IN THE AFTERMATH: JOSH NEUFELD ON A.D. - AFTER THE DELUGE

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

Cartoonist Josh Neufeld is perhaps best known as non-fiction comics creator, working with Harvey Pekar, David Greenberger and on his own work A Few Perfect Hours and Titans of Finance (with writer R. Walker). A resident and active participant in the NYC comics scene, Neufeld is also a founding member of the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE.

Neufeld's online graphic novel, A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge tells the real stories of five New Orleanians in the days leading up to, and the weeks after, Hurricane Katrina. Serialized at SMITH Magazine, the series has received extensive press coverage and acclaim for its eye-witness accounts.

Neufeld himself has spent time in the gulf coast region, working for three weeks as a Red Cross volunteer. It was turning this humanitarian outreach that Neufeld began composing his thoughts about the event, first as a blog of his work, and now with the comic.

Newsarama: Thanks for talking with us, Josh. Let's start at the beginning of your journey. You spent three weeks as a Red Cross volunteer in Biloxi helping with the Katrina clean-up. What led you to sign up?

Josh Neufeld: What led me to signing up as a Red Cross volunteer for the Katrina-effected areas was the horror and sadness I felt after seeing what happened in New Orleans: the flooding after the levees broke, people stuck on roofs, and the whole Superdome/convention center situation. The fact that there was no contingency plan – the government was completely failing those people.

I had some awareness of how badly the hurricane had hit the Gulf Coast - and Mississippi in particular -- although the media was focused primarily on Louisiana and New Orleans. My Titans of Finance collaborator R. Walker lived in New Orleans in the early '00s, and my wife and I had visited him there a year or two prior to Katrina.

My volunteering came from the experience of seeing this happen in my own country, and feeling shocked that our government couldn't take better care of its own people – or be prepared. I took that shock, sadness, and anger, and realized that there was something I could do – volunteer – and help somehow. One thing led to another, and I explored different options, finally settling on the Red Cross because a.) it was secular, and b.) it was able to sponsor my trip down there. Other more grassroots organizations simply didn't have the funding or infrastructure of the Red Cross.

NRAMA: Once you got there, what kind of tasks did you do during those three weeks?

JN: I ended up working on an ERV; an Emergency Response Vehicle. It looks like an ambulance and is designed to carry hot food and supplies to areas where people don't have the ability to take care of themselves, due to lack of water, non-functioning kitchen appliances and/or because they're living in a tent – that kind of thing.

I ended up on an ERV, but I was originally trained as a shelter worker. By the time I got down to the Biloxi, the shelters had emptied out, since it was almost a month after Katrina, and most people were living back at their homes, although they couldn't in most cases feed themselves.

I was really happy to get to do that.

NRAMA: Did you know anyone when you went down there?

JN: No, I went by myself. As it turned out, I was the only person from the New York City chapter of the Red Cross in Biloxi. I had trained for three weeks or more with a lot of other New Yorkers, but for some reason, I got sent down before the others (or they were deployed elsewhere around New Orleans or Houston). In any event, I was the only New Yorker I saw while down there. It was a challenge to totally be on my own.

It reminded me of my first day in fifth grade or whatever, but I made friends and made my way through it. I also coped by blogging almost every day, keeping in touch with people that way, and talking to my wife on the phone. And of course the work itself was completely time-consuming, from about 8 in the morning 'til 8 at night.

NRAMA: Did you have much of a connection with New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area before the events of Katrina?

JN: Not really, no. Other than my prior visit, and a cultural appreciation of the city of New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz and so much other good music, and its occupying a unique spot in the American fabric with its French, Cajun, and Creole roots. As an American, I knew how important the city was to the identity of the whole country -- and how all this was in danger of being lost due to Katrina and the aftermath.

It goes back to my original reason for volunteering. As Americans, we're so used to seeing natural disasters happening to different people all over the world, and seeing our government give aid to other countries… But seeing this happen here at home, I felt like I needed to actually physically do something for my fellow Americans.

NRAMA: At what point did you think, "hey, there might be a comic in this?"

JN: Well, it was never anything I thought about as it was happening. But because I've made a career of doing comics about real life (and usually about my own life), it was something natural to think about. While I was blogging, cartoonist friends like Dean Haspiel and Leland Purvis said "you gotta make a comic out of this!" At the time I was so focused on being a volunteer that I wasn't in comics-creator mode. But since I was recording everything, taking down my thoughts, and taking pictures, it provided great background and reference when I did eventually decide to develop the Katrina experience as a comic.

NRAMA: The characters in A.D. are real people – what led you to using these people, and what do they think about being in the comic?

JN: Well, that's sort of a big transition. After I came back from my deployment, I published a book of my Katrina blog entries. Time passed, and I still hadn't done a comic – I had been thinking about it, but I was stuck about what to do. I happened through my pal Jeff Newelt to meet Larry Smith of Smith Magazine, which had just finished their run of webcomic Shooting War. Smith was anxious to run another online graphic novel, specifically one about Hurricane Katrina. Larry and I started talking, and he suggested doing the comic about people other than myself. When I realized that that was the way to go, it struck a chord and a bell went off: "that's it!"

I had been struggling with the idea of doing a comic from my point of view. I didn't want to be the star of the story, as I'm not from the region, I didn't do anything more than offer a helping hand there for a few weeks. I didn't suffer, I didn't lose anything, so it wasn't right to make me the center of the story.

When Larry suggested using real people, the flood gates (bad metaphor!) opened. Larry and I brainstormed and thought about the type of people we wanted to find for the story. I first thought about Red Cross volunteers and people in Biloxi, but Larry thought it was important to focus on New Orleans, as it is the center of the region affected and the most relatable. Once we settled on New Orleans, we had to find the characters. We did a lot of real journalistic research; it was really important for us to find a cross-section of folks that were a demographic representation of the city – men and women, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, people with a connection to the music scene, people who were greatly affected by the flooding and even those who weren't.

NRAMA: Did you meet the people in A.D. through your time down there with the Red Cross, or through some other means?

JN: Well, like I talked about before, we figured out demographically who we wanted. We asked around, talked to people, listened to the radio, and asked journalist friends familiar with the region. After a long process of culling and elimination, we found our group, and then went down to New Orleans to meet them in person and "seal the deal." We were really lucky because everyone we found turned out to be great in person and everybody was on board. We were lucky enough that in a three-day weekend trip in January; all five of our main characters were in town or nearby. We hung out, met them, and even made some audio recordings which ended up on the website later.

The only character who was a potential "issue" was "Kevin," the young guy in high school. His dad – who is actually a preacher, and an imposing figure -- came along as a chaperone. Well, we talked honestly about what we had in mind, showed him some art samples, and eventually won him over. The one thing we agreed to is to use a pseudonym instead of his real name. As with all the characters, I keep in touch with "Kevin," and he and his family enjoy the comic, and specifically remark that I draw him and the family realistically.

NRAMA:The latest chapter is 8, and at this point in the story the hurricane has passed but the flood waters are starting to rise. Each of the characters is feeling it in their own way, but this chapter focuses on Hamid and Mansell as they cope with the rising waters while at Hamid's grocery store. Tell us about this in particular – how did you learn of the event?

JN: It was all through phone interviews. I hoped to get some footage and pictures because Hamid said he had some; but with the flooding, and him moving and rebuilding, they got lost in some boxes somewhere, so I never got them. I've done a number of phone interviews with Hamid – he's hard to get ahold of, as he reopened the store back in the beginning of the summer and its been very hard for him to find workers. He's working all the time and so is his wife. The only time to reach him is on his cell phone when he's driving home.

With the phone interviews, I got enough details to write out an outline for Hamid to read over. I talked with him and asked direct questions to get everything right, the specific details to fit the story that I was trying to write.

That's how I pretty much how I write the whole thing. In my initial conversaions with the characters, I get the story notes – hitting the most poignant and interesting moments for me, then I later go in to fill in the key details.

NRAMA: How has the reaction been from the people you focused on to be characters for the series?

JN: I would say it's been uniformly positive. There was one hiccup along the way, though; Denise felt that in my first representations of her I was mis-characterizing – stereotyping – her as the prototypical "angry black woman." We talked about her concerns, and I asked her to trust me that as the story continued her character would become more developed and reveal more of the full person that she actually is. She did trust me, and was happy I listened, and was understanding about her concerns.

I try to be as true to the characters' experiences as possible. Doing that isn't stepping on my toes as the author – to me it's of the utmost important to get it right, and to focus on the dramatic moments without making stuff up. After all, the things Katrina-survivors went through are so incredible on their own, it's pointless to try to augment the drama.

NRAMA: When does the next chapter come out, and how many chapters are in the story all together?

JN: Unfortunately, there has been a bit of a hiatus between chapters eight and nine, due to me working on the new American Splendor series with Harvey Pekar. My goal is to get the next chapter, which is number nine, online by February 1st. Then the hope is to put out a new chapter every two weeks. There will be between four and eight more chapters before I finish it up on the web.

NRAMA: Assuming there's going to be a print version sometime down the road, what will it look like?

JN: I like the way Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman handled Shooting War – they extended the comic, and Dan went back and redrew a lot of the work in there. While I don't think I'll be quite as radical with A.D. in terms of re-drawing, the print version will have more material – such as secondary people and more about the characters' lives before the hurricane. It'll probably be another six months to a year in terms of preparing the book version.

NRAMA: You're part of the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE, you have a strong history of self-publishing, and you know more than a few publishers on your own – so what led you to doing A.D. with the online Smith magazine?

JN: Well, I wanted to do a comic about New Orleans and hadn't figured out how to do it. Larry Smith of Smith helped me find that story, and was so instrumental in making it come alive in my head. Then, with the opportunity to publish the story online -- straight from my drawing board to readers' eyes in such an instantaneous manner – I loved it. I love the web for its ability to cut out the middlemen and just get the work out there. It's extremely satisfying, but it'll also be satisfying to get it published in book form for people who don't catch it online, and of course for the web readers who want a physical copy.

A.D.: After The Deluge is serialized online at Smith Magazine. Currently eight chapters are online free, with the ninth scheduled for February 1st.

[hondo]

Not familiar with the work of Josh Neufeld until this article, but I'm intrigued enough to pick this up. I'm surprised no one has done something like this yet in graphic form.

[Mike]

Those unfamiliar with Josh's work on A.D. are in for a real treat. There's nothing else like his masterful storytelling on this project, and the true-life insight offered through the tale itself is fascinating and touching. There are clearly great things in store for A.D. once it's completed. I think it's great that you can get in on the ground floor now and watch it develop piece by piece.

[Not From Around]

Sounds like a very ambitious project! This was such a huge event.

And what happened in New Orleans, though the most dramatic and the most costly in terms of human life, was only a part of the wider Katrina story. Somebody needs to be trying to record the stories of others who were involved as well--the people on the Gulf Coast, rural Louisianans, the people who weren't trapped in the flooded zone but found themselves in need of food and shelter after they evacuated, and the inhabitants of the places where the evacuees moved. There could be half a dozen cartoonists doing Katrina projects, and it wouldn't cover every facet of it.

Good luck on this attempt to portray the New Orleans part of the story!

[heelmark]

A friend and I stayed in NOLA with a friend of her's for about a week in October/November. It was the most beautiful and unique town I've seen in this country, full of these great people everywhere we went. I almost couldn't go back home. That was a great week.
But staying there....watching the news, talking with the locals, seeing the crime and corruption. Governments (city especially) doing nothing to help, except for themselves. It's like two cities there. One is trying to carry on and keep NO the most amazing and unique city we have. The other is scrambling to pick up the pieces to benefit themselves, leaving everyone to else and the city to waste.
I found AD just a couple days after coming home. It's a great comic. But even more, it's a real one. You're doing good work here Josh.