Western North Carolina, in the heart of Appalachia, was one of the more surprising high water marks in Tuesday’s “Blue tsunami” election. Considered by outsiders as a stronghold of MAGA traditionalism, the region’s behavior in the midst of a political hurricane can perhaps be explained by the lingering impact of an actual hurricane, and the community’s response to it.
In September of 2024, Hurricane Helene tore its way through the inland south, resulting in catastrophic flooding that decimated the mountainous regions of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and West Virginia. The area around Asheville, NC was especially hard-hit. Over a hundred people across the state were reported killed or missing, with tens of millions of dollars in damage to property and infrastructure.
“It was the most impactful storm to hit the mainland. The roads everywhere were flooded, people displaced, businesses gone, people lost their lives,” said Preston Blakely, mayor of Ledger, North Carolina, just south of Asheville, in a phone interview this week. “We’re talking about a $60 billion recovery.”
The isolated region received some federal support but had to rely on itself, especially as FEMA and the new administration failed to deliver the full measure of relief it had promised. Throughout western North Carolina, people, businesses and organizations chipped in to help their neighbors get back on their feet.
One of the most creative responsescame from Andrew Aydin, co-writer of John Lewis’s best-selling graphic novel memoir series March, who had moved to the region and was caught up in the disaster and recovery effort. Aydin recognized that the community needed more than money to rebuild what it had lost. It needed to tell its stories, to be dignified and recognized for what its people had gone through. So he organized the Appalachia Comics Projectas a way to get those stories to as large an audience as possible.
“Comics and graphic novels can help dramatize conflicts,” said Aydin in a call earlier this week. “They can help show the reality of horrible situations in a way that brings people together.”
Aydin spearheaded a unique project to pair members of the community with top comic book industry professionals like Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Steve Orlando and Gene Luen Yang to produce an anthology of personal narratives about the storm and its impact. He launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover production costs, and Islands in the Skywas published in September, 2026.
The comic featured the stories of ordinary people filtered through a medium that connects deeply with readers of all ages. The comingling of different voices and perspectives produced a harmonious and uplifting narrative of disaster, perseverance, grace and resilience that more accurately reflected how the community sees itself than the vocabulary of hillbilly stereotypes too often applied in outside perspectives of the region.
“We used comics as well as public broadcasting and every outlet we could to show that what happened in Hurricane Helene was not what people saw on television or heard through the media,” said Aydin. “We showed them the reality that people experienced. It made it much more immediate. And the people who came to our events and bought the book weren’t sad. They were joyful, because they felt seen and represented.”
Aydin, who served on the staff of Georgia Democratic Congressman Lewis as well as collaborating with him on his graphic novels, understood the political dimension as well. Though Appalachia is seen as the cultural heartland of MAGA, the region is actually much more complex. In his view, its recent politics result as much from the neglect or worse of the mainstream media (and the focused attention of conservative media) as from any ideological affinity.
“After the storm, you heard people say, you know ‘they voted against their interests,'” said Aydin. “That showed such a cruel incompetence and complete misunderstanding of the history of Appalachia and the forces that have been used to subjugate it.”
The uplifting language of the comic and Aydin’s drumbeat of promotion through the fall of 2026 found its way into the political discourse.
“The messaging we delivered in August around the book, where I would say ‘no one asked who you voted for. They asked ‘do you need help? are you thirsty? Here’s water,’ I said that over and over again. And it became the closing message for Jamie Ager [Congressman-elect for North Carolina’s 13th district, representing Asheville and the surrounding region]. We weren’t trying to an influence an election. We were trying to raise the issue in order to help people.”
“I think it made a real difference in some of our elections here, sure,” said Mayor Blakely, whose office is elected on a nonpartisan basis. “People are fiercely upset about the recovery process and how the Trump administration failed our recovery. Here in Henderson County, we elected a Democrat to the statehouse, which I don’t think has happened since the 1950s. I mean, the impacts are tremendous.”
Aydin says one of the things he learned from Congressman Lewis is that you don’t get change without first laying the foundations for it. “The Congressman used to call it ‘creating the climate and the environment for change.’ And we did that. We used comics as well as every media we could to tell these stories.
“Once you give people that moment of being seen and the opportunity to tell their stories, people stand up,” he said. “They change. They make progress. This is the nature of progress. The only question now is, can we bring enough people together, raise enough money, to build this into a sustainable long-term effort that could possibly change the country?”
This article was originally published onForbes.com
