When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, television cameras scanned miles of destroyed homes and empty flooded streets. News reporters described power outages, toxic water, and a shortage of relief. Josh Neufeld started blogging.

Years later, those blogs came together with numerous interviews to inspire A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. “I’m a cartoonist and that’s the way I tell stories,” he said when I spoke to him last week about his newest graphic novel. “So it just made total sense to me.”

In 184 pages of illustrations, A.D. chronicles the experiences of seven survivors of the Hurricane–Denise, a sixth generation resident living in Mid-City; Leo and Michelle, twenty-something natives; Abbas, an Iranian-born convenience store owner and father of two; Darnell, Abbas’ friend who sticks with him through the flood; Kwame, a senior in high school and son of a pastor; and Dr. Brobson, a “man-about-town” who’s rarely fallen on hard times.

“These seven characters are really stand-ins for all the tens of thousands of people who have equally traumatic or horrifying or tragic stories about their experiences,” Neufeld said.

Neufeld’s images tap into a human element of the flooding that words alone cannot accomplish. His use of a monochromatic color scheme evokes palpable feelings from happiness to misery, hope to devastation. Yellows and oranges fill the pages of the chapter entitled “The City,” creating a sense of the golden days before New Orleans was ravaged by 140 mph winds. The tones turn to a sickly green as Denise and her family arrive at the Convention Center to chaos, waste, oppressive heat, and human excrement.

With the demolition of New Orleans also came political turbulence. As income levels often determined who fled and who stayed, socio-economic disparities and racial prejudices met the public eye, not only in the Gulf Coast region but throughout the nation. In A.D., however, commentary on these elements is subtle. Though Neufeld recalls the media distinguishing “looters” from “foragers” based on race, he ultimately decided to let the characters’ stories illuminate the truth.

“Facts speak for themselves,” he said. “As an artist, I’ve always tried to stay away from direct editorializing [to] let the story do that, and let the reader draw their own conclusions…I know [that] I have sort of a knee jerk reaction against being told what to think myself. So I try not to do that in my own work.”

As we near the four year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the multicultural mecca is still feeling the effects of its damage. Many have said the city will never be the same. Neufeld echoes that sentiment: “I think of A.D. as sort of being the marking point for the history of New Orleans, and maybe our country. There’s everything that happened before Katrina, and then everything that has happened since…It was almost something out of the bible, like the great flood that washed away civilization.”

And now civilization must begin again. A.D.’s storyline extends beyond the days of flooding to catch up with the real-life people who inspired Neufeld’s novel. All but Kwame have returned to New Orleans to rebuild their lives. They’re making leeway, but it’s not an easy transition.

“The thing I’m most concerned about still,” said Neufeld, “is this abandonment of the ninth ward and the areas in the city that were most affected by the flooding and how it does not seem like there is a coherent plan to bring people back. Everyone agrees that the situation in the ninth ward was really bad before the hurricane and people were dealing with communities in neglect and dangerous violence, but that doesn’t mean you can just wipe these people away.”

To contribute to relief, Neufeld is raising money for an organization called Common Ground Relief, which he describes as a grassroots-oriented organization that’s devoted to “on the short term, helping people get their lives back in order, and on the long term, helping to develop sustaining community-oriented things and rebuilding neighborhoods.”

How to help on a larger level? “People should continue to visit New Orleans and know that all of the great cultural destinations are still there, and it’s still an amazing place to visit. It’s a constantly evolving city with lots of culture–and music, obviously. And the more tourist dollars they can get, the more they can use those toward helping people.”

A.D.: After the Deluge goes on sale tomorrow, August 18.  Copies are available here.

For a list of relief organizations dedicated to restoring New Orleans, go here or here.