I’m just back from New Orleans, where I attended a little inspirational celebration of Big Easy music, food, and culture called Jazzfest. Jazzfest has been on my life list for years, but honestly I had no idea exactly how special an event it is. For eight hours a day the music flows: 10 stages ranging from jazz, blues, gospel, cajun, bluegrass, country, rock, and all sorts of hard-to-define combos, like The New Orleans Bingo Show, a local band that’s a cross between Tom Waits, Hedwig, and a naughty circus act—one of the city’s many homegrown treasures.

Pictured above is the real life meeting of two of the A.D.’s stars, Leo and The Doctor, who mingled in real time at a Jazzfest party hosted by Cree McCree. Cree, a SMITH writer (she wrote the diary about returning to New Orleans after Katrina), artist, vintage clothing and costume maven, and 18-year Jazzfest veteran, can now boast one more talent on her resume: Big Easy-approved gumbo cook, as deemed by The Doctor, who knows from N’awlins cooking.

Unlike this past January, when Josh Neufeld and I first met the comic’s “characters” just as the city was dealing with a wave of murders, the mood in New Orleans was much better. Jazzfest and good weather have a lot to do with that. But as you’ll soon see in the video with the real people behind this story’s illustrations, there’s a clear sense that we’re looking at years, possibly decades, before the Big Easy is truly back. We’ve just posted Chapter 3 and will be uploading video and more audio in the coming months. I’m awed by Josh’s work, and was floored by the reaction of the locals I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with about this project. I truly hope you give it a look. Rolling Stone just did and called it “stunning.” And Wired.com’s Todd Jatras says: “A.D. is a sterling example of comics with a social consciousness, and is exactly the kind of thing we need to keep the human dimension of this unimaginable disaster and its ongoing aftermath in the public eye.”

There’s a lot of work to be done, and the city and the entire Gulf Coast still need lots of help. But as I spent time with some of the people who are the illustrated-but-beating heart of A.D., had the pleasure of laying my eyes on Ernie K-Doe’s incredible wife Antoinette before hearing the insane genius of something called Mr. Quintron and Miss Pussycat in the bar that she and Ernie built, and inhaled the sights, sounds and tastes of a spot like no other in this world, Jazzfest (to borrow the words of this blogger), is a blessing.