Scoping out the "True Stories" shelves at Crescent City Comics

Some of the best history books being written right now are graphic nonfiction.

This is how it goes for us on any given day: Newbie Orleans and I decide to go to a coffee shop, find it closed due to some infrastructural whatsis, then are forced to improvise and drift elsewhere. There’s some initial frustration, but always a surprise happy ending.

Yesterday, we washed up on the doorstep of Petite Rouge Cafe, a short stroll from Crescent City Comics. Not only do we have a new coffee shop to add to our rotation, we both found shelves at Crescent City that seemed almost personally curated to our tastes.

Mine, of course, was the “True Stories” bookshelf — holy cats! A while ago, I devoured American Splendor and loved it so much I always hoped to cross paths with Harvey Pekar when I lived in Cleveland for a brief time. (Never happened. Bummer.)

Anyway — standing in front of this bookshelf, I realized part of what sparked my obsession with history was books like Art Speielman’s MAUS, Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. I also realized that graphic nonfiction has blown up. There’s so much here that I’ve missed. I got rollercoaster stomach realizing there are so many of these books I want, but don’t need. (What I do need is a shiny new library card.)

Here’s a quick roundup of titles that stood out:

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer, by Sydney Padua: “It features Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in an alternative universe where they have successfully built an Analytical Engine and use it to “fight crime.’”

Tenements, Towers & Trash, by Julia Wertz: “Here is New York, as you’ve never seen it before. A perfectly charming, sidesplittingly funny, intellectually entertaining illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, and the guts of New York City, based on Julia Wertz’s popular illustrated columns in The New Yorker and Harper’s.”

Angola Janga: the Kingdom of Runaway Slaves, by Marcelo D’Salete: “An independent kingdom of runaway slaves founded in the late 16th century, Angola Janga was a beacon of freedom in a land plagued with oppression. In stark black ink and chiaroscuro panel compositions, D'Salete brings history to life; the painful stories of fugitive slaves on the run, the brutal raids by Portuguese colonists, and the tense power struggles within this precarious kingdom.”

Berlin, “a comic book series by Jason Lutes, published by Black Eye Productions and then Drawn & Quarterly. Planned as a series of 24 magazines, since reduced to 22, then re-released in book form, it describes life in Berlin from 1928 to 1933, during the decline of the Weimar Republic.”

I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi, by Gina Siglano: “In 17th century Rome, where women are expected to be chaste and yet are viewed as prey by powerful men, the extraordinary painter Artemisia Gentileschi fends off constant sexual advances as she works to become one of the greatest painters of her generation. Frustrated by the hypocritical social mores of her day, Gentileschi releases her anguish through her paintings and, against all odds, becomes a groundbreaking artist.”

The Arab of the Future, “a graphic memoir by award-winning French-Syrian cartoonist Riad Sattouf. The work recounts Sattouf's childhood growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.”

Aurora Borealice, by Joan Steacy, Steacy’s graphic biography tracks her “odyssey to get the education she was denied in a rapidly changing technological world.”

The Machine Never Blinks: A Graphic History of Spying and Surveillance by Ivan Greenberg “spans surveillance from the Trojan Horse, through 9/11 and to the so-called War on Terror, which enabled the exponential growth of government and corporate intercepts and databases. It also explains spying as entertainment (reality TV) and convenience (smart speakers).”

Numbers nine and 10 in my wow-I-want-this-book list live on our bookshelf: A.D., New Orleans After the Deluge, by Josh Neufeld, and a freebie, Health and Wealth, a Graphic Guide to the U.S. Healthcare System.

Health and Wealth is a nifty little pub — produced by the Center for Cartoon Studies, it was researched, drawn and written by folks at Harvard, including cartoonists, medical scholars and students. The narrative style is inspired by Schoolhouse Rock, the illustrations by Richard Scarry’s Busytown. (You can download a free PDF of Health and Wealth, as well as a graphic nonfiction manifesto, The Moon is Made of Cheese, on CFCS’s site.)

The book I’m psyched to dive into is After the Deluge. Dave Eggers (who’s done his own writing on New Orleans) called it “one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage,” and “an essential addition to the ongoing conversation about what Katrina means, and what New Orleans means.” It feels like the perfect chaser to New Orleans Mon Amour, which Newbie Orleans and I watched a few weeks ago.

Plus, the woman at the counter gave us a nifty bit of trivia: the guy second from the left (in the purple box) works at Crescent City Comics. Next time we bob in, I’ll look for him. And will, I’m sure, walk out with another graphic nonfiction book under my arm.

By the by, Friday’s post is underway, and includes a jaw-dropping photo I borrowed from a NOLA Facebook group, some statistics, an absurd video I’m still editing, another graphic nonfiction reference, and some big news. Buckle up/stay tuned!