Already Underwater: Finding Hope in a Drowning Nation, Mat Johnson and Simon Gane’s Dark Rain

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on Mat Johnson and Simon Gane’s graphic novel Dark Rain (2010). It argues the authors combine words and images to reframe Hurricane Katrina as a verification of national character rather than a deviation from it. Using this lens, readers can understand the washed-out colors, the muted artistic choices, and the somewhat conventional plot as all pointing toward exhaustingly predictable racial violence in the United States. The graphic novel then uses four characters, who are working to control money from a bank in New Orleans, to demonstrate competing visions for what might come after the storm. Three of the four end up dying, but in the lone surviving character, readers see potential for healing and community.