They then attended Kent State University together.

There the youngster met fellow comics fan Seth Tobocman and they progressed through the school system together, catching the bug for self-publishing early. There are so many million stories in The City and they are all connected through the unceasing urban pulse and incessant, unending forward motion of The System.Ĭlever, compulsive and engrossing, this delicious exercise in dramatic interconnectivity and carefully constructed symbolism is a smart example of how powerful comics can be.ISBN: 978-1-60486-811-1 (PMP HB) 978-1-56389-322-3 (Vertigo TPB)Īrtist, storyteller and activist Peter Kuper was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1958, before the family moved to Cleveland when he was six. The streets rattle with subway trains below and elevated trains above. Religious zealots harass gay men and an Asian cabbie gets grief from the white fares who despise him whilst depending on his services. A derelict and his dog eke out a precarious daily existence and a beat cop does his rounds, collecting payoffs from the crooked dealers and helpless shopkeepers he’s supposed to protect. A boy and girl from different neighbourhoods find love. An old, weary detective ruminates on his failures. It is immediate, evocative and effective.Ī stripper is murdered by a maniac. As if this was not challenge enough, Kuper pushed his own storytelling abilities to the limit by constructing his pages and panels from cut stencils, creating the narrative in a form akin to urban street art. It’s a beguiling, interlinked portmanteau tale of many lives interweaving and intersecting in the Big Apple, told without benefit of word-balloons, captions or sound effects. Following a moving preface from the author describing the genesis of the project, Senior News Editor at Publisher’s Weekly Carl Reid offers an effusive appreciation in ‘Bright Lights, Scary City’ before the wordless drama begins. The System was released as a softcover graphic album in 1997 and is magnificently repackaged here in a lavish hardback edition. Many of Kuper’s most impressive works have stemmed from his far-flung travels, but at heart he is a son of New York, with a huge amount of his work using the city as bit player or star attraction. Artist, storyteller and activist Peter Kuper has championed social causes, highlighted judicial and cultural inequities and spearheaded the use of narrative art as an effective means of political activism.

The system by peter kuper