Last week, the 310NxRd space at Goldsmiths hosted an exhibition of ‘City Strips’, a zine of comic architecture produced by P.O.I.
Comic series are usually all about the superhero and his adventures, but ‘City Strips’ is all about the cities: it removes characters and speech bubbles from issues of popular franchises such as ‘Superman’, ‘Batman’ and ‘The Walking Dead’, allowing us a better look at the spaces that these heroes inhabit.
The purpose is to explore the context that gives comic heroes agency, Goldsmiths Design lecturer Stuart Bannocks explains. It’s also undeniable that these comic cities are an important part of who its heroes are: “Spiderman could only be Spiderman in New York; if he were in London, he’d have to walk everywhere or take the bus!”
Don’t worry if this sounds exactly like your kind of thing and you missed the exhibition, though; you can also find ‘City Strips’ in comic shops.