As Leo wrote when he invited me to contribute, "the only thing we ask is that if you’re not currently living in the New Orleans area, your cartoon would be about New Orleans or something New Orleans-related." I welcomed the chance to revisit New Orleans in my comics—especially now that the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is looming.

After thinking it over a little bit, I decided to address the passage of time since Katrina, and the way that New Orleans is still dealing with the storm. I was inspired by a paper an A.D. reader shared with me. Sean Mallin is a PhD Student in the Dept. of Anthropology at UC Irvine, and his paper is called "Steps to Nowhere? Rebuilding Haunted Landscapes in New Orleans." I remembered being particularly struck by the lines (quoting Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose) "Everywhere you go now, there’s some memory staring you in the face. What it used to look like;" as well as Mallin’s passage, “Memories of things they had or the way things were ‘before’ haunt [New Orleans residents] on a daily basis. Just like the ‘steps to nowhere,’ all the ‘stuff’ washed away by the floodwaters maintain a haunting presence in the lives of city residents."

I try to get at those feelings in "The Persistence of Memory…," which tracks one New Orleans house (or, rather, one piece of property) through the storm, the flooding, the aftermath, and subsequent stages of destruction and renewal. To make it extra fancy, I attempt to show all this one shot, broken up into five panels, each representing a different time in the life of the property.

It’s a subtle piece, requiring close reading; I hope it works for you.

Sounds like Dan Baum mixed with The Civilians mixed with Anna Deavere-Smith (with maybe a little A.D. thrown in)! I can’t wait.

Should you be in New York next week, here are the dates and show times (only $15 ea.):

The Players Loft, 115 MacDougal Street b/w West 3rd and Bleecker, NYC 10012

• Monday 8/23 at 5:15pm
• Wednesday 8/25 at 5:15pm
• Thursday 8/26 at 8pm
• Friday 8/27 at 7:45pm
• Saturday 8/28 at 3:30pm
• Sunday 8/29 at 1:15pm

All shows are one hour long. To buy tickets, call 866.468.7619 or click here.

P.S. Mari and Deanna are raising money to have 23 Feet in 12 Minutes professionally videotaped. To contribute on KickStarter, go here.

At first, I was led to believe that the current spill wasn’t anything like the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdex spill. Unlike that event, which dumped almost 11 million gallons of oil into the water extremely close to the shore, the BP leak was "only" releasing 40,000 gallons a day from over 40 miles from shore. The implication was that there would be much more dispersal of the lesser volumes of oil into much larger quantities of ocean water.

But now it’s coming out that initial reports of how much oil was being released into the war were vastly under-estimated. Now we’re seeing the oil coming ashore, and those heartbreaking, all-too-familiar images of oil-saturated birds and water-life are being broadcast to our television screens. Now the tragic truth is becoming clearer.

The ironies for the Gulf Coast are obvious. Just as the region (in some ways) is emerging from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina (and Rita), now this. There are already reports of tourists canceling trips to the region—and to New Orleans in particular—for fear of unsightly beaches and contaminated seafood.

There’s a larger question of how a disaster like this is a direct result of our country’s—our world’s—insatiable need for oil. That’s something we all need to think about it. In the meantime, below is a list of organizations which are working to alleviate the effects of the oil spill. Some have even changed or adapted their focus from post-Katrina relief to this new ongoing disaster. Please consider donating something to their efforts while we continue to hope that a solution to the leak is found. (I’ll be adding these links to the A.D. resource page shortly.)

• Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana
• Matter of Trust
• Oceana
• Natural Resources Defense Council  
• National Wildlife Federation  
• National Audubon Society 
• The Greater New Orleans Foundation
  
• Oxfam America
  
• Catholic Charities

As Mr. Caine wrote, "My students were 11 when the storm hit, and so it felt pretty current to them. Yet they were still too young to understand the weightiness of the situation, and A.D. opened their eyes." Because of budget issues, Mr. Caine chose to use the original, online version of the book (on "SMITH Magazine’s fantastic website"):

… Online reading is a novel yet relevant way to experience text; as nonlinear web reading becomes more common, your online presentation of A.D. (with informational links for many panels) matched the style of literacy that students are comfortable with. In addition, the links lent gravity to the material, and served as important reminders that this was indeed nonfiction.

I’m really overwhelmed by this package. Not only does it thrill me beyond words to know that A.D. on SMITH has continued life, but to think that actual students are taking advantage of all the site’s resources is more than I ever could have imagined. (After all, I put most of those links together!) And the individual letters from the kids are really touching—filled with questions, comments, and appreciation. I still haven’t worked my way through them all, as I’m savoring each one individually. I’m so grateful to Mr. Caine for exposing his students to the unique educational potential of comics in general, and A.D. in particular. And of course for taking the time to let me know about his class’s experience.

I plan on sending the class a personalized hardcover of A.D. And of course letting Mr. Caine know that, should he care to teach Katrina through A.D. again in the future, that there’s a free teacher’s guide online, and that the more economical A.D. paperback is due out in August.

Three cheers for Danny Caine!

Last year the Raffle raised $18,000 to be split between two charities: Half the money raised goes to Fest 4 Kids, which provides tickets, food money, and chaperones for local children to attend Jazz Fest. It is affiliated with Silence is Violence, which provides instruments and music clinics to local kids as an inspiration and alternative in their lives. The other half goes to the Threadhead Records Foundation, which helps out unsigned New Orleans musicians and also donates money to the New Orleans Musician’s Clinic.

Should you want to buy an A.D. raffle ticket (only $1.10!), you can find it at the Threadheads raffle site by looking under "Raffle Items" and then "Books": www.threadheadraffle.org

But hurry—the raffle ends May 5!

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.