Sticks and Stones - Softcover

PETER KUPER is the author of numerous graphic novels, among them The System, Speechless, and an award-winning adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. His illustrations appear regularly in the New York Times, Time, and MAD, for which he draws the world-famous "Spy vs. Spy" every month. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Betty, and his daughter, Emily. He can be reached though his website, www.peterkuper.com.

Kuper is one of the masters of wordless comics, and his earlier works, from Metamorphosis to his recent reinvention of the Spy vs. Spy series in MAD, has showcased his fierce political wit and lushly textured, stencil-based, woodcut-inspired design sense. This allegory about the vanities of empire is both a story for children and a political commentary for their parents. A stone giant is born from a volcano and demands the fealty of the people around him. He makes them build him a stone castle; then he discovers a nearby peaceful village made entirely of wood and sets about conquering it and plundering its resources. Meanwhile, a small resistance front develops, led by a woman from the stone tribe and a boy from the wood tribe, and eventually the stone empire and its despot meet a grim fate. Kuper's narrative is beautifully constructed, from its grand sweep to its minute details. It's hard to give characters distinct personalities in a silent allegory, especially with such stylized drawing, but Kuper pulls it off by giving everyone ingeniously exaggerated body language. Almost every page is a joy to look at: even the landscape echoes the story's mood, and the spray speckles of Kuper's stencil technique become the grain of the tale's rocks and sky.
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