By Paula L. Woods

Over four years after it hit Florida and the Gulf states, Hurricane Katrina is still remembered as the costliest and one of the most devastating natural disasters in U.S. history.

The statistics still boggle the imagination: $81 billion in damages, only half of which were insured; winds of 125 mph when Katrina reached landfall, and storm surges as high as 28 feet in Western Mississippi and 19 feet in parts of New Orleans.

Photo from Smithmag.net

But the images that linger in memory are of human loss and suffering: over 1,800 dead in five states; 1.2 million evacuated from New Orleans; dead bodies drifting down flooded streets in the Ninth Ward or abandoned in wheelchairs in front of the Convention Center, where crowds of those unable to leave the city swelled to 25,000. That a disproportionate number of those suffering seemed to be African American made tangible a persistent fear—that no one in America really cared about black folks, the poor or elderly, that when the spit hit the fan, the least among us were on our own.

Attempting to bring that perspective to life is Josh Neufeld, a nonfiction graphic artist, in the sobering comic book A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Through research and interviews than span several years, Neufeld tells in words and pictures the true stories of seven New Orleanians and their families, some of whom evacuated the area, some of whom toughed out Katrina and the subsequent flooding. They are: Denise, a sixth-generation New Orleanian who lived in a Mid-City apartment with her mother (a surgical tech at Memorial Baptist Hospital), niece and her small daughter; Kwame, a high school student and son of a local pastor; Leo, a twentysomething music zine publisher and avid comic book collector, and his girlfriend Michelle, a waitress; Doctor Brobson, a local physician and man-about-town; and Abbas, an Iranian-born owner of a convenience store and his African American “fishing buddy” Darnell, who gamely decide to ride out the storm together from the would-be security of the store.

Neufeld, who has contributed illustrations for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor series as well as written a groundbreaking graphic travelogue, establishes in a brief visual prologue the awesome power of Katrina, furiously churning over New Orleans like a mushroom cloud, and the destruction that followed. He then backtracks to give brief biographical sketches of characters that represent a cross-section of the city’s residents before putting them literally in the eye of the hurricane.

Some stories, like that of the well-heeled Dr. Brobson enjoying the golden glow of a fine meal at Galatoire’s or hosting a hurricane-watching party from his home in the French Quarter, seem trivial compared to the stark suffering of African Americans like Denise who, through a series of disasters, ends up with her family in the hellish Convention Center; or of Abbas and Darnell, who become trapped by floodwaters and must retreat to the store’s roof. Yet juxtaposing these stories of what we now know to be naïve denial in the face of unstoppable natural forces, serves to humanize the tragedy and connect the reader to the communal grief Katrina engendered.

Neufeld worked as a Red Cross disaster response worker in Biloxi, MS, for three weeks after Katrina, blogging and self-publishing his observations. For A.D., he selected the range of people he chronicles with care, providing welcomed diversity while making the well-known elements of the hurricane’s aftermath—the flooding, Convention Center and Superdome chaos—central to his narrative.

Photo from Smithmag.net

Denise’s blistering story, replete with images of sweltering chaos and death at the Convention Center, miscommunication, inattention and outright hostility from the military and unorthodox albeit welcomed help from gang members, reminds readers of that essential narrative while offering a deeper perspective and a few surprises. And although the federal government’s scandalously slow response is noted in Denise’s and later in Dr. Brobson’s perspectives, A.D. does not digress into political or sociological analysis, choosing instead to focus on the power of story.

In personalizing the horrific flood experience of the stubborn Abbas and Darnell, Neufeld also illuminates the depth of friendship in hard times. Darnell is Johnny-on-the-spot ready to help Abbas weather the storm and later is unwilling to leave his friend despite his own worsening asthma. Darnell’s wheezing insistence that “I’ll go when you go” is a testament to the cross-cultural friendship as much as a canny bargain Darnell forges to get Abbas to save himself.

As did over a million New Orleanians, underground scenesters Leo and Michelle, and Kwame, a teenaged African-American pastor’s son, evacuated in advance of the storm, unable to return for months and—in Kwame’s case—years. The diaspora and return are deeply felt by Leo, who loses not only his home and prized collection of 15,000 comic books but his optimism. Neufeld’s artistic rendering of that loss is both dramatic and heartfelt, especially when he relates Leo’s depression and anger at those who he believes abandoned the city: “There’s no way I could ever look at those people the same way if they come back after everything is rebuilt and working again,” Leo tells Michelle. “Staying away is taking the easy way out! Take part in the process or stay away. That’s just how I feel.”

Neufeld spins Leo’s sentiment into hope as most of his characters return to New Orleans and begin the long battle to rebuild their lives and communities. Kwame’s father’s parishioners help rebuild the family’s home. Comic book collectors learn of Leo’s loss and send hundreds comics to restart his collection. But perhaps the most affecting journey is that of Denise, who channels her counseling degree and anger into working with battered female Katrina survivors in Baton Rouge and later, with church groups back home. “It was obvious I could do more good here than being bitter and complaining back in Baton Rouge,” she tells Neufeld in A,D,’s final panels, which end the story in an explosion of Mardi Gras purples, greens and golds. “But it’s not over. We’re not all home yet.”

Paula L. Woods is a book critic and author of eight books, including I, Too, Sing America: The African-American Book of Days, and four Charlotte Justice crime novels, which include Inner City Blues and Strange Bedfellows.