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.

As for the Saints, all eyes will be on them and their stars Drew Brees and Reggie Bush this evening. And when I say “all eyes,” I really mean it—I’ve never seen a more football-crazy town than the Big Easy. I’ve lived in some big sports towns in my day, including Chicago and my own New York City, but New Orleans beats ‘em all when it comes to the Saints. They truly are a team that unites folks from disparate backgrounds: black & white, rich & poor, corporate-type & artiste, etc.—which is all the more remarkable given that for most of the Saints’ history they’ve been worse than mediocre. But this year they’ve been pretty damn good, and it should be a good match with the (slightly) favored Indianapolis Colts (whose quarterback, Peyton Manning, is a New Orleans boy himself).

So what’s A.D.’s connection to the Saints and the Superbowl? Check this out: Last August, right at the beginning of the NFL season, A.D. character Leo McGovern published an editorial in his music zine Antigravity. It took the form of a dream he’d had, and went like this: “It’s the morning of February 7th, 2010. I’m cleaning my Mid-City apartment and making the final preparations for what will surely be the greatest party ever thrown. All the food is simple—chips, dips, vegetable trays, and pre-made sandwiches, as to not give the hosts (me, my wife and our roommate) any chance of having to be away from the television for any reason. . . . So I’m now putting the finishing touches on a clean apartment, tapping the kegs and arranging the sandwiches, because tonight we’re watching the Saints play in the Super Bowl.”

Unfortunately, Leo’s dream didn’t reveal who won the big game, but like any good New Orleanian, Leo will “have two kegs of a local amber and, for backup, a few bottles of a local rum—enough to make us forget, if it comes to that.” But should the Saints win tonight, you can be sure next Tuesday’s Mardi Gras parade will be a city-wide party to remember.

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.”

And while it’s not technically a “best-of” list, we particularly wanted to mention the Comics Journal’s review of A.D. Matthew Miller’s piece is titled “Everlasting Memorial,” and in the review he covers all the bases, discussing A.D.’s origins as a webcomic on SMITH, dissecting the opening section, “The Storm,” focusing on various characters and elements throughout the book, and contextualizing it with interview quotes and behind-the-scenes information. The review ends with these words: “A.D. [is] powerful and gratifying. The novel becomes an everlasting memorial to the lives of a city, its people and perhaps a generation of survivors.”

We couldn’t be more pleased and grateful.

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.

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!

The next day I was scheduled for a late afternoon signing at one of my favorite comics retailers, The Million Year Picnic, operated by the sweetest man in comics, Tony Davis. Beforehand, I had the privilege of getting to see my favorite cousin, Lauren, who took time off work to come into the Harvard area to have lunch with me. Before heading over to The Picnic, Lauren and I passed The Globe Corner Bookstore, which had recently posted a kind review of A.D. on their blog and was featuring A.D. on their shelves.

It was a bit of a slow day at MYP, since the new comics were delayed due to the previous Monday’s Labor Day holiday, but Tony and his employee Anthony kept me engaged and entertained throughout the two-hour signing session. And it turned out that Tony has many family connections to NOLA, and just happened to get stuck in the city in late August 2005 right before Katrina struck. (Thankfully, he made it out of town just in time, and was able to fly back to Boston from Baton Rouge before the storm actually hit.)

The signing done, I threw my pens into my case, slung my bag over my shoulder and headed back to South Station. The Bolt Bus delivered me back safely into the welcoming arms of NYC and I made it home before midnight. Not a bad two-day jaunt to Beantown.

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.”

In a wonderful interview about A.D. with Josh and one of the characters, Leo McGovern, on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” host Linda Wertheimer suggests that, “It seems that the people in the book gradually seem to recover their balance, but I think your book really brings home to me how very pervasive the sense of loss was and still is in New Orleans.” That sentiment, is exactly what both Josh and I hoped to convey as readers click on the last panel, or turn the last page of A.D. Listen to the story or read the transcript on the NPR site.

Finally, we’re so excited that A.D. has landed on the New York Times Bestseller list in the graphic books category for the second week in a row. For the week of September 13, it’s #4, one of the few graphic books not about Batman. It’s a fitting place for a book with seven very real superheroes who go by the names Leo, Michelle, Denise, Kwame, Abbas, Darnell, and The Doctor.

The event that night was at the Book Cellar, in Lincoln Park. I’d heard a lot of great things about the place, particularly from Larry Smith and Rachel Fershelisher, who landed there during their Six-Word Memoirs book tour. The Book Cellar serves wine (as well as the usual tea & coffee) while you peruse your favorite books. The event itself went really well, with about 40 people in attendance, including a group old Chicago pals. The crowd was really receptive to the book and ran me through the best Q&A session to date.

The next day was August 29, the actual fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My only event was an “author coffee” at Amy Davis’s writing workspace, where I walked 11 people through the origins of A.D. Everyone there was a writer of some kind, with a range of interests in self-publishing, web-to-print projects, and comics, and we spent a lively couple of hours chewing the fat.

I do know it actually happened, thanks to my wonderful ex-assistant Rachel, who videotaped my rambling incoherent (and ultimately teary) speech of thanks at the event, which if you insist on viewing can be seen here. Also, just as things were heating up, Jason Boog of GalleyCat did a video interview with me, which can be seen here. And my good pal Heidi MacDonald covered the event for Publishers Weekly’s “The Beat”, which you can read here (even though, weirdly, I am not pictured!).

In the end, Idlewild sold out of all 75 copies of A.D.—and the benefit raised $1,200 for Common Ground! Big ups to the Big Apple!

A typical scene in the Lower Ninth

We also happened by the Ninth Ward headquarters of Common Ground Relief, an organization I’ve been raising money for by having fundraisers and selling A.D. prints. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon, Director Thom Pepper was there, keeping shop, as well as an assortment of dedicated volunteers. Thom showed us around a little and told us in detail some of Common Ground’s projects: gutting and rebuilding houses, and working on wetland restoration, hoping to revitalize the natural surrounding flood barriers. Common Ground is good people.

Our audio and video archive offers a number of takes on their lives pre-and post-Katrina from the very real-life “characters” in A.D. Denise talks with emotion and honesty about the painful process of rebuilding New Orleans, the city she’d lived in her entire life. Leo speaks about what it means to lose his prized comic book collection, and it’s larger metaphor for loss post-Katrina. And the Doctor, who I could listen to all day, recalls his first days in the city at the ripe old age of 18, and how he came to love the language of the place. “When I first came to New Orleans everything was new and exotic to me,” he says. “It was almost like going to France; you had to learn a new vocabulary. The language…completely different. Charming. Fascinating. Addictive.” Listen that clip and many more in the audio and video archive.

One of the Doctor's A.D. serving trays

The party was everything I would have thought it would be given the host and location—a savory gumbo of New Orleans upper crust society, libertines, and eccentrics—with a politician thrown in the mix. (Edwin Murray, a 2010 candidate for mayor, was there, and Dr. Lutz had me sign his book “To the next mayor of New Orleans.”) In addition to the Doctor and his dogs Kip and Rose (both of whom also appear in A.D.), also present were A.D. characters Leo & Michelle, as well as the Doctor’s partner Ken Combs, and Ken Colditch and Edwin Curry, who all make brief appearances at the Doctor’s house during his “hurricane party”. And of course Larry, who made a very gracious toast to the Doctor. There was copious food and drink, and a barefoot “gypsy band” playing fiddles and a washboard, that Dr. Lutz had pulled off the streets in Jackson Square. People lingered late into the night, spread out around the pool, at the back yard tables, and in the Doctor’s sitting room.

About halfway through the festivities, I was again sat down at a table to sign books. Again it was a long string of great encounters with amazingly gracious and grateful people. I was thanked again and again for telling the story of Katrina and keeping it in the public eye. (It only occurs to me now, four years after the storm, that much of the rest of the country really has “moved on” from Katrina and doesn’t spend some portion of every day thinking about the hurricane and its effect on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.) Nonetheless, in the midst of that crowd, I did feel a little bit like some kind of curious creature on display for the evening—”Come see the funny Brooklyn cartoonist!”—but I soaked it up regardless.

By evening’s end, the Doctor was slumped against his couch with assorted hangers-on, at least “three or four sheets to the wind” as Leo so eloquently put it. After my long day, I was beat, and Sari & I called it a night.

I found out the next day that the band went skinny-dipping in the Doctor’s pool; when I mentioned it to him later he drawled,”That’s fine, because they needed a bath.”