After the Deluge

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up next month.

Today Dolly has been upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.  And again there are worries about levees:

Coastal officials worried Tuesday that Tropical Storm Dolly may bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.

Some stories don’t ever seem to change.

I wanted to share an awesome piece of art, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a “true story written and illustrated by Josh Neufeld.”

Using his great talent for illustration, Josh has written a graphic novel online, now in its thirteenth chapter, of what happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina  hit.

Modeling the story on real life examples, you can follow their journey from the dawning horror that this was no typical storm, to each person’s unique experience of the storm and its aftermath.

Here’s a FAQ on the story, which is very informative – this whole online project (and the story is about to be published as a book very soon) is remarkable in itself.  Here’s a sample of the FAQ:

Is A.D. true?

Yes. The characters are real, the dialogue is taken from direct quotes, the depictions of the inside of their homes are what the inside of their homes look like, down to the DVDs on their shelves and collars on their dogs.

How long will A.D. run?

A.D. debuted in January, 2007 and is expected to conclude in March, 2007.

How often are new chapters published?

New chapters of A.D. are published each month until its conclusion.

How did SMITH Magazine and Josh Neufeld get together?

Storytelling site SMITH Magazine wanted to tell the story of Katrina from the perspective of a range of real people who lived through it. After reading American Splendor artist Josh Neufeld’s blog and subsequent book about his time volunteering on the Gulf Coast, Katrina Came Calling, SMITH editor Larry Smith got in touch with Neufeld. Together, they created what would become A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.

How did you find the characters?

Old-fashioned legwork. Via friends (and friends of friends), who live or lived in New Orleans, talking to people who ran nonprofits and other local organizations, hearing different accounts on the radio or reading them on the Internet-lots of asking and looking around. After coming up with a list of possible people for the project, Neufeld and Smith went to the region to meet each potential character in person. Ultimately, six people emerged as the main “characters” in A.D. One of them, Leo, was a reader of Neufeld’s blog (and, as fate would have it, had always dreamed of being a character in a comic).

It’s called a “webcomic”-do you think Katrina is funny?

Not at all. SMITH Magazine tells stories in many different ways, and “webcomics” are simply another style of storytelling.

The graphic novel-from Art Spiegelman’s Maus to Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis-has a long and proud tradition of tackling some of the most important historical events of our time. SMITH felt that this form would be an interesting way to tell the stories of the lives of a cross-section of people who survived Katrina-and something very different from what else has been done to date.

Of course, this work didn’t end in 2007.  As the July 21, 2008 intro to Chapter 13 states:

It’s with bittersweetness that I’m here to tell you that Chapter 13 of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is up. Bittersweet as it’s the penultimate chapter on SMITH, and I’m getting wistful already. We’re wrapping up the story in this space for a great reason: Josh needs to focus on expanding it into a full-length book which will be published by Pantheon Books in summer, 2009. We could not be happier that the story of Denise, Leo, Michelle, Hamid, Kevin, and the Doctor will be told in greater detail and reach a new audience with the help of folks who are the absolute best in the business (they published Persepolis, among others).

I started reading this story when Chapter 1 first arrived, in 2007, and have been hooked on it ever since.  I have never seen any piece of art which captured so well the interior story, the human heart of what happened in New Orleans in August of 2005.

I thought today I’d share that with my fellow Dharmaniacs – reading about Hurricane Dolly reminded me of After the Deluge and the upcoming third anniversary of Katrina.