The pen-and-ink drawings are clear, simple and so static in their muted colors that they suggest an airless calm -- but the real-life events in those drawings pulse with tension, confusion and fear.
"It's an account of Hurricane Katrina by a small group of survivors," artist Josh Neufeld said by phone recently, "but really, at its heart, it's a story of loss and how we deal with loss."
On Sunday, New York artist Neufeld posted online the sixth chapter of "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge," an illustrated work of nonfiction storytelling that springs from the tradition of comic books but, like so many similar projects these days, is poorly served by the clunky term.
Referring to "A.D" or one of Joe Sacco's illustrated memoirs as a comic book is a bit like calling "Schindler's List" a talkie.
"A.D." tells the tale of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history through the experiences of six people: Denise, a poet and sixth-generation New Orleanian; Hamid, an Iranian-born father of two who owns an uptown market; Kevin, a high school student and the son of a pastor; a young couple, Leo, who works with developmentally disabled youngsters, and Michelle, a gymnastics instructor; and Dr. Brobson Lutz, a man about town and former health department official.
One person who is not in the story is the man holding the pen. Neufeld, 40, perhaps best known to comics fans as a frequent collaborator with Harvey Pekar on "American Splendor," is the unseen journalist at work in "A.D." But that doesn't mean he didn't witness the destruction of Katrina firsthand.
Neufeld was overwhelmed as he watched the media coverage of the hurricane and the destruction in its wake from his home in New York. After a few days, he had to act. He became a Red Cross volunteer and was shuttled down to the ravaged Mississippi coastal communities of Biloxi and Gulfport.
Neufeld blogged about the wrenching duty and also about the nature of being one of the few New Yorkers in the disaster area, where he learned lessons about race, class and human tragedy. "I learned a lot about our country, honestly," he said in a solemn tone.
Those blogs caught the attention of Larry Smith, the editor of Smith Magazine, who was a fan of Neufeld's "American Splendor" work and was looking for a follow-up to his website's first serialized Web comic, "Shooting War," which was met with sparkling reviews for its near-future vision of a blogger covering the still-raging war in Iraq in 2011. (The collected Web comic will be available this November at bookstores as a graphic novel.)
