Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures

Ambitious visionaries who made career-ending mistakes get their moment in the spotlight in this clever and quippy anthology of historical misfits, anticlimactic ends, and the death of utopian dreams. McDonald (Stars, Hide Your Fire) brings together more than three dozen artists, among them Helen Greetham, who explores how one man used a bagel as inspiration for the circular space station of the future, only to be thwarted by the much cheaper “kebab-like” stations of today. E. Altman tackles planned obsolescence by recalling the death of their childhood PC repair shop; J. Dalton shows how Star Trek’s anticapitalist utopia never came to fruition because the show failed to describe how Picard and crew got there; and Triple Dream Comics spotlights one man’s quest to solve the 1910 Louisiana meat shortage by importing surprisingly vicious hippos. The pieces vary between hilarious, disturbing, and tragic—sometimes simultaneously. But the artists’ collective commitment to reimagining history instills possibility even amid flops. Suffused with humor, the works offer incisive critiques of capitalism, technology, inequality, and the limits of human ingenuity. Bright colors illuminate each page, with art that adds depth and uncanniness to the collection, representing the power—and risk­—of dreaming big. History may remember the winners, but this one’s for the losers. (Oct.)