The Reading Gaze: "My" Comics

Plot

These essays were originally published, in a slightly different form, in the magazines Satélite Internacional (Oporto, 2005) and L’indispensable (Nîmes, 2011), Indy Magazine online site (USA, 2004) and on the blogs The Crib Sheet (Portugal, 2008-10, 2015) and The Hooded Utilitarian (USA, 2010-11, 2013).

“It was February 24, 2004, 08:27 AM, on the Comics Journal Messboard.” This is the first phrase of my blog, The Crib Sheet. What happened at that particular day and particular hour was that I, fed up with the accusation of not liking comics, decided to write a list of my favorite ones. With that list my answer was: I like comics, I just don’t like the same comics you like. This is the genesis and explanation of this book’s subtitle, “My Comics.” On the other hand, if you insist that I don’t like comics because what’s in this book are not precisely cartoonists, don’t worry, I like them too, they’re just not here yet because I divided the comics corpus in two: The Extended Field and The Restrict Field. This book is, then, an anti-essentialist stance, a cry of freedom from India Ink on board, if you like...

Domingos Isabelinho