Today, our newly regular (as in: from this point forward) contributor Sean Kleefeld of Kleefeld on Comics takes a look at one of the few nonfiction/journalistic comics to break out of the webcomics scene: Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Is it worth owning on paper? Find out, after the break.

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge follows five individuals who lived in New Orleans in 2005. When Hurricane Katrina swept through on August 29, it wreaked more havoc than the area had seen in generations. Cars were thrown around like toys, buildings were ripped up from their very foundations, and a good portion of New Orleans was flooded with up to 15 feet of foul, disease- and rodent-infested water. Over 700 people died in New Orleans alone, and the exceptionally poor response from the government helped to make it a much worse humanitarian disaster than it could have been. The lives of everyone in the area were impacted, and many of their stories have been told. In A.D., Josh Neufeld focuses on Denise, Leo, Abbas, Kwame and Brobson. All of whom had little in common with one another other than living in New Orleans. But they come to represent precisely the types of things those of us outside the area kept hearing on the news. People fighting traffic to leave the city. People who didn’t leave winding up stranded on rooftops. People left for dead at the Superdome. Those are the stories presented here.

Neufeld introduces us to the characters a week before the storm, allowing us to get to know them somewhat before they’re all forced to deal with the impending crisis. The reader is not only able to better empathize with them, but is also able to see precisely the thought processes they used to arrive at their decisions of when, or even if, to leave the city. We see their struggles and feel their pain; and, as the astounding shock of the unbelievable events that actually happened has started to wane, we can now start to understand what they really went through.

For us, though, it’s not an issue of survival. Neufeld makes it clear that he’s used first-hand accounts of the events, so we know the stories are ones told to him by the survivors. No, A.D. is a story about what’s worth fighting for. When do you give up your comic book collection? When do you give up the neighborhood store you’ve worked so hard to make a success? When do you give up your cat? When do you give up the city you’ve spent your entire life calling home? And how do you live with those decisions? It’s damn powerful story and it’s no surprise that his work is getting more than a little attention.

The story doesn’t get political; it doesn’t get accusational. It doesn’t pander to the reader; it doesn’t portray anyone as a helpless victim. Here are five people; here’s how they deal with the worst natural disaster they’ve ever experienced. They made their choices and live with the consequences. “Laissez les bon temps rouler”? No, this is Life. It’s a lot of hard work, and sometimes it can really suck. But you pick yourself up, and you keep on keepin’ on.

Is it worth buying the book, when you can read it online for free? Yes. Neufeld’s gone back and reworked some sequences, making the story flow smoother. He’s also reformatted the whole thing with a running calendar to better show readers when they are in the story. The colors work much better on the printed page, as well, and many of the sequences have been recolored accordingly. You can go to the site and read the story for yourself, and see how well Neufeld handles the basic storytelling. But the printed version does indeed take an already solid story and knock it out of the park.

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