The System intertwines the lives of several instantly identifiable New York City archetypes (drunken subway motormen and drug-dealing beat cops) into a dreamily suspenseful tale of corruption and ambition. 45 slug drifting through a gun barrel, Peter Kuper’s The System gives urban tragedy an almost graceful inevitability. The star of the story is the dark city itself, and the point is how money ties all its occupants-whether they know it or not-together.“ Gavin Edwards, Details Kuper uses his trademark spray-paint/stencil art to send us careening through a kinetic New York landscape, jump-cutting from a crooked cop to a stripper, panning from a homeless guy to a cell-phone yuppie. “Though it has no word balloons or thought bubbles, The System is filled with so much urban clatter, you’ll want to seal your windows shut. Long may his pencil, pen and brush silently flow.' Al Jaffee, legendary Mad cartoonist Over the years there have been a few geniuses in this specialized art form. Every action and emotion in the story has to be conveyed through static images alone. Not only are there no words to lean on, but there is also no movement. Pantomime cartooning shares this limitation, yet the challenges are even greater.

It is comparable to the early days of silent films when actors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton only had gestures and facial expressions to tell their stories and convey complex feelings. If done properly, it is capable of displaying a range of ideas and emotions that people all over the world are able to understand. The purest of this form is the wordless comic, where the cartoonist creates a strictly visual language. 'Cartooning is an art that can be universally recognized and appreciated. Told without captions or dialogue, The System is an astonishing progression of vivid imagery, each brilliantly executed panel containing a wealth of information, with layer upon layer forming a vast and intricate tour of an ominous world of coincidences and consequences. A corrupt cop is shaking down drug dealers. If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, get ready to run for cover! A sleazy stockbroker is lining his pockets. They tie each of us to our world and it to the universe.

It’s this premise that lies at the core of The System, a wordless graphic novel created and fully painted by award-winning illustrator Peter Kuper.įrom the subway system to the solar system, human lives are linked by an endless array of interconnecting threads. It’s said that the flutter of insect wings in the Indian Ocean can send a hurricane crashing against the shores of the American Northeast.

The system by peter kuper