by Jimenaz Lai
-This is a collection of short speculative comics by an architecture professor about speculative architecture and urban planning. It's influenced by manga and, to my eyes, Dash Shaw, though he isn't mentioned, nor are all the other cartoonists who work in speculative architectural comics––Schuiten and Peeters, Ware's Building Stories, Katchor's Metropolis strips, Tom Kacznyski, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, etc. but instead the introduction talks about fucking Crisis on Infinite Earths. The packaging really tries to reach for profundity and significance, smh. I wanted to like the thing and I'm sympathetic to the aesthetic in spirit, and OK it's interesting at times, but it's all together too underdeveloped, and with the packaging and academic posturing...it's not doing anyone any favors.
