of the protestors, who have been charged with causing the train accident. The assaulted stripper and her son leave the city on a plane. MacGuffin retires a hero for saving the stripper. Lil Bro weeps as he sprays red paint under the phrase “Rest in Peace,” in memory of his murdered friend. The gamer, with cash from the stockbroker’s bank account, upgrades his vehicle from a skateboard to a motorcycle. The gay couple raises a champagne toast to themselves. The missing woman, Betty Russell, closes a window blind in her brightly lit room.

In the final pages, a homeless man lights a match and opens a suitcase that contains the terrorist’s radioactive bomb, which he took from the scene of the subway accident. As he opens the suitcase, his dog accidentally activates the bomb. This eighty-four-page wordless comic concludes with three disturbing onomatopoeic words, “tic tic tic,” displayed in the lower left corner of a solid black page. In the lower right corner are also the words “The End,” which have a double meaning: Not only do the words refer to the end of the narrative but also to the end of many lives after the anticipated explosion.

Characters

•A homeless old man and his dog appear in the beginning and end, as well as at various times throughout the narrative, but they are always in the background of unfolding events.

•The strippers include two who are murdered and one who eventually escapes and gratefully leaves the city with her son.

•The interracial couple is attacked by a gang of skinheads, resulting in the death of the African American man.

•The stockbroker is a dishonest employee guilty of insider trading.

•Detective MacGuffin is haunted by guilt from the accidental shooting death of a boy. His intuition leads to the discovery of the murderer, which saves the life of the third stripper.

•Lil Bro is a young, black graffiti artist whose artwork covers building walls and subway trains.

•The drug dealer is a close friend of the graffiti artist who is killed by a rival gang.

•The corrupt policeman is guilty of robbing drug dealers and taking protection money from local businesses.

•The young gay man is casually dressed and friendly with everyone he meets. His partner is in the hospital being treated for AIDS.

•The singer in the subway narrates in song the destruction of the global environment.

•The Indian cab driver accidentally kills the murderer when he runs out in front of the cab.

•The drunken subway operator is responsible for crashing into another train.

•The terrorist is hired to set off a bomb and destroy the Syco high-rise.

•The long-haired gamer on a skateboard disrupts traffic and pedestrians and hacks into the stockbroker’s account.

•The evangelist and his son stand at a subway entrance and accuse strippers, the interracial couple, and the gay man of sinful acts. The evangelist’s son is responsible for murdering two strippers.

•The missing woman is named Betty Russell. Her name and face are displayed on posters throughout the story. At the conclusion, she is shown in a room, happily alive.

Artistic Style

The System displays Kuper’s distinctive use of stencils and spray paint, which he skillfully renders in dynamic color, capturing heartfelt moments such as a mother embracing her son or, in contrast, the powerful crash of subway trains. His use of lines provides additional insight into the characters. Diagonal lines provide a sense of tension in a panel, as with the renegade skateboarder racing past upset pedestrians on the sidewalk or the eager hands reaching out for a stripper on stage. In another example, wavy lines around the panels that display the subway operator indicate his intoxication as he steps out of a bar.

Kuper cleverly introduces new characters by displaying them in the background of a panel from an event that involves a different character. The new character is subsequently placed in the foreground, and an event unfolds in his or her life until another character is introduced and the story follows that person. This overlapping of characters and events increases readers’ attention to details in the story. At first, the characters appear to have little to do with one another, as in a panel where the gay man rides in a taxi driven by the Indian cab driver that passes the homeless man in an alley. Kuper subtly increases the involvement of the characters throughout the story until the subway accident and the death of the evangelist’s son, which illustrate the intended connection between the characters.

With the multitude of characters in this story, Kuper relies on stereotypes that provide a means to identify and predict behavior. Examples include the gang of skinheads who harass and brutally attack the interracial couple and the overweight, cigar-smoking policeman guilty of harassment and extortion. In contrast, Kuper challenges readers’ stereotypes by presenting a drug dealer with a tender heart and a stripper who returns home as a loving mother to her son in a well-kept apartment. The mixture of heartfelt and tragic events encourages readers to question their own prejudicial stereotypes.

Kuper also uses word images that include marketing slogans, brand names, graffiti, posters, newspaper headlines, news on television, electronic ticker tapes, and online banking transactions. These words are essential elements in the plot and provide important clues about characters, events, and cultural norms. One example is shown at a bodega corner market advertising “Candy” and “Beer,” implying a childhood dependence on candy that may progress to alcohol dependence. Another example is a poster of a missing woman named Betty Russell, an image in the beginning panel and one that surfaces nine times throughout the narrative and is not resolved until the end, which invites multiple interpretations.

Themes

One of the major themes is the power of money and the dysfunctional compulsion that drives people to accumulate cash in the capitalistic “system.” Many of these diverse characters are involved in making money, whether legally or illegally. This is conveyed in a constant exchange of dollars, from the extortion of local businesses by the corrupt policeman to the transfer of virtual currency in an online transaction. The dollar bill is one of many visual motifs used in the narrative and is behind every motivation, from buying a newspaper to the underhanded schemes of business transactions and cutthroat presidential elections.

Intolerance is another theme portrayed throughout this comic. Narrow-mindedness is displayed in a variety of events, including through the raised eyebrows of people in the subway judging the racially mixed couple, the public reprimand of the gay man by the evangelist, and the harassment of the homeless man by the corrupt policeman.

Another theme is the destruction of the natural environment by large corporations such as Syco. This theme is presented by a street singer in a song about a peaceful jungle that is torn apart by bulldozers that slaughter birds and animals and uproot plants and trees.

Impact

Along with Eric Drooker’s award-winning graphic novel Flood! A Novel in Pictures (1992), Kuper helped revitalize the genre of contemporary wordless graphic novels with a social focus and modern themes. In subsequent years, many comic artists have adopted the wordless medium for their storytelling ideas. To celebrate the new millennium, the French publisher L’Association published a two-thousand-page wordless volume, Comix 2000, with more than 324 international contributors. Marvel Comics even jumped on the wordless trend by publishing all its issues in December, 2001, without words. The series was named ’Nuff Said, based on a quote by renowned comics creator Stan Lee.

Further Reading

• Drooker, Eric. Flood! A Novel in Pictures (1992).
• Kuper, Peter. Sticks and Stones (2004).
• L’Association. Comix 2000 (1999).

Bibliography

• Beronä, David A. “Wordless Comics:  The Imaginative Appeal of The System.” Critical Approaches to Comics and Graphic Novels: Theories and Methods, edited by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Kuper, Peter.“This Is Not a Comic Book: Jarret Lovell Interviews Graphic Artist Peter Kuper.” Interview by Jarret Lovell. Crime Media Culture 2 (April, 2006): 75-83.
• ________. Speechless. Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Productions, 2001.

• System, TheCritical Survey of Graphic Novels: Independents & Underground Classics Bart H. Beaty Stephen Weiner 2012 Salem Press