About A.D.

When the levees broke, nothing was the same for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is about escaping and surviving Hurricane Katrina–and what happens next in the lives of a cross-section of Crescent City residents. Told in webcomic form, A.D. is free and presented by SMITH Magazine.

A.D. tells the story of Katrina and its aftermath from the perspective of real people still dealing with the storm each and every day. A two-part prologue sets the scene and shows the storm, almost like a silent movie. In chapter one, we meet the people whose lives we’ll be following over the course of one year, with audio and video augmenting the comic itself on our active blog. A.D. is a nonfiction graphic novel, a new approach to storytelling, and a multifaceted peek into the personal tales emerging from the storm of the century.

Among the characters we’ll meet throughout the course of this serialized comic are:

  • Denise—Sixth-generation New Orleanian poet, singer, and kickboxer with a master’s degree in guidance and counseling.
  • The Doctor—Medical man-about-town based in the French Quarter and often found at the legendary Galatoire’s
  • Hamid—Iranian-born, long-time New Orleanian, father of two, and owner of a family-run supermarket in Uptown who faces the storm with his friend Mansell.
  • Kevin—Son of a pastor from New Orleans East, he was in high school during Katrina and is now attending a small Midwestern liberal arts college.
  • Leo & Michelle—Twenty-somethings who each grew up in the city. He’s a local music zine publisher and works with mentally challenged youth. She’s a gymnastics instructor.

A.D. creator Josh Neufeld writes & draws nonfiction, journalistic comics to offer a new perspective on political and social upheaval, and to give voice to stories that wouldn’t otherwise be heard. In addition to A.D., he is the illustrator of the bestseller The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media (W.W. Norton). His journalistic pieces have been published by Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, Medium, Al Jazeera America, Fusion, The Atavist, and The Mint (India), among others. He received his BA from Oberlin College, and was a 2013 Knight-Wallace fellow in journalism at the University of Michigan. Neufeld has taught comics in programs and workshops in the United States and abroad.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Neufeld served as a Red Cross volunteer for three weeks in Biloxi, Mississippi. The blog he kept about that experience turned into a self-published book, Katrina Came Calling. During his time volunteering and blogging after Katrina, one his readers wrote: “Do a comic. Please.”

Although A.D. only addresses Josh’s own experiences in the Gulf Coast region in part, in a very real sense, more than a year after that life-changing experience, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is Neufeld’s answer to that call.

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A.D. is now out as an expanded book from Pantheon. You can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or at your local bookstore. Here’s a story about A.D. that ran in the New York Times upon the book’s release.

For more on the making of A.D., see our A.D. FAQ. or video about its genesis.

 
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