Kateřina Čupová, Karel Čapek
Kateřina Čupová (b. 1992, Ostrava) is a Czech animator and comic book artist, and a graduate from the renowned Department of Animation at the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín. Many of her works have been published in magazines and comic anthologies. Her webcomic The Author’s Apprentice was published in print following a successful Kickstarter campaign. She won the Muriel Award for a short graphic story and was also nominated for her R.U.R this year’s comic book adaptation. Her eye-catching, cartoon-like style is firmly rooted in decades of prized Czech animation.
Karel Čapek (1890-1938) was a key figure of Czech literature in the interwar period as a prolific journalist, fiction writer, playwright, translator and critic. Among his best-known works are novels The White Disease, Krakatit and War with the Newts, and plays such as R.U.R, Pictures from the Insects’ Life and The Mother. He was close to his brother Josef, with whom he co-wrote many of his works. Alongside the first Czechoslovak president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, he produced the popular collection Talks with T. G. Masaryk. Karel Čapek used his writing to reflect on the looming political threat. He himself did not live to see World War II, though his brother was eventually murdered in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He was a seven-time aspirant for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
CZECHIA GOLDEN RIBBON AWARD 2021
BEST COMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR
R.U.R.
script and art by Kateřina Čupová
November 2020, 256 pages
Rights sold to: France (Glénat), Turkey (Dergah), South Korea (Sunest), Italy (Miraggi Edizioni), Spain (La Cúpula), USA (Rosarium Publishing), Egypt (Al turjman)
A timeless commentary on the nature of human existence – and our future
The R.U.R. Factory, far from humanity on its own island, has produced the perfect product: Robots! Devoid of pain, love, and all human emotion, never tiring, never bored, unfazed by death they are the ideal worker for modern-day society!
All of this is about to change, and only Helena can see it. She is condemned to remain alone in her dread, as all of society embraces the robots and the automatons‘ presence increases. However, there has been a glitch in the programming. All of our assumptions may have been wrong. The robots may indeed feel pain. They may harbor passions and hatred, and the Robot Revolution may be near!
As retold and drawn by the young, award-winning Czech graphic novelist, Kateřina Čupová, this seminal dystopian work by Karel Čapek makes the reader question the notions of work and progress and humanity itself. Through Čupová’s deft hand, R.U.R. is a sight to behold.
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“The 1920s Czech sci-fi theater piece that coined the term „robot“ and set the bones of the many plots of „replicants“ to come in modern literature gets transformed into a graphic novel, where fluid watercolors contrast with the heady philosophical dialogue and stark moral message. In a kind of anti-Blade Runner style, here the light and soft colors of the world and character portraits actively defy the darkness of humanity’s drive to oppression that is so profoundly depicted in these pages.”
— Meg Lemke, comics and graphic novels reviews editor, Publishers Weekly
“Argo Publishers is giving Rossum’s Universal Robots a chance to conquer the world again, making sure the immortal classic doesn’t bore readers to death. The comic book approach is the perfect way to bring classic literature to a contemporary audience. Readers’ emotions are tapped into using not only drawings which are color-matched to reflect the atmosphere of the story, but also through the speech bubbles. The text quite literally leaps off the pages at times and gets the audience fired up with its carefully selected punchiness.”
– kultura21.cz
„The drawings are distinctive and impeccable. R.U.R. is essentially a depressing tragedy of apocalyptic proportions, albeit tempered at the end by a hint of better times in which the best of humanity returns to the world of robots. Čupová stages the story using subtle, almost cheerful, or rather caricature-like drawings.”
– Pavel Mandys, iliteratura.cz
“The graphic-novel adaptation of Čapek’s famous play pleasantly surprises especially with unexpectedly delicate drawing.”
— iLiteratura
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