It’s not often that webcomics tackle serious subject matter. It’s even rarer when creators take the time to interview people who lived through traumatic real world events, then captured their experiences through illustrations. Creator Josh Neufeld, though, a Xeric Award winner and a founding member of ACT-I-VATE, was up to the task. Neufeld interviewed six different people about what the trials and tribulations they faced on the worst storm that New Orleans ever experienced and made a comic out of it.
This month, the highly acclaimed webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge hits the bookshelves. (Amazon.com places the release date at August 18.) The “deluge” in the title is, of course, Hurricane Katrina. The comic was originally serialized online between 2007 and 2008 in Smith Magazine. It was recognized in several publications, including Rolling Stone, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. USA Today named it as one of 2007′s best comics.
Notices like these, by the way, can sometimes be detrimental. They can intimidate potential readers who see the attention the comic is getting from mainstream media reviewers and deduce that the work is difficult, given how praise is usually only bestowed to difficult works. Well, don’t be frightened. The voices of A.D. are those of everyday people, and the straight forward storytelling puts you in the shoes of those who witnessed it.
The Webcomic Overlook is back to provide you the weekly scrapbook of webcomic news. So grab your mint julep (or iced tea), saunter off the the patio, and open your laptop. Take care to put something in between your lap and the computer, by the way (a towel, perhaps), because the heat from the laptop can burn like the dickens. 
