Katrina: "I took exactly one comic from my house."

New Orleans native Leo McGovern is best known for running a cool monthly zine called Antigravity, promoting NOLA's alt-music scene, and producing a twice yearly event called NO[DIY] that sheds light on the work of indie creatives. He and his loved ones lost pretty much everything to Katrina. He's blogging about it now. Above, a "before" snapshot taken just as he was evacuating; below, what he returned to.

Snip:

To say words cannot describe a situation like this is just wrong. The easiest thing to say is that it's fucked up. Demolished. Destroyed. Catastrophic. Cataclysmic. Some words may seem overbearing, but when you're standing there looking at all your possessions scattered about like Neptune flailed about your house, no situation can seem worse. It makes you wonder whether it'd be easier if a tornado simply hit the house and flung everything to another city. At least then you don't have to walk on things that used to be on bookshelves.

Seeing my comics strewn about was the hardest. I've never been a mint freak, meaning I didn't really care if my comics were in the best condition. If I could read them, that was the important thing. I do have a theory about books though. They're like furniture. You buy a book to read just like you buy a couch to sit on. Sure, the book or couch will be messed up eventually, but you like to keep it in the best condition possible for as long as possible. To see my books in the worst condition they could ever be in, and to walk on them, seemed preposterous.

(...) I took exactly one comic from my house. I happened to have a TRANSMETROPOLITAN #1 in a hard case hanging on the wall, and it was above the water line. That was the one comic I took, out of all the others that lay on the ground there. I took some of the posters, too, and some action figures that were above the walkway. One comic.

After we took what we could, we decided to go explore.

Link to full post.

Here's that comic. Here's the guy who wrote it.