Yesterday kicked off a momentous fortnight in New Orleans, with a mayoral election, the Saints’ participation in the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras all taking place in a span of eleven days.

Saturday’s election of Mitch Landrieu ushered in the city’s first new mayor since Hurricane Katrina. (Ray Nagin was term-limited—and surely would have been voted out this time). You may recall that back in August, I signed a copy of A.D. for one of the mayoral candidates, State Senator Edwin R. Murray, at The Doctor’s A.D. release party. Well, Senator Murray pulled out of the mayoral race last month. In any case, although Landrieu will be New Orleans’ first white mayor in over thirty years, he won 66% percent of the vote, including a large share of the African American electorate. Let’s hope Landrieu truly is a mayor of unity and progress, and speeds up the Crescent City’s post-Katrina rebuilding. Read the rest of this entry »

A.D. has been cited on a number of year-end “best-of” and gift-giving lists. The New York Times gift guide cited the book, the San Jose Mercury News recommended it, and Vanity Fair magazine declared A.D. to be one of its five “better-than-a-sweater” gift suggestions.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoman listed A.D. as one of 2009’s best graphic novels, and MTV’s “Splash Page” blog called it the best nonfiction comic of 2009. A.D. was also cited numerous times on the Daily Cross Hatch’s list of “The Best Damned Comics of 2009 Chosen by the Artists.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m excited to announce that A.D. will be translated into Dutch. The upstart publisher De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) is going to be releasing A.D. in The Netherlands some time next year. (They have also done Dutch translations of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Y the Last Man, Stitches, and Logicomix, among others, so it’ll be in good company.)

I find it fitting that an Amsterdam-based publisher would relate to my story of broken levees and flooded cities: in 1953 the Netherlands was flooded when the dikes protecting the southwest of the country were breached by the joint onslaught of hurricane-force winds and exceptionally high spring tides. The flood came in the night without warning, killing 1,835 people. Their very own Katrina… fifty years earlier.

I took A.D. to the Boston area September 8 and 9, my first experience on the Bolt Bus (very cheap, very pleasant). My ol’ pal dj BC (Bob Cronin) was kind enough to host me in his Somerville abode, where I got to hang a bit with his awesome, feisty wife Stacey and their adorable daughter Stella.

My first event was Tuesday night at Brookline Booksmith, a large, extensive store devoted to new and used books. I did my presentation in front of a good crowd of about 30 folks, which included a motley group of characters from various stages in my life, going all the way back to junior high school! It was wonderful catching up with Chris, George, Pete, and A. Dave, as well as fielding questions and signing books for a very engaged group. The best moment of the night was when a girl in the audience, just starting college in Boston after moving up from New Orleans, realized she personally knew Kwame, one of A.D.’s characters!
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A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge has had quite a sprint since its release on August 18. When Josh Neufeld began his book tour I warned him: book tours aren’t necessarily a great way to sell books. No matter how much love and media a project gets, authors often end up reading a book, or discussing their work to just a handful of people. The good news is that didn’t happen at all with A.D. Josh has discussed the making of A.D. to packed houses from New York to New Orleans, selling hundreds of books and having dozens and dozens of conversations about how much the work, and the region that inspired it, mean to them. The above photo is from Octavia Books in New Orleans, where A.D. shares a special place in the hearts of locals as Dave Eggers’ masterful Zeitoun.

The media coverage has been more than just wide-ranging, it’s been thoughtful. In a huge piece that led the New York Times’ Arts section, George Gustines reconstructs the path that took A.D. from web to print, writing that A.D. shows “the magnitude of the catastrophe … on a personal level.” Read the rest of this entry »