Peter Kuper is an American alternativecomics artist and illustrator, best known for his autobiographical, political, and social observations. Besides his contributions to the political anthology World War 3 Illustrated, which he co-founded in 1979 with Seth Tobocman, Kuper is currently best known for taking over Spy vs. Spy for Mad magazine. Kuper has produced numerous graphic novels which have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Greek, including award-winning adaptations of Franz Kafka's Give It Up! and the Metamorphosis.
Early life
Peter Kuper was born in Summit, New Jersey, and moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was six years old, where he graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1976. He lived in Israel with his parents in 1969–70. In 1970 Kuper and his childhood friend Seth Tobocman published their first fanzine, Phanzine, and in 1971 they published G.A.S Lite, the official magazine of the Cleveland Graphic Arts Society. In 1972 Kuper traded R. Crumb some old jazz records for the right to publish some artwork from one of Crumb's sketchbooks in a comic titled Melotoons that lasted for two issues. He attended Kent State University in 1976–1977, then moved to New York City in 1977, where he studied at Art Students League and the Pratt Institute. For a short period he acted as studio assistant for cartoonist Howard Chaykin at Chaykin's shared studio space, Upstart Associates.
Career
Comics
Kuper, Tobocman, and painter Christof Kohlhofer founded World War 3 Illustrated in 1979. Kuper has travelled extensively through Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, much of which he documented in his 1992 book, ComicsTrips: A Journal of Travels Through Africa and Southeast Asia. Spy vs. Spy had passed through various hands after its creator Antonio Prohías retired, but Kuper's version has appeared without interruption since 1997. Kuper's Eye of the Beholder was the first comic strip to ever regularly appear in the New York Times, and his quasi-autobiography Stop Forgetting To Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz covers the birth of his daughter, 9/11, and other vicissitudes in his life from 1995–2005. Though permanently based in New York City, Kuper and his wife and daughter resided in the Mexican state of Oaxaca 2006–2008, where he documented an ongoing teachers' strike and other aspects of Mexico in his sketchbook journal Diario de Oaxaca. Kuper's work in comics and illustration frequently combines techniques from both disciplines, and often takes the form of wordless comic strips. Kuper remarked on this, "I initially put comics on one side and my illustration in another compartment, but over the years I found that it was difficult to compartmentalize like that. The two have merged together so that they're really inseparable."
Illustration
As an illustrator, Kuper has produced covers for Time, Newsweek, Businessweek and The Progressive. He has done hundreds of illustrations for newspapers including The New York Times and for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Yorker. Kuper has been co-art director of the political illustration group INX International Ink Company since 1988.
Awards
Kuper won a journalism award from The Society of Newspaper Designers in 2001. His wordless picture story Sticks and Stones was awarded the 2004 gold medal, and his comic "This Is Not A Comic" won a silver medal in 2009 both from the Society of Illustrators. He won another gold medal in the sequential arts category from the Society of Illustrators in 2010.
