WASHINGTON, DC.- The Library of Congress has acquired the original artwork and related creative materials for two acclaimed graphic novels: “Naked City,” by award-winning artist Eric Drooker and “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge,” by journalist and cartoonist Josh Neufeld. Together, the acquisitions enhance the Library’s significant collections documenting the evolution of graphic storytelling, visual journalism and contemporary American life.

Acquiring “Naked City” is especially noteworthy because it completes the Library’s holdings of the original artwork for Drooker’s celebrated “City Trilogy.” The Library already preserves the artwork for the trilogy’s first two volumes, “Flood” and “Blood Song,” offering researchers and visitors an opportunity to study Drooker’s creative development and changes in graphic novel production across four decades.

“By acquiring the original art, scripts and drafts for Eric Drooker’s graphic novel Naked City, the Library has obtained works of art created over a 35-year-period,” said Sara Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. “This offers researchers insights into not only the way an artist’s work changes over time, but how book production has altered in the digital age. Drooker is a visual storyteller, and although this third work in the trilogy has speech balloons, the art continues to drive the narrative.”

Published in 2024, “Naked City” follows a young female musician navigating life in New York City while pursuing artistic ambitions amid personal hardship and uncertainty. Like the earlier books in the trilogy, the city itself becomes a central character, offering a vivid portrait of urban life and creative communities.

“I’m thrilled that the Library of Congress is embracing graphic novels as part of its vast literary collection,” Drooker said. “The acquisition of my City Trilogy archive ensures that future scholars, art lovers and enthusiasts will have access to my original drawings – including preliminary art and notes for ‘Flood,’ ‘Blood Song,’ and ‘Naked City.’”





Drooker is an award-winning artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and is also held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum.

Josh Neufeld Documents Impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans

The Library also acquired original artwork and related materials for “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge,” Neufeld’s groundbreaking graphic account of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and its aftermath. First published as a webcomic in 2007, the work combines journalism and graphic storytelling to document the experiences of New Orleans residents before, during and after one of the most consequential natural disasters in modern American history.

“Although not an eyewitness to Hurricane Katrina, Josh Neufeld volunteered in Louisiana and saw the havoc it wreaked and the lives it upended,” Duke said. “He created a nonfiction graphic novel that evokes the fear and creates sympathy for five very different survivors. Katrina not only reshaped coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, but it also affected the entire United States.”

Neufeld’s interest in documenting the disaster grew out of volunteer work he and his wife performed with the American Red Cross in New York, assisting evacuees who had fled New Orleans after the storm. He later trained as a disaster response worker and was deployed to Biloxi, Mississippi, where he fed residents whose homes had been destroyed or flooded.

“A.D.” draws on extensive interviews and first-hand observations to tell what Neufeld described as a “people’s history of Katrina,” offering a perspective that captured ground-level experiences of resilience, displacement and recovery, often absent from official accounts. The acquisition provides researchers valuable insight into how visual narratives can document contemporary events and preserve community memory.

“Having my work archived at the Library of Congress and preserved for future generations is profoundly meaningful because, for me, it’s a validation of my career choice and artistic legacy,” Neufeld said. “People who are curious about my work and the creative process can see not only the pages, but also the thumbnail drawings, scripts, and other supporting material. It’s really mind-boggling. It’s such an affirmation that what I chose to do in life was a good choice.”

Neufeld is an acclaimed cartoonist and graphic journalist whose work has explored topics ranging from natural disasters and public health to immigration and social change.

The original work artwork, sketches, notes, and production materials for both acquisitions will be available to researchers through the Library’s collections.