SMITH’s newest webcomic, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, is live. This is our second webcomic, which we’re thrilled to present after the success of Shooting War. We’ve moved from fiction to nonfiction this time, choosing a charged topic that we think will be served well by webcomic form: the story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, from the perspective of real people still dealing with the storm each and every day.

We won’t meet the “characters” in A.D. for a few chapters, and right now I’m in New Orleans with A.D. creator Josh Neufeld, meeting them in person, after having made contact with them on the phone and via email. Always an intense and amazing place, we arrived in the Crescent City on what’s called Twelfth Night (the official start of the Carnival season), and in the middle of a horrific crime wave.

We suspect that you’ll come to know and care about the folks you’ll meet in A.D. over the course of the next year as we have in just a few days. The story of New Orleans during and after the flood is one that will be told and retold with a huge range of perspectives and swell of emotions for generations. We hope A.D. will be a worthy addition.