A.D.’s Dr. Brobson Lutz, aka “The Doctor,” discusses what’s inspired him most in the post-Katrina period from the backyard in his home in the French Quarter.

The first of each month is when we usually release a new chapter of A.D., but as you can see, Chapter 12 has not appeared yet. The fact is I’m still deep in the process of drawing it. Chapters 12 & 13 deal with Denise’s experiences at the Convention Center, where she was trapped for two days with her family and thousands of other New Orleanians who took shelter from the storm.

In many people’s minds, the New Orleans Convention Center evokes stories of gang violence, rape, looting, and general chaos. But what happened at the Convention Center was the result of nearly total abdication of responsibility by the supposed authorities—and most of the stories of violence and death were later found to be false. Denise and the other evacuees trapped at this “place of refuge” were left without food, drink, running water, medical supplies, or any means to escape. Ever since I first heard Denise describe what really happened there, I knew what she went through and witnessed would form the heart of the A.D. project.

But now that it’s actually time to depict that episode, I have found it difficult to write and draw.
Read the rest of this entry »

This past Sunday, the New York Times ran a nice little piece on Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927.” (Ever since I first heard it on Aaron Neville’s 1991 CD, Warm Your Heart, the song has been one of my favorites.) The article talks about how since its creation in 1975, the song has gone through many iterations. It seems that just about everybody who’s covered the tune—the Wild Magnolias, John Boutté, Willie Nelson, Martin Simpson,Terrance Simien, Howard Tate, the String Cheese Incident, and Neville are cited—have tweaked the lyrics to make it more poignant, more topical, and more specific. And of course since Katrina, the song has gone through even more lyrical “mashups”. For instance, Boutté’s version changes “Clouds roll in from the north” to “Clouds rolled in from the Gulf,” and the line “President Coolidge come down in a railroad train / with a little fat man with a notepad in his hand” became “President Bush flew over in an aeroplane / with about twelve fat men with double martinis in their hands.”

Our series of short video interviews with the very real “characters” in A.D. continues with Leo. Taken at the last Alternative Media Expo—which Leo organizes—he discusses what’s inspired him most in the post-Katrina period.

We’ve just posted “Diaspora,” the newest chapter of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, the all-true serialized webcomic from Josh Neufeld and SMITH. I’m continually amazed at the detail Neufeld brings to each panel—the precision of expression that’s so vital as he captures what is truly the ground-up perspective (we call it the “chicken’s-eye view”) of a larger-than-life situation: Hurricane Katrina.

New to A.D.?
1) Read the story from the very beginning.
2) Check out this short video on the making of A.D.
3) Check out some of the incredible coverage of the webcomic—from comic bloggers to New Orleans’ own daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune.