Domingos Isabelinho - The Reading Gaze (EN)

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 was born in Lisbon in 1960. He contributed to the magazines Nemo, Quadrado, Satélite Internacional, Splaft!, various catalogs of the Porto, Lisbon, Amadora comics conventions (Portugal), The Comics Journal, The International Journal of Comic Art (U.S.A.), L’indispensable (France), European Comic Art (UK). He also wrote the preface to one of the latest editions of Guido Buzzelli’s book I Labirinti (Italy). He co-curated a Buzzelli exhibition in Lisbon and an exhibition of his original art collection in the Beja Comics Convention (Portugal). He wrote twenty three entries in the book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die (UK). In 2012 He was invited to the seminar Aesthetics of Contemporary Comics in Oslo (Norway).