Josh Neufeld's "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge"

Talk about "Altered States": How's about Louisiana after Katrina!
...
(Sorry, that was oficially the lamest, most tasteless transition in HALLUCINA's historied history.)


Josh Neufeld's celebrated graphic novel "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge", originally serialized in SMITH magazine, is firmly grounded on the journalistic tradition of Joe Sacco's work ("Palestine", "Safe Area Gorazde"). Like Sacco, Neufeld wants to stick to reporting the facts about Hurricane Katrina's devastation, but his indignation keeps coming through. "A.D." is drenched in anger: at a failed FEMA; at a leadership that reacted in ways that are best explained by racism; and at that wrathful, random deity that rains- and rains and rains- on the just and unjust alike.
But mostly anger at our helplesness, at the realization that our ant-hills are not meant to contend with sights like these:

In a startling opening zoom-in, Neufeld does more to convey awe before Nature's whims than a thousand Weather Channel reports. The book then settles for the human: six survivors share their real life experiences, their features morphed into caricatures that universalize their plight rather than reduce them to "you had to be there" racounteurs. There's Denise, close witness to the horrors of the Superdome; Kwame, who watches his hometown disappear from afar; Abbas and Darnell, loyal friends caught on the roof of their sinking corner-store while rats swarm the nearby trees; the hurricane-party-throwing Doctor, a French Quarter fixture out of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"; and Leo and Michelle, probably the more "relatable" couple.

All of these people lose a lot- sometimes practically everything they have- but it is the not-particularly-dramatic tale of Leo that clearly gives Neufeld a place to quietly examine loss from a place dear to a cartoonist. Leo edits a music 'zine called "Anti-Gravity" but his pride and joy was a collection of some 15,000 comic books. On several panels Neufeld lovingly browses through these books, with the same detail he elsewhere dedicates to flooded neighborhoods. Leo is a fan of the Marvel and DC standards, of "Watchmen" and "Maus" and "Palestine" and "Strangers in Paradise", but it's the cover to the first issue of Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan", (about future-gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem), that gets framed on the wall of his apartment.

When Leo and Michelle return there post-flooding, that truth-pusher journalist is the only superhero left standing. Neufeld latches on to that detail. It's appropriate: bearing witness to what happened may be the only way we have out of nightmares like Katrina.
It's also how we reach out to get our faith back: After hearing of Leo's plight on the internet, fellow nerds have sent him box after box of classic comics. He's getting his collection back on track.