A friend tipped me to “Katrina, Texas,” a four-page comic book story about a real-life New Orleans Hurricane Katrina survivor. Sound familiar? :->

This is the story of Eartherine Odem and her escape from the flooded 6th Ward to the Convention Center and then Austin, Texas. It’s told to Yaphet Smith, with terrific illustrations by Frank Stockton and Mike Neumann. Check it out here.

In “Hero Complex,” the arts-geek blog of the L.A. Times, Josh Neufeld reflects on his experience of reporting, writing, and illustrating A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge for the past year and a half. His short essay will also appear in the print edition of the paper later this week.

Earlier this month, one of A.D.’s real-life characters, Leo McGovern, wrote a guest post on what it felt like to have his story told via a comic, and his life after Katrina—and now Gustav. Last year, Larry Smith recorded a short interview with Leo and his wife Michelle about what it felt like to lose everything.

Finally, next year, an expanded A.D. book comes out from Pantheon Books. Thanks for everyone’s great comments, clicks, and support throughout this intense and wonderful project.

Editor’s note: With Leo returning home after evacuating for Gustav–and the comic wrapping up online—he offers his thoughts on being a character in “A.D.”:

As I write this Michelle and I sit in an Uptown coffee shop, watching rain sprinkle over the area. Last Wednesday we returned from our Hurricane Gustav evacuation to find our Mid-City apartment okay but with no electricity due to a power line knocked down around the corner from us. Michelle’s dad lives a couple minutes from us and had power, so we spent two nights there and our power returned on Friday. It wasn’t the most comfortable of times, but gearing up for a trip to the Superdome made it easier, and the Saints beating the Buccaneers let us forget about the previous week and the work ahead, if just for a few hours.

Considering the recent anniversary of Katrina and the release of A.D.’s last chapter, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the comic. (Of course, the actual anniversary might’ve been a good time, but it seems even better now that Gustav has done a better job reminding us of what we’ve lost than any date on a calendar could.)
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On Wednesday, Sept. 10, in conjunction with the 2008 Howl Festival, I will be taking part in “Inside Out: Self and Society in Comic Art.” Moderated by the inimitable Calvin Reid, the panel includes David A. Berona (author of Wordless Books); DC/Vertigo editor Pornsak Pichetshote; and artists Jill Tamaki, James Romberger, and yours truly. We’ll be discussing trends in autobiography, journalism, and social critique in graphic novels. Of course I’ll be mostly talking about A.D.

Details:
“Inside Out: Self and Society in Comic Art”
St. Marks Church, 131 E. 10th Street, NYC
Wed., Sept. 10, 7:15 pm
FREE!

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has just passed, and now another huge storm — Gustav — is bearing down on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, with forecasts of it hitting the area late Monday. Predicting a hurricane’s path is a very imperfect science, so it’s possible the city may dodge the bullet (as it had so many times in the past—before Katrina). But Katrina taught us that it’s far better to be safe than sorry.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin called Gustav “the storm of the century” and ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city today. Thousands of people are streaming out of the region as I write this. Things seem to be proceeding much more smoothly this time than in 2005, with government agencies working together to provide transportation options for just about everybody. Trains and buses are ferrying evacuees to Alexandria, Shreveport, and other northern Louisiana locations—and this time people can take their pets. To deter looting, the National Guard plans on sending a lot more troops into the city this time around. As an incentive to get everyone to leave, New Orleans is not providing any “shelters of last resort” (like the Convention Center or the Superdome), which seeing what happened at those places after Katrina might be a good thing. Even though the levees have been repaired and “shored up” since Katrina, they are still not designed to withstand more than a Category 3 hurricane; Gustav could end up as a Category 5.

Our A.D. characters are all preparing for the storm in their own ways. Read the rest of this entry »