A.D.

Sketching, Speaking, and Signing at MoCCA

A.D., Publicity

This Sunday, April 11, at the annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Art Fest, I’ll be a “special guest,” sketching, speaking, and signing…

From 1-1:30, I’ll be at the MoCCA Sketch Table, donating my time to create original sketches for festival attendees. The primary purpose of the sketch table is to create a fun way to fund-raise for the museum. Festival-goers pay either $25 dollars for a “headshot” or $35 for a “full body” sketch.

From 2-3, I’ll be taking part in the panel discussion Sequential Activism: Saving the World, One Panel at a Time. Moderator Brian Heater (Daily Crosshatch) will lead us to explore the history of subversive political comics, from political cartoons to World War III Illustrated. Along with Bill Ayers (To Teach: The Journey in Comics), Peter Kuper (WWIII Illustrated, Oaxaca), Tom Hart (Hutch Owen), and Ward Sutton (Sutton Impact). Should be fascinating.

From 3:30-4:30, I’ll be at the Pantheon table, signing copies of the Eisner Award-nominated A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Come on by and say hi.

See ya Sunday!

MoCCA Fest 2010
April 10–11
69th Regiment Armory at 68 Lexington Avenue (25th Street), New York City
$12 at the door ($20 for both days)

Next Tuesday: First Person Arts in the City of Brotherly Love

A.D.

Next Tuesday, March 9, I will be appearing at the Philadelphia First Person Arts’ event, Warning: Graphic Content.

This year’s One Book, One Philadelphia program is centered around Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and W:GC features artists Daniel Heyman, Jamar Nicholas, and yours truly presenting our work, followed by a screening of the Persepolis film. (Isn’t it freakin’ cool that the whole city of Philly is reading and discussing a graphic novel?! And one as awesome as Persepolis, no less?!)

Prisoner abuse connected to the Iraq War has influenced the recent work of Philadelphia artist Daniel Heyman, who incorporates the words prisoners speak to him as he draws them. Philadelphia-based comics artist Jamar Nicholas is working on a new, graphic version of Geoffrey Canada’s powerful memoir Fist Stick Knife Gun. And I’ll be discussing A.D.

Marjane Satrapi’s two graphic memoirs were combined to make the film version of Persepolis. The film chronicles Satrapi’s childhood in the shadow of the Iranian Revolution, following her into young adulthood as she navigates the starkly different worlds of Western Europe and an increasingly conservative Iran.

Details:

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 7pm
Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 West Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA
Tickets $15 ($10 for First Person Arts and BMFI members)

 
Some coverage of the event:

New Orleans' Perfect Storm

A.D.

Yesterday kicked off a momentous fortnight in New Orleans, with a mayoral election, the Saints’ participation in the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras all taking place in a span of eleven days.

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.

Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List

A.D., Geek

Sandy of the I Love Rob Liefeld blog just posted his Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List. I love this list — and not only because A.D. landed at #13. No, I really love it because the "meta-list" was compiled in an obsessive, exhaustive way that matches my own long (sad) history of rating, chart-making, and list-making. Here, I’ll let you read for yourself how it was done:

I gave each individual "best of 2009" list 550 points to distribute among the comics named on the list. For unranked lists, the 550 points get evenly distributed among all the books. Thus, if a critic named ten books but didn’t rank his or her choices, each book gets 55 points. If a critic named 20 books, each book gets 27.5 points. If the list is ranked, the points get distributed according to a formula that gives more points for higher rankings and less points for lower rankings. So, for a top 10 list, the #1 book gets 100 points, the #2 ranked gets 90, all the way down to 10 points for #10. For a top 20 list, the #1 book gets 52.4 points, the #2 gets 49.8 points, on down to 2.6 points for the #20 book. After distributing the points, I totaled up the number of points given to each book to produce this "meta-list" of the top 100 books of the year. I only counted lists that had five or more books; for ranked lists with more than 20 books, I only counted the top 20.
 
Nuts, right? Sandy mentions that a guy named Chad Nevett "devised the formula for distributing points," which I should definitely read, because I’m dying to know how he came up with 550 points as the base allotment. I’m sure there’s a good reason.

It’s comforting to know that there are obviously lots of other people (guys?) out there who also spent their childhoods obsessing over baseball stats, comic book collections, D&D charts, and the like. That’s the beauty of the Internet: it links us all together. On the other hand, it’s also a bit scary because it makes it that much easier to cross back over that line, to go back into the interior world of numbers, where the big scary, chaotic world seems manageable, understandable — able to be controlled.

Anyway, bit of a tangent there. And in all seriousness, the Meta-List is a nice aggregator of all those top-ten lists out there (the Meta-List was made up of 130 lists identified by Sandy — including my own list!), plus it gives a good sense of the consensus of readers/critics. I’m definitely intrigued by some of the higher-ranked books that I haven’t yet read, comics like Darwyn Cooke’s Parker: The Hunter, Seth’s George Sprott: 1894-1975, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, Ken Dahl’s Monsters, Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III’s Detective Comics, and  Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe.

End of the year wrap-up

A.D.

A.D. has been cited on a number of year-end "best-of" and gift-giving lists. The New York Times gift guide cited the book, the San Jose Mercury News recommended it, and Vanity Fair magazine declared A.D. to be one of its five "better-than-a-sweater" gift suggestions. 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. In addition, A.D. is a "runner-up" on New York Magazine‘s list of the best comics of 2009, and was also cited numerous times on the Daily Cross Hatch’s list of "The Best Damned Comics of 2009 Chosen by the Artists."

And my lovely and talented wife Sari Wilson wrote the official A.D. teacher’s guide, which is available (for free) on Pantheon’s website.

Save the Date: Chip Kidd's artbreak, Dec. 29 @ Dixon Place

A.D.

Looking for something to do this holiday season? (New York City can be so dull.) Then come check out Chip Kidd’s band artbreak — and indy cartoonists Dash Shaw, David Heatley, and yours truly — at a benefit for Dixon Place: “Chip Kidd presents an evening of music, comics, and cartoons — New York indie style. Kidd’s band artbreak (with Mars Trillion) will perform a full set in preparation for its upcoming self-produced LP Wonderground, with special guests cartoonists Dash Shaw, David Heatley, and Josh Neufeld. A visual presentation of the artists’ current and upcoming projects will followed by artbreak’s only live appearance of the year, debuting their first EP and single, ‘Speedy’." Word is that Heatley will be joining Kidd and Trillion onstage for a performance of one of Heatley’s songs as well.

Original artwork and prints will be on display upstairs and our books will be on sale.

Details and more info:

artbreak
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Place: Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, NYC
$30

Also, join Kidd, Shaw, Heatley, and myself the next day, Wed., Dec. 30, for a signing at Jim Hanley’s Universe. In commemoration of Indy Comic Book Week, we’ll all be signing our books from 5-7 pm. More details to come.

artbreak flyer

The Comics Journal reviews A.D.

A.D.

It’s been a long time since my work’s been reviewed in The Comics Journal — not since a 1997 review of Keyhole — but they just found me again with a review of A.D.! (This is as about a big thrill for me as the New York Times feature back in August.)

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 even contextualizing it with quotes from previous interviews I’ve done. In short, a classic Comics Journal piece. It 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."

I couldn’t be more pleased and grateful.

Also, The Oklahoman just named A.D. one of the ten best graphic novels of 2009.

Miami Book Fair International!

A.D.

This weekend Sari & I will be in Miami for the Miami Book Fair International! Besides enjoying the warm weather, partying by the water, and hopefully meeting A.D. readers, I will be taking part in two panels on Saturday, November 14. And Sari will be joining me for one! To whit:

11:30 a.m., Centre Gallery, Rm. 1365 (Bldg. 1)
A Conversation with Dan Goldman (08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail), Josh Neufeld (A.D. After the Deluge) and Joshua Dysart (Unknown Soldier). We’ll be presenting our work, conducting a group Q&A, and signing books.

2:00–3:00 p.m., Kids’ Comic-Con (on NE 1st Ave., in front of Bldg. 1)
How to Create Your Own Mini-Comic in 45 Minutes or Less
Have you ever wanted to create your own comic? Or have you ever been faced with nothing to do on a rainy day (although we realize that doesn’t happen very much in Miami)? Come to this workshop and discover how easy and fun it is to make your very own self-published comic book! (Taught by: Josh Neufeld, author and illustrator of the critically acclaimed graphic novel A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge; Sari Wilson, a creative writing educator with New York City’s Teachers and Writers Collaborative; and Janna Morishima, director of the Kids Group at Diamond Book Distributors).

The book fair is being held at the Wolfson campus of Miami Dade College, around the intersection of NE 1st Ave & NE 5th St. in Miami. See you there!

“Your Alma Mater is Proud of You!”

A.D., Travel

That was the subject line of the email I got from Erik Inglis, Oberlin professor of medieval art and a fellow Oberlin art history grad from the class of ’89. He had seen the August New York Times piece on A.D., and dropped me a congratulatory email. One thing quickly led to another and soon enough I had been officially invited back to Oberlin to present A.D. to the school. The fact that Kwame, one of A.D.’s characters, is also a student at Oberlin, and was willing to take part in the presentation, added to the allure.

We settled on this past weekend, November 6–8, Parents’ Weekend 2009. Since Sari is an Oberlin grad too, it seemed appropriate for us to go as a family — Phoebe too! So last Friday we all jumped on a commuter flight to Cleveland for a fun-filled three days back in the corn fields of Ohio.

The “official” part of the trip went really well. Erik kindly picked us up at the airport and drove us into town and to our room at the Oberlin Inn. He had to leave to teach a class — likely excuse! — but we sauntered over to the new (to me) crunchy Black River Café to meet Danielle Young, the Alumni Association executive director, and her protégé Liz Weinstein. We had a pleasant lunch, and were encouraged to reminisce about old times for a recorded interview. Danielle & Liz also presented us with an official Oberlin alumni mug and some other assorted goodies.

With all the Parents Weekend events going on, I was a bit nervous about how well-attended Saturday’s 3pm presentation would go, but I was elated by the turnout. At least 75 people — parents, students, and even some faculty — turned out for the event, in the Hallock Auditorium of the new(ish) Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies. (A little shout-out to my buddy Mark “Stinky” Rusitzky, who worked as an architect on the building and served as the liaison during its construction. Mark, a Connecticut College graduate, has spent more time in Oberlin than I have in the last decade!)

After my slideshow, I sat down with Kwame and African-American Studies chair Caroline Jackson-Smith to talk about the project, Kwame’s involvement, and to take questions from the audience. The crowd seemed really engaged, and there were some great questions and comments. Professor Jackson-Smith was terrific, with a real respect for the comics form even though it was one of her first experiences with it. And Kwame was amazing, closing the event with a wonderful, eloquent summation of where New Orleans is now, and how he plans to fit in there once he finishes his academic career. I was so proud of him, and also in awe of his poise and strength of character. Once again, I was reminded what an amazing group of human beings I’ve been lucky enough to get to know though this project.

After the event, Kwame & I sat down in the lobby to sign copies of A.D., which people had quickly bought up all the copies provided for by Infinite Monkey (the new comics retailer in town). It was an odd experience sitting there signing copies for Oberlin students and parents, feeling somehow caught in between those two realities. I know one end of that experience — maybe someday I’ll know the other. I must admit I felt a certain pride, sitting there as a returning alumni, actually invited back by the institutional powers-that-be.

That evening Erik had us over to his E. College house for delicious home-made pizza by his wife Heather. Also there was Anne Trubek, another Oberlin alum of our era (who makes a great apple crumble!) And Phoebe got to marvel at the antics of the three boys (two 10-year-olds and one six-year-old) running rampant in the house. A good time was had by all, and Erik and I refrained from too much teary-eyed reminiscences of those two years we shared at Dascomb.I loved what Erik said about why he loves studying medieval art: “There’s so much we just don’t know! I would hate to teach modern art — we know what Manet had for breakfast every day of his adult life! On the other hand, I would hate to teach ancient art. We don’t know anything! Medieval art is just the right balance of what we know and what we have to use our imagination for.”

Sunday was a free day before our 5 pm flight, and Sari, Phoebe & I mostly spent it strolling around the Oberlin campus, visiting the museum, and admiring and kicking the fall leaves. It was comforting to hear the chants of protesters ringing through trees of Tappan Square, though we didn’t get there in time to find out what the protest was actually about before they had moved on. We also got a giant chuckle from the sight of a bedraggled group of Obie kids attempting to stage an earthbound game of Muggle Quidditch on Wilder Bowl, with broomsticks and everything. Ah, Oberlin!

Next time: Oberlin then and now

A.D. goes Dutch

A.D.

I’m excited to announce that A.D. will be translated into Dutch! The upstart publisher De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) is going to be releasing A.D. in The Netherlands some time next year. (They have also done Dutch translations of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Y the Last Man, Stitches, and Logicomix, among others, so I’m in good company.) 

I find it only fitting that an Amsterdam-based publisher would relate to my story of broken levees and flooded cities: in 1953 the Netherlands was flooded when the dikes protecting the southwest of the country were breached by the joint onslaught of hurricane-force winds and exceptionally high spring tides. The flood came in the night without warning, killing 1,835 people. Their very own Katrina… 50 years earlier.