Not sure if I get the headline, but yesterday’s Dublin (Ireland) Sunday Tribune had a nice piece about the new comics journalism. Besides the usual suspects like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, reporter Patrick Freyne covers A.D., Coco Wang’s China 5.12 tales, and Ted Rall’s To Afghanistan and Back, as well as the work of a cartoonist new to me, Jeffrey Lewis. Freyne contextualizes nonfiction comics in an interesting way, tying them in with Egyptian hieroglyphics, Christian church iconography such as the Twelve Stations of The Cross, and Hogarth’s painting series The Rake’s Progress. He even discusses 1950s British comics like The Eagle, which “attempted to tell historical and religious stories . . . , and even war comics like Battle featured heavily researched and credible war stories like Pat Mills’ and Joe Colquhoun’s ‘Charley’s War.’” Check it out.

How can music help heal New Orleans? What role should the arts play in rebuilding communities? Why does this city’s storied culture find itself embattled? Why are so many residents still displaced or homeless?

NEW ORLEANS: Culture, Crisis, and Community — a panel discussion
Moderator: Larry Blumenfeld, journalist
Panelists: Kalamu ya Salaam, poet/activist; Kent Jordan, musician/educator; Josh Neufeld, cartoonist/Red Cross volunteer; Emmanuel Pratt, urban planning researcher/digital media artist; others

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008, 5pm (until about 6:30)

Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center
107 Suffolk Street
New York, NY 10002

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Presented by the 13th annual VISION FESTIVAL as a prelude to Wednesday night’s Lifetime Achievement Celebration of Edward “Kidd” Jordan.

In the wake of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, Chinese cartoonist Coco Wang has been hard at work doing comics reportage. Using a streamlined manga style, with just black, white, and red, she’s used news reports to create one-page strips about the Chinese earthquake’s victims, survivors, and rescuers. As Wang says, “I drew these stories in English so that everyone in the world would be able to learn our stories. . . . I hope these stories could show . . . readers the love, warmth and courage of the Chinese people, also the sad and cruel reality of the horrible 5.12 Earthquake.” In the tradition of manga, the tone of the strips are a bit melodramatic, but they’re a fine corollary to what we’re doing with A.D., using real people’s stories to bring large-scale disaster to human dimensions. They stories are horrifying and inspiring, gruesome and lyrical, and I encourage you to check them out; they’re still being updated.

One of the most popular questions in the year or so since we’ve been publishing A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is: So, when is the book coming out? We’re absolutely thrilled to say that Pantheon Books, the preeminent graphic novel publishers of our day (they brought us Persepolis), are wild about A.D. and its creator Josh Neufeld, and will be publishing the serialized webcomic as a full-length, hardcover graphic novel (most likely released next summer). We’re very proud of Josh, and very grateful for the courage and insight of each and every one of the very real characters in the story. So a special thanks to Denise, The Doctor, Leo, Michelle, Kevin, and Hamid.

This also just in: “Section H,” the twelfth chapter in the comic is up. It’s perhaps the most intense chapter of this New Orleans story we’ve published, and among the most powerful examples of unique, personal, nonfiction storytelling we’ve had the pleasure to present in SMITH’s two and a half years online. I hope you give it a look. If you’re new to SMITH or A.D., read Josh Neufeld’s story from the very first panel.

A.D.’s Dr. Brobson Lutz, aka “The Doctor,” discusses what’s inspired him most in the post-Katrina period from the backyard in his home in the French Quarter.