Hugos 2020: LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2019 (contents: 2018-19)
Borrowed from my wife 
Read May 2020

LaGuardia: A Very Modern Story of Immigration

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Writer: Nnedi Okorafor

Artist: Tana Ford
Colorist: James Devlin
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

I moderately enjoyed this, which places it in the upper tier of Okorafor books I've read. It's an obvious riff on Trump-era immigration politics, where it's aliens who have trouble immigrating into a xenophobic United States. I think a good sfnal take on a contemporary issue will make you think about it in a new way; this, however, didn't really make me realize anything that I didn't already know. It's fun, but ultimately shallow. I felt it suffered because the character work seemed very rush-- key emotional truths about the characters are just kind of tossed off, and as a result, the ending doesn't land with the punch that it wants to. I had sort of a mixed reaction to Tana Ford's art, which I realized when I read the backmatter might be down to the inking (which she does herself) and/or the coloring (by James Devlin). I found her pencils more expressive and organic.