Next week, acclaimed cartoonist Peter Kuper's new book Insectopolis: A Natural History will be released. It's a magnificent achievement in cartooning, presenting the story of insects, of their relationship to humans, and of the humans who have studied them, all told with absolutely gorgeous, meticulous artwork.
The book starts with a foreshadowing quote from one of my heroes: biologist, entomologist, environmentalist and author E.O. Wilson. "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."
The narrative structure starts with two present-day people, a brother and his entomologist sister, walking in New York City toward an exhibit at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library about insects, talking about some of the marvels of the insect world.
Spoiler Alert (although this happens about 20% into the book): The siblings never make it to the exhibit. An unnamed apocalypse suddenly occurs, and all humans on Earth are destroyed.
But maybe you've heard the trope that insects, in particular cockroaches, could outlast a cataclysm that would kill all humans. And so, surviving insects eventually find their way into the library exhibit and somehow gain the ability to talk to each other about the various displays. The majority of the book is then devoted to their informative but breezy and humorous discussion primarily of how humans have viewed and interacted with their various species.
As a fellow cartoonist, I can barely believe how intricate and beautiful some of these page are. Kuper brilliantly depicts his insect subjects against the backdrop of the sublimely illustrated architectural beauty of that Stephen A. Schwarzman library building.
And the stories told are fascinating, weaving insects into the history of just about every human endeavor: geopolitics, pop culture, medicine, science, literature, even genocide.
Some of the illustrated displays of the fictional exhibition even include working QR codes that will lead the attentive reader to audio passages of esteemed entomologists talking about the insects at hand.
An Insectopolis coloring book, Coloring Insectopolis, is being simultaneously released, if you're interested in giving your own colors to the amazing artwork.
And in the introduction to that coloring book, Kuper explains the creative impetus for the main book's setting and conceit:
Insectopolis … began as a proposed history of insects therough the millennia and the people who had studied them as a graphic novel. This was the idea that won me a 2020-2021 Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library. I was working out exactly how to tell that story and then Covid-19 hit. Although I was allowed into the library, the public was not. The hallowed institution felt like a ghost-filled, post-apocalyptic environment, my steps echoing down empty halls. But on a visit to the map room to look up the flight of the monarch butterfly, a light bulb went off in my head — I could populate the entire place with insects! (At least in my drawings.) Suddenly I had the framework form y story: People are gone and insects are thriving and studying their own history in the magnificent library. The only people to appear would be the ghosts of entomology's past, naturalists forgotten through time.
A link to pre-order/buy Insectopolis is here.
There will be an exhibition of the art from Insectopolis at New York City's Society of Illustrators from May 14 through September 20, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 22.
Previously:
• Peter Kuper, cartoonist
• Spy vs Spy is and was the best thing about MAD
• Cartoonist Peter Kuper in Oaxaca
• WWI trench poetry given gorgeous graphical treatment
• Comics Rack: Boing Boing's comics picks for June 2013
