Well, Josh Neufeld has one answer.

To commemorate the recent four-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Neufeld released A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a graphic novel that details one of the world’s worst disasters through the stories of seven real survivors.  Neufeld himself volunteered with the Red Cross in the Gulf Coast after the storm and chronicled his experiences on a blog.  A few years ago, a commenter on the blog wrote: “Do a comic. Please.” Readers were already familiar with Neufeld’s work on Harvey Pekar’s “American Splendor” so they knew that his storytelling comics had the power to convey the intensity of the disaster.

Neufeld began by writing a serialized webcomic that also included links to archival footage and other materials documenting what actually happened in the Gulf. Through multiple installments of the comic, he followed the lives of real people dealing with the aftermath of the storm. Now the comic has just been released as a book with some new additions.

Many non-fiction books have been written about Hurricane Katrina, but Neufeld uses a different method of storytelling to chronicle the disaster. The graphic novel format, basically a long-form comic, allows Neufeld to conduct the same reportage that many previous authors conducted and then transform his research into a moving visual story.  He has creative license to convey the stories in ways that are most emotionally compelling. By looking at Neufeld’s drawings instead of at photos, we as readers are able to imagine a more universal story of crisis and loss.

It looks like a pretty amazing book, and an exciting new release in the burgeoning world of graphic novels (remember Persepolis?)

Check out Neufeld’s tour dates here.