Josh Neufeld‘s striking webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge gets a very good mention in Newsweek: “A.D.” is raw and painful—down to the detailed depictions of ruined homes and the frenzied dialogue among friends. It reaches a climax in chapter 13 (above), with army vehicles whizzing past the frail and thirsty, crying children and a dying old woman. The language, too, is authentic—and foulmouthed—which is in part what makes it all so powerful. “It’s one thing to imagine what happened, and to hear these stories from people you’ve never met,” says Neufeld. “But I really tried to make these characters real people you feel like you knew.” For many New Orleanians, the story hits all too close to home.”
A.D. is being serialised online by the good folks at Smithmag, where you can also see Josh working with his wife Sari on a segment for another webcomic series there, Next-Door Neighbour. I’ve found A.D. to be disturbing and compelling – considering the amount of suffering Hurrican Katrina caused it is obviously a delicate area for a storyteller to work on, but given the botched repsonse to the disaster by authorities its also important that this kind of story is told and Josh has handled it extremely well. Quite often its very hard to read because of the subject matter, but given what happened (and the mess large parts of the city are still in) some of it should be bloody hard to take.
(scenes from A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, art and (c) by Josh Neufeld, serialised on Smithmag)
Mon, Aug 11, 2008
General