Ronald Wimberly & Co.'s LAAB Magazine is here! This GIGANTIC broadsheet – spreads measure a whopping 23" x 32"(!) and it is divided into three sections, just like a newspaper (but, in this instance, delivering news you actually want to hear) – unlocks social strictures and unpacks social structures employing Black/ness and (its) representation as key and signifier.
This issue presents readers with the LAAB manifesto and includes interviews with Alexandra Bell, Trenton Doyle Hancock and Saul Williams. Then there are some excellent illuminated essays – primarily by Wimberly – that are both eye-opening and consciousness-expanding (don't allow yourself to be intimidated by the giant expanses of type; these essays are well worth your time and all efforts expended in their absorption will be amply rewarded). And, last but far from least, a big pile of amazing GIANT-SIZE comics by Ron Wimberly!
RECOMMENDED!
And, anyone looking for greater detail avbout the making of this issue should hop over to TCJ.com and check out this interview with Mr. Wimberly.
Ronald Wimberly & Co. are back with another issue of the broadsheet newspaper art magazine, LAAB! A feast for the mind as well as the eyes, it features a host of fascinating pieces chock full of interesting insights designed to challenge our perceptions and conceptions of yesterday, today and tomorrow. This issue "concerns themes of death and environmental devastation, horror, hauntology, necropolitics, and the anthropocene. We ask what it means to die, and what it means to live -- and what might have to die for a future to be born." While this issue states that it is "#4", it is in fact the second issue, so, as long as you have the first issue (which was #0), don't worry, you haven't missed anything. The issues are numerologically numbered, and this issue is #4 due to 4's association with death.
This time around we have six 8-page sections of full color comics, intellectual explorations, semiotic deconstructions, reporting, interviews, and even a horoscope – well, "horrorscope", actually. And what pages! LAAB takes the prize for size. Printed on bright, crisp newsprint, each of the 48 pages are 16" x 21" – which opens to eye-popping 32" x 21" spreads – making for a unique reading experience. There are all new comics by Emily Carroll, Ben Passmore, Hellen Jo, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Nishat Akhtar, Josiah Files, Freddie Carrasco, Richie Pope, Tanna Tucker and Gymah Gariba, with the feature attraction being a twelve page work by Ronald Wimberly himself. We also are treated to an essay on the possibilities of Frankenstein's monster representing blackness by Elizabeth Young; Sarah Jaffe's exploration of how women's reproductive rights are embedded within the Alien films; an interview with John Carpenter and Sandy King; a look at the battle for Standing Rock by Michael Horse; and much more.
