Inked: Hurricane Helene's legacy lives on, through comics
The Appalachia Comics Project wants to hear your stories of survival from Hurricane Helene. David Marquez/Laura Martin illustration
When Hurricane Helene tore through Southern Appalachia last year, it left behind more than just downed trees and flooded homes. Helene carved enduring, indelible stories into the lives of those who lived through it.
Now, a group of writers and artists is set to give those stories a vibrant physical presence by turning firsthand accounts of survival, resilience and loss into vivid, illustrated narratives — and they want to hear from you.
“We want this to be the true story of what happened and how it happened, so that it’s out there for people to be able to access,” said Lauren Sankovitch, managing editor. “We want to make sure that it is it set up in a way that it can be fighting back against misrepresentation and the large amount of misinformation and disinformation that’s been filtering through these kinds of disasters.”
The Appalachia Comics Project, a brainchild of the team at Good Trouble Productions, transforms personal experiences into powerful visual storytelling, preserving a piece of history while proving that even in the face of destruction, creativity can do more than just entertain.
Good Trouble Productions was founded in 2019 by comics industry veterans Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine DeLandro and Matt Fraction, alongside Vaughn Shinall, a tech product outreach leader with literary agency experience, and Andrew Aydin.
Aydin, who lives in Western North Carolina, is a New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award winner and co-author — with the late Congressman John Lewis — of the graphic memoir series “March” and its sequel “Run,” which chronicles the life of Lewis and the Civil Rights movement.
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“Everybody loves to read comics, whether you’re a kid or a parent or an adult sitting in the auto repair shop waiting to get your car back,” Aydin told The Smoky Mountain News. “Reading a comic is fun, and it’s also one of those things that helps you learn. We forget that the language of comics, the sequential narrative, is the fundamental human language.”
Aydin was personally affected by Hurricane Helene, and in response, decided to embark on this new endeavor, creating an accessible historical record that will not only preserve the community’s stories but also provide fair compensation for those sharing them.
“We’ll be putting into place contracts so that we can make sure that these survivors that are telling their story are getting paid for their work, because telling stories is work, so we want to make sure that everyone is compensated appropriately,” Sankovitch said.
The title, “Islands in the sky,” comes from a sermon Aydin heard on the radio shortly after Helene struck; as internet and cellular infrastructure failed, that preacher was the first human voice he’d heard in days. Aydin said the term referred to isolated mountain communities made even more isolated by the lack of communications.
The process for submitting stories to Appalachia Comics is simple; fill out a brief questionnaire on the project’s website and later, the Appalachian Comics Project team will conduct follow-up interviews to gather further details, helping participants refine their stories. Once completed, survivors will collaborate with comic professionals to craft their narratives.
“The follow-up is really where we can kind of get a sense of what the story is that they’re wanting to tell and ideally, help them kind of tease out where the where those major story elements are, and then how we might be able to shape that into a piece for the larger project,” Sankovitch said.
The final project will feature approximately 10 stories across about 120 pages. Depending on the success of a forthcoming Kickstarter campaign, the team hopes to expand the project and possibly include additional volumes that delve deeper into the lives of those impacted by the storm.
“I don’t think the rest of the country understands what we went through,” Aydin said. “And the stories that they did hear about what happened in Western North Carolina weren’t from the people who actually survived it. We had so many outsiders and interlopers and influencers and everybody else coming in trying to tell our story, and this is an opportunity for all of us who survived to tell what really happened and also to tell what we learned.”
The Kickstarter campaign for the project is set to launch in early June, with an additional goal of raising funds to pay the creators and help produce the book in early 2026. Physical copies of the comic will be available through the campaign, alongside digital rewards. The team is also working on a strategy to offer the comics to local libraries and bookstores that were impacted by the storm, helping rebuild the region’s artistic and literary community.
While the focus of this project is on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the larger vision for Appalachia Comics extends far beyond this single project. The organization hopes to produce a series of comics that celebrate the people and culture of Appalachia, using the medium of graphic novels to educate, engage and inspire people of all ages.
“I hope that what we can do is give that power to new voices in the region, in Western North Carolina and Appalachia, so that this isn’t just a one-time project, that we’re recording these stories to go in schools and to go in libraries, so that the lessons and the tragedies and the inspiration will live on,” Aydin said.
For more information on the Appalachia Comics Project or to submit your story, visit appalachiacomics.org.
