Hey there, where y’at? I just finished, and SMITH just posted, the latest chapter of my serialized graphic novel, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. It’s chapter 4, but is pretty much the second part of chapter 3, as our characters do what they can to avoid and/or prepare for the hurricane.
So go now, please, and check it out. And feel free to comment (at the site), if you feel so inclined…
Chapter 3 of A.D., “…Or Should I Go?”, is now live on SMITH.
Hamid sends his family off to Houston, Kevin fills the bathtub with water, and Denise seeks shelter — but finds only chaos. It is Sunday, August 28, the day before Katrina.
Chapter 2 of A.D., “Should I Stay…”, is now live on SMITH. As Katrina bears down on New Orleans, Kevin prepares to leave for Florida, The Doctor invites some folks over to ride out the storm with him in the French Quarter, and Leo & Michelle debate the pros & cons of evacuating. Please check it out.
After a manic month of writing and drawing (and only a couple of days behind schedule), I’ve completed the first chapter of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. In chaper 1, we meet our five protagonists — Leo, Kevin, Hamid, Denise, and The Doctor — and follow their pre-Katrina preparations. You can read Chapter 1 (as well as the two-part prologue) for free right now on SMITH Magazine.
Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast in part II of the prologue to A.D.
“Moved to action by the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, Napoli collected hundreds of drawers from the flooded and abandoned neighborhoods in the days and months that followed.
“In this site-specific installation, the drawers sit upright along a 230-foot-long platform, which spans the length of Liberty Street Bridge — standing like empty luggage without their passengers and flowing like a levee, broken in places. Beneath the drawers, placed in intervals along the platform, moving-message LED signs silently repeat the words of the people who have parted with these drawers. Their words reminisce and mourn:
“‘I thought New Orleans would be a good place to go for rain and history, and it was.’ . . . ‘Having to throw your furniture out in front of your house — your life is sort of taken from you and sort of dumped out in your front yard.’ . . . ‘New Orleans was here before America was here and we are a part of America.'”
The show will be up ’til Feb. 9. There’s a free reception and walk-through (with the artist) tonight, from 6:30-8:30 p.m (again, at the Liberty Street Bridge of the World Financial Center). I’ll be there, and then hit up the ACT-I-VATE party at the Village Pourhouse.
Fresh from our trip to NOLA, we’ve posted the initial foray into the A.D. experience. It’s part I of the prologue, titled “In The Beginning…”, documenting Hurricane Katrina as it builds from a tropical storm in the Bahamas and moves inexorably toward New Orleans. Check it out over at SMITH.
I hope to post the second part of the prologue in a couple of weeks, with chapter 1 — and the introduction of our five central characters — to follow within a month.
I’m getting excited about my next project, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, which debuts on SMITH Magazine this weekend (which is also Smith’s one-year anniversary). Following (belatedly) in the footsteps of Anthony Lappé and dangoldman‘s critically acclaimed (and justifiably so!) Shooting War, A.D. is about Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the lives of five real New Orleans residents.
I’ll also be dealing with the effect of the storm on other regions, such as Biloxi, in the parts of the project dealing with my personal experiences as a Red Cross volunteer.
This is my most research-heavy project ever, and is going to be a major focus of my time for the next six months (at least). I plan on putting up a new chapter at least once a month, and hopefully more often than that. And it’ll all be free for viewing at SMITH.
As part of the research, I’ll be visiting New Orleans this weekend (along with A.D. editor/SMITH founder Larry Smith), where we’ll meet with the characters from the project, tour around a bit, and take lots of photos. This’ll be the first time I’ll be visting NOLA since shortly after the hurricane, when I came through just for an afternoon.
We’ll have the good fortune to be put up right in the French Quarter, in the guest-house of one of our subjects, a doctor and local NOLA character. And dinner at Galatoire’s is on the agenda!
Should be quite a trip.
In the “wake” of Katrina Came Calling, I was approached to write the foreword to a new book of photographs. Called Signs of Life: Surviving Katrina, the book gives us a look at the multitude of hand-made signs which proliferated throughout the Gulf Coast following the storm. It’s a remarkable — and beautiful — collection, and it goes on sale today, Katrina’s one-year anniversary. [http://www.signsoflifebook.com — also, you can check out a Flickr.com slideshow of images here.]
All the proceeds from Signs of Life go to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, so I encourage you to make the investment. As Rob Walker (Titans of Finance, Letters from New Orleans) writes, “It’s impossible to speak for the people who lived through Katrina. Far better to let them speak for themselves. That’s exactly what these images (sad, hopeful, funny, enraging) capture—and it’s exactly what Signs of Life is about.”
My introduction follows.
I should have mentioned this a week ago. For those interested in Katrina Came Calling, this is a much more compelling read, written before Hurricane Katrina, by my buddy R. Walker, who lived in New Orleans for about for years. Anyway, this is where I’ll be tonight:
The Letters From New Orleans 2nd Edition* Release Party
Tuesday March 14, 2006
No cover. Free snacks at 6:30pm
Reading at 7:00pm
Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A between 2nd and 3rd
NYC
Rob Walker reads from, discusses, and perhaps answers questions about his essay collection Letters From New Orleans, covering such topics as celebratory gunfire, urban decay, the relationship between people and places, and the pros and cons of masking.
*2nd Edition includes a new afterword, and two or three typo corrections.
