Four-Eyes

One of my weekly rituals is my Tuesday night basketball game in Manhattan. I live in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, so to get to the game in the Lower East Side, I switch at Atlantic Avenue to either the B or the Q. The B takes me to Grand Street, where I walk to the game; or the Q takes me to Canal, where I switch to the M to Essex. But that's neither here nor there. (Sorry, bad pun.)

Usually, during the B/Q leg, my head's buried in a book or my iPod, but the other day, in the section of tunnel right before the train emerged from the Dekalb station into the open air of the Manhattan Bridge, I was idly glancing out the window... and I saw the coolest thing! Flickering by against a background of bright white was what I took to be a complex graffiti mural, something like you used to see in abandoned stations but rarely see in the subways any more. But as I watched the images unfold I realized this was much more than a long string of graffiti. The images moved, morphed, danced, and, at the end, took off in a rocketship! Here's what it looked like:


(Don't you love the running commentary?) I did a little Googling and quickly discovered this is a newly restored piece of urban art by Bill Brand called "Masstransiscope". It's actually a zoetrope — individual paintings (in this case, 228 of them) separated by slits and "animated" by the moving train. Really ingenious — and a technique only over 100 years old, ya big dunce! (It also turns out the art was painted in an abandoned station, "Myrtle Avenue," no longer serviced by the MTA...)

So next time you're on the Manhattan-bound B or Q, leaving the Dekalb station, keep looking out the right side of the train: you're in a free Big Apple cartoon treat.

I recently finished reading Dan Baum's remarkable book, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans. Published this past March (right around Mardi Gras), in alternating, rigidly chronological chunks, the book follows a diverse group of New Orleanians and their disparate paths through Hurricane Katrina. Sound familiar? Yeah, on the surface, the premise is similar toA.D.'s, but Nine Lives is much more than a Katrina book.

In my career as a cartoonist I've come to treasure the many things that comics can do to bring a fullness to storytelling, that unique combination of words and pictures which bring a tale to life. When I took on A.D. I really felt that comics was a groundbreaking way to explore the Katrina story in a way that the magazine stories, photographs, news footage, and even documentaries could not. Fortunately, many have agreed, and in fact no less than Baum himself recently wrote about A.D. that “Who’d have thought that after watching all that video we’d come upon a fresh visual way to experience Hurricane Katrina? Josh Neufeld’s drawings — and his tender, dead-honest dialogue — brought it all back in a way that made me feel it in my gut."

Anyway, it's my turn to repay the compliment. Baum, who was a New Yorker staff writer sent to cover New Orleans when Katrina hit (and who a few months ago posted a notorious post-mortem of his New Yorker career on Twitter), has talked about how he soon realized that "Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot." No, rather it is the city itself — its history, its people, its communities, its soul — that made it so compelling. And by writing about his subjects in such a fully realized way, Baum really proves that point.

Nine Lives picks up the stories of its characters in 1965, right after Hurricane Betsy ravaged New Orleans, and takes us through the next forty years — and Katrina. With incredible skill and imagination, Baum evokes each of his subjects' circumstances. Whether they're the quirky county coroner, the Mardi Gras indian, the Ninth Ward union leader, the transsexual bar owner, the cynical white cop, or any of the book's other wonderful subjects, Baum gets into each of their heads in an amazing way. He does this through novelistic techniques unusual for a nonfiction book.

And Nine Lives uses one distinct advantage of prose, the ability to really delve deeply and thoroughly into a topic. It's a profound trip through these characters' lives, as they grow from young men and women, succeed and fail, fall in and out of love, have children of their own, and grow old. The result is an amazing 40-year journey which brings real context to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and reminds us what a complex, contradictory, bizarre, infuriating, lovable, alien, and yes, unique, city, New Orleans was — and is. Nine Lives refuses to let tragedy be the final note. As Baum writes, his writing mandate for Nine Lives was "all happy endings. All nine of these people are, in their own way, heroes. And while [I] could have ended any of their stories on a down note, [I] instead end all at a moment of ascendance."

Thanks to Dan Baum and Nine Lives, we all have reason to hope the real story of New Orleans ends happily too.

[cross-posted to A.D. site]

This just in, from the August Vanity Fair:

So this blog is now spotlighted on the homepage of Livejournal, which is very exciting and flattering. If you're reading this for the first time, hello, and please allow me to introduce myself (all apologies to Mick Jagger/Lucifer). In RL I am Josh Neufeld, a Brooklyn, NY-based cartoonist (e.g. comic book writer/artist) who speciaizes in nonfiction. If you've read Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, or Art Speigelman's Maus, or Joe Sacco's Palestine or Safe Area Gorazde, then you know comics can be a wonderful way to explore, explain, and illustrate the real world. If you haven't read any of their work, then go out now and buy some!

In any case, I've been working in this corner of the "alternative comics" field for awhile now, as an illustrator of Pekar's stories, as an autobiographer of my own backpacking adventures, and most recently as a chronicler of Hurricane Katrina, as seen from the perspective of seven real-life New Orleanians who survived the storm. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is coming out next month from Pantheon Graphic Novels. I'll be going on tour to support the book, and maybe I'll be coming to a city near you: stops include Austin, TX; Houston, TX; Chicago, IL; Washington, DC; Portland, OR; Miami, FL; and of course New Orleans and my hometown of New York City. (You can see all the details here...)

A.D. came about indirectly because I was an American Red Cross volunteer shortly after Katrina, where I worked for almost a month distributing food to Katrina survivors in Biloxi, Mississippi (about 90 miles outside of New Orleans). I wrote about those experiences as they were happening right here on my LJ, and eventually collected the posts — and readers' comments — in a "blook," cleverly titled Katrina Came Calling. A little later, Jeff Newelt, the comics editor of the storytelling site SMITH, showed it to SMITH's editor, who shortly thereafter asked me to do a comic about Katrina for his site. In January 2007, after about six months of research and reporting, and finding seven amazing, wonderful people willing to have their stories told in comics form, I I began serializing A.D. on SMITH. Lo and behold, two-plus years later and a brand-new, expanded hardcover edition of A.D. debuts August 18 (right before the fourth anniveray of Katrina).

I'm extremely excited for the book to be out, not only because it's the culmination of many years' work, but because I think it's so important that we continue to tell the story of New Orleans. I made a big effort with A.D. to show my characters' lives continuing on after the hurricane, as the city begins to forge its post-New Orleans history. Four years down the line a lot has happened — some good and some bad — but the rest of America (and the world) needs to keep the "City that Care Forgot" and its people in our hearts and minds. I'm also excited about A.D. because I truly do believe that nonfiction comics are a vital part of the comics mosaic, and my hope is that if enough copies of the book finds their way into the hands of people who wouldn't normally pick up a "funny book," it will help break down the continuing prejudices against the form.

I'm running on a bit, and I don't want to bore my normal readers, so I'll cut things short here. Normally, my blog is a place where I write about all sorts of things, not necessarily just comics, though I would say that 4-eyez (full title "Four-Eyes: Stories and Thoughts from One of Life's Vagabonds") is mostly about what my comics are about: remarking on and treasuring the experiences of everyday life. Oh, and also my sad obsession with trivia, charts, and statistics.

So look back through some of my previous posts to see what catches your fancy. Meanwhile, to take advantage of LJ's kind spotlight, I plan on posting once a day for the remainder of the week. Stay tuned!

Our upstairs neighbors moved out last week. The owner, a Nigerian gentleman named Obi, sublet the place for the first 4-5 years, to a procession of folks who woke us up with really loud music, or overflowed their kitchen sink and caused water damage to our kitchen, or did the same thing to our bathroom from their shower. Each time Obi was fairly swift about responding to our complaints and paying for necessary touch-ups and repairs.

Then, about 5 years ago, he brought back a Nigerian bride. She was sweet, but their adorable newborn eventually turned into a not-so-adorable toddler who enjoyed nothing better than running up and down their hallway about 50 times a day — when he wasn't riding a Big Wheel (or whatever modern equivalent little boys have nowadays). I'm pretty sure the kid had the strength of Spider-Man as it also seemed he rearranged the furniture on a regular basis. Then, a couple of years later, his little brother was born, and that kid seemed to be able to run right out the womb. The amount of noise those pipsqueaks could produce was truly awe-inspiring — it was like two baby elephants lived upstairs. When friends would visit, their eyes would shoot up to the ceiling in alarm. We shrugged — we live on a fairly noisy boulevard, and after a while you can get used to anything. (And now we have a kid ourselves, who's not exactly light on her feet.) When we would run into the kids' mom on the elevator, she would look at us in chagrin. We asked her only two simple favors: to not let the kids begin their Olympic trials until after 7 each morning (which is when Phoebe generally wakes up), and if the mom could make sure to do her house-music-accompanied-personal-trainer-morning exercises in the living room — as opposed to the bedroom above ours.

Anyway, Sari ran into Obi on the elevator last week, as his family was loading their last things into the moving van. (They're moving back to Nigeria, to Lagos.) She wished him luck and he took her hand in his. "I just have to thank you," he said in his courtly way. "You have been the best downstairs neighbors anyone could every have. So patient, so gracious, I can't imagine how bad it must have been for you." Sari shrugged demurely. "Hey, you know, that's big city apartment living."

In any case, the folks who bought Obi's place? A family with FOUR kids.

Last Thursday I gave a presentation for Gelf Magazine's Non-Motivational Speaker Series. (I was there along with mollycrabapple and the New Yorker's Farley Katz.) In my speech, "How to be an Obscure Alternative Cartoonist Specializing in Real-Life Topics (in, Give or Take, 20 Years)," I took the audience through my career, starting with my love of Tintin, continuing on to my high school romance with superhero comics, my travels and travel comics, Keyhole, Titans of Finance, Harvey Pekar, and ending of course with A.D. Then I answered some questions about New Orleanians' response to A.D., what the real Harvey Pekar is like, and whether I had ever read Destination Moon.

I'm sure the reason you couldn't make it to the event was because you were just too broken up about Michael Jackson's death, and I understand, I really do. Fortunately for all of us, Gelf just posted a two-part video of my presentation, so now you can watch it in all its cable-access-style glory. Just click on the links below:

I was at a huge outdoor arena — possibly the Rose Bowl — for Michael Jackson's public funeral. The stands were packed, and Phoebe and I were way down at the bottom of the stage. They wheeled in the body on a hospital gurney, covered by a thin sheet, and it ended up parked right next to our location. Looking at the corpse laying there under the sheet I had a premonition... and in the next second it came true. Michael moved, his hands came up and lifted off the sheet, and he sat up! I realized the whole thing — his "death," the tributes, the wall-to-wall news coverage — was a huge publicity stunt, a device to build interest for his new 50-show London concert series.

The crowd freaked, a mixture of cries of joy and rage. Underneath the sheet, Michael was dressed to perfection, in a white suit and white fedora. But he looked different: his skin was dark again, how he looked in the early 1980s. He reached up to remove this latest mask, but it wouldn't come off. It was his "new" face. A mask of death and renewed life.

Michael looked around at the crowd and smiled. "Now I know how you really feel about me, what you think of me." He paused as the shouts, hoots, and whistles rained down on him. "Sounds like some of you wish I was still dead!" He jumped off the gurney and pirouetted onto the stage, as the music came on. It was electric.

Phoebe scrambled up on to the empty hospital gurney and started toddling uncertainly along it, performing an awkward dance to the music. I ran over to her to stop, to save her from hurting herself.

That was the text message I got informing me Michael Jackson passed away. How bizarre that on the very day I wrote a tribute to Prince's Purple Rain that the extremely troubled former King of Pop should die. The similarities between the two stars are many, the most obvious being their ability to transcend musical (e.g. racial) boundaries and draw people of all stripes to their music.

If the summer of '84 was to me Prince's summer, then the summer of '82 was obviously Michael's. Thriller dominated the world in a way probably no album has since. That summer I was also a camp counselor (at Beth Elohim, in Park Slope, if you must know), and I can't say I was plugged into Jackson's music before Thriller. I mean, I dug it and all — especially "Billie Jean," which is still one of my favorite Jackson songs — but he didn't do all that much for me until... that moonwalk on the Grammy's in 1983! Holy crap! I never got the glove thing, or all that sparkly stuff, but that man could perform! The combination of his Tourettes-like yelps and rubber-band-man dancing made him the most kinetic entertainer I'd ever seen. (Even Prince, with all his stagecraft, had to take a back seat to Michael.)

Without absorbing Jackson's music first, I don't know if I would have been able to truly appreciate Prince's. They were both extremely... odd... human beings (and the 80s was known for some pretty outrageous fashion choices) but Jackson's G-rated persona paved the way for the more "sophisticated" role played by Prince. (Though of course as Wacko Jacko came more and more to the fore starting in the 1990s, who could've guessed how R-rated — or maybe I should say NC-17 — he would become?)

Another great memory was during some random free period in high school, back at the old Harlem building of Music & Art. I was sitting in the auditorium reading an X-Men when the "Thriller" music came on somebody's boombox. I looked up on stage and there were about twenty of my fellow students doing an impromptu yet perfect step-by-step run-through of the "Thriller" video choreography. It was freakin' awesome!

In the end, you have to agree that no matter your personal musical tastes, there was no way of escaping Jackson's music or it impacting your life. The closest personal connection I have to this moment is when my mom woke me up on a cold December morning in 1980 to tell me John Lennon had been shot. As with Lennon, this is my generation's Elvis moment. I'll remember this day for the rest of my life.

My Michael Jackson Top 5 — probably not too many surprises here:
5) "The Way You Make Me Feel"
4) "State of Shock" (with Mick Jagger)
3) "Ease on Down the Road" (with Diana Ross)
2) "Beat It"
1) "Billie Jean"

The summer of 1984 was the summer of Springsteen, Ghostbusters, and Madonna, but more than anything that summer's soundtrack was Purple Rain. You couldn't escape Prince, the songs, or the movie, and I was one of the millions who fell under its spell. I was a teenager working as a camp counselor that summer, and it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with the Purple One: his racial and sexual ambiguity, his warring themes of sexuality and spirituality, and most of all the rockin' funky brilliance of his music. "Let's Go Crazy," "Darling Nikki," and most of all "When Doves Cry" were all unlike anything I'd ever heard before — transgressive, titillating, just plain buck wild — and that was before I discovered the unparalleled brilliance of "Computer Blue" and "The Beautiful Ones." And the album version of "Purple Rain" will always be my personal anthem — romantic, bombastic, silly, profound, beautiful, but in the end, perfect.

I had my first beer that summer, at a showing of the Purple Rain movie, thanks to man_size , and I'll always credit Prince and that album for profoundly loosening me up. Up to then, I had been a weirdly repressed and judgmental kid; something about the Purple Rain summer helped get that stick out of my ass. Probably a month hasn't gone by since 1984 that I haven't listened to Purple Rain; it's cool to hear the songs out in the zeitgeist again amidst all the tributes.

Come join me this Thursday, June 25, for the newest installment of Gelf Magazine's Non-Motivational Speaker Series!

"Illustration will be this month's theme. Speakers include artist Molly Crabapple (aka mollycrabapple), creator of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, a cabaret-life-drawing class with 57 branches around the world; New Yorker cartoonist and editor of the magazine's comedy blog Farley Katz; and Josh Neufeld, author of graphic novels A Few Perfect Hours and the widely acclaimed A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, to be published by Pantheon this fall." Should be entertaining and informative. And it's FREE.

Wow, Now I'm on Twitter. It's so amazing! You should check it out — all the kids are doing it. You can "follow" me at http://twitter.com/joshneufeld

The reviewer thought I "did a pretty good job" even though my art  is "generic." He also wanted to "slap" me because I featured a character who lost his comics collection, whereas other characters were "sleeping on their roofs and fighting off rats" and "struggling to get drinking water." Check it out.

evandorkin  has a lengthy and IMHO balanced wrap-up of MoCCA on his blog. I basically agree with his comments (which he seems to have taken some heat for from other bloggers — big surprise).

I've been to every MoCCA since it started, and I treasure the show dearly. Lately, I've been tending to go to MoCCA (and the New York Comic-Con) more to see compatriots than buy much stuff, though there's always a gem or two which finds its way into to my hands. This year, deespite the fact that for most of it I was wheeling a napping Phoebe aroujnd the gym, er, Armory, I had the pleasure of seeing and chatting with man_size, iconotrast , dangoldman , leborcham , chatterbox_dc , simonfraser , 66mph , James Romberger, George O'Connor, Joe Infurnari, Charlie Orr, Bob Sikoryak, Isaac Eddy Littlejohn, Mark Siegel, Gary Sullivan, Greg Bennett, my old assistant Nick Sumida and my current assistant Ben Moody, David Mazzucchelli, and my benefactor, Pantheon publisher Dan Frank. I also spotted, but never got a chance to talk with, zegas, bobfingerman , mikedawsoncomic , ellenlindner , alexbot3000 , Chris Staros, Brett Warnock, Lauren Weinstein, Tom Hart, Brendan Burford, and many other folks.

That was great. However, given all that, I totally agree with Dorkin's characterization of the show. The new locale changed the feel of MoCCA from a "classy" art show to a punk rock flea market. Which is fine, if that's what you're into, but I guess I'm not. On the face of it, I applaud the fact that the Armory's new one-room layout democratizes the space and equalizes all the presenters, but I miss the way that certain publishers had pride of place in the old layout. You always knew where to find Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, and Pantheon.

Personally, I didn't notice the heat, but I wasn't working a table (other than sitting at the Pantheon table for an hour), and I was only there on Saturday.

There were some advantages to this new location (the bathrooms, the location of the panels, the all-in-one-room openness), but I miss the more elegant (yea, "precious") feel of the Puck Building. And I agree that the organization, with the dysfunctional badges and wristbands, long lines, etc., was a total mess. I hope they can work out all these kinks for next year, as I love MoCCA and fervently root for it to succeed.

Well! That was pretty cool. The final show was a lot more "viewer-friendly" than the show I was originally brought on to write. For one thing, they integrated a lot more "solutions" into the "collapse" narrative, rather than saving them all for the end. They also soft-pedaled some of the more dire/horrifying peeks into the future. In the end, they pretty much changed every word of dialogue Sari & I wrote, while still keeping the basic storyline and "action sequences." Even so, other than the occasional cringe-inducing line of dialogue, we didn't hate it; in fact, there were many instances where the new dialogue worked better than what we'd come up with. And the art and animation was stellar! Great work from Messers. Infurnari, O'Connor, Purvis, Hamilton, Bair, and the Guerilla FX crew.

And, yes, Lucy's love interest was indeed named Josh. Truth be told, all the characters (including the hurricane which struck Miami) were named after people or their loved ones in the creative staff. They made me name Lucy's hubby Josh, but it was a surprise that Infurnari, et al. actually drew him to look (vaguely) like me! I got a kick out of that. And of course it was satisfying to "die a hero."

I've yet to read any mainstream reviews of the show, though there has been some early blog reactions, most of them fairly negative. (One in particular felt that the comics element — big surprise — lowered the program's overall IQ.) Early word is that the show drew in around 2.5 million viewers. Not bad, except that was fourth place in the network battles. Of course, we were up against an Obama interview and two shows with the word "Mental" in the title. (Note to self: maybe we should've named the show Mental 2100?) Also, seems the show has been bought by the History Channel, so expect to see reruns over there shortly enough.

All in all, a fun dip into the TV world. And it gave me and Sari an excuse to at least get a skeletal version of the Dojo Graphics website up.

• Guerilla FX press release about the project, detailing their work (including two sample clips)
• Post Magazine on Guerilla FX's creation of the motion comics element
• MTV.com's Splash Page blog
• Comic Book Resources Robot 6 blog
• Bob Woodruff on The Daily Show
• Heidi MacDonald on PW.com's The Beat
• Earth 2100 official site

When ABC News’s Documentary Group approached me last fall to collaborate on a motion comic for an upcoming primetime show about climate change called Earth 2100, I was excited. Through an imagined future scenario — intermixed with interviews with scientists, a global summit simulation, and user-generated videos — the two-hour special explores the effects of catastrophic climate change, and educates viewers on possible solutions. Earth 2100 will air nationwide next Tuesday, June 2, from 9–11pm. (Here's a promo.)

Earth 2100’s producers asked me (and my new studio Dojo Graphics) to create characters and scenarios that would put a human face on the hot-button issue. For me, this was a perfect match. Throughout my cartooning career (A.D., Titans of Finance, A Few Perfect Hours, and American Splendor), I've been drawn to documentary-style storytelling. And for my wife and collaborative partner Sari Wilson, this was an opportunity to use her strengths as a fiction writer and comics scripter to breathe life into my concepts and characters.
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http://www.observer.com/2009/books/norton-buys-graphic-media-manifesto

Over the last couple of years, I've become addicted to Wikipedia. Not just consulting it for answers about everything under the sun, but writing and editing articles as well. Yes, I am a Wikipedia editor. (And you can be one too.)

It's not really a big deal. Anyone can do it; you don't even need to create a user account (though it's much more fun to do so). That's the beauty — and the danger — of the whole system: Wikipedia is literally open to anybody, which means it's uniquely vulnerable to vandalism and deliberate misinformation. And of course we've all heard horror stories about how "inaccurate" it is, or infamous examples of slander (particularly in biographical entries). Or how Wikipedia is not considered a legitimate source for academic research. (There is also a study, however, that compared a range of science-related Wikipedia articles with those from Encyclopedia Brittanica and found the two sources virtually identical in terms of accuracy.) Actually, what makes Wikipedia such a formidable force is how little vandalism there actually is. And the fact is that most articles of any significance are constantly vetted, and any malevolent contributions are speedily removed. Wikipedia actually has an incredibly stringent set of guidelines for writing articles, and you will find the best entries are widely sourced and footnoted, overseen by editors with a great deal of professional knowledge.

In any case, just try doing a Google search, and most often the top result is a Wikipedia entry. With Wikipedia and Google (even unintentionally) combining forces, Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the dominant Internet research tool.

Personally, I'm charmed and fascinated by the "crowdsourcing" ethos at the heart of Wikipedia. I love the idea that collective wisdom is more reliable and "objective" than the old encyclopedia model of a selected few "experts" deeming what's relevant and factual. Which brings me to my own particular journey down the rabbit hole.
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