectives, sometimes all in the span of just a page or two. “Laguardia” is a beautiful book. And it is rewarding to see and read this level of artistic collaboration dedicated to such an important story. “Laguardia”“ is essential reading for our times. Okorafor is challenging us to be better citizens ”“ better humans. Read this book and accept the challenge. 5/5

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In Shops: Dec 05, 2018

Final Orders Due: Nov 12, 2018
Order Code:Â OCT180292

(W) Nnedi Okorafor (A/CA) Tana Ford
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics / Berger Books