With the glow of New York City’s scary magnificence.Actions speak louder than words. System details the capricious power of coincidence, the simple bonds ofĪffection, the daily grind, and the super-charged existentialĬonsequences of ethnic and social complexity-and illuminates it all Ordinary people, from strippers and crooked cops to martyred streetĪrtists, corporate financiers, and Pakistani drivers. Routines and, most important, the overlapping, interdependent tales ofĭisparate social and politicized interests that loom over the lives of “system” is an elaborate network of coincidental encounters, parallel Recognizable, fictionalized events-a kind of melodrama on the patterns Multiple narrative threads into a brightly patterned fabric of Journey, The System is a parable-like, sentimental meditation on theĬonvulsive social drama of day-to-day urban life. Specifically to the knockabout experience of life in New YorkĬity….A wordless pictorial novel reminiscent of Frans Masereal’s Passionate

influences, graphic achievements, and attempts to reconcileĬomics to their own formal history, to life and to art, and Published in 1997, The System serves as an early repository of all In the Introduction, Calvin Reed, co-editor of PW Comics World writes: First published as three separate comics in 1996, laterĬollected in a paperback anthology in 1997, The System is now available in a colorful hardcover edition.

Racism and economic inequality. Pages from World War 3 Illustrated wereĪppropriated by protesters during the Tomkins Square Park Riot ofġ988, to be transformed into improvised signage and DIY posters.įrom this day-to-day laboratory of conflicts and coinciences, Kuper began mentally assembling The System,Ī wordless chronicle of the clashes and convergences of New York City’s Manhattan including housing rights, gentrification, police brutality, Right-wing conservatism that prevailed following the election ofĮmbraced the “us vs. The anthology magazine was a homeįor comic book work and graphic/illustrated storytelling that wasĪnti-establishment and aggressively critical of the social and political Kuper is one of the co-founders of World War 3 Illustrated, Manhattan, what would the various actions of a subway full of If the flap of a butterfly’s wings in China could cause a storm in This trip all we have in common,” he thought, “or might our livesĬrisscross and impact one another in positive or even catastrophic Passengers and their destinations in a new way. While riding the packed #2 train, began wondering about his fellow A moment of heightened awareness one day back in 1995, Peter Kuper,

The system by peter kuper