Opening the Black Box: flight 713 to Belize never arrived at his destiny. The apparatus was found two days later, in the depths of the Yucatan jungle, near Uxmal,barely damaged. However, from crew and passengers, no trail. The aeronautical experts were baffled when they analyzed the black boxes: instead of communications between airplane and air traffic controllers, the tapes contained only unusual stories, apparently nonsensical and narrated in a dragged and monotoned voice, which was not identified as belonging to any of the crew members…

Black Box Stories is a collection of more than 100 short stories written by the prolific Portuguese sequential artist José Carlos Fernandes. This volume collects 5 of those short stories, illustrated by Roberto Gomes.

Every day at three o’clock in the afternoon, the attic windows promptly slide wide open as if by an invisible hand. A ritual that is repeated no matter what's the weather, and even if the south wind makes the smell of the Liposuction Factory, or the sound of The Worst Band In The World's rehearsal particularly unbearable... (excerpt from João Ramalho Santos's foreword)

Throughout the pages, the reader discovers the lifes of several inhabitants of a city which he doesn’t know the name and exact location (cars and clothes are reminiscent of an American city of the 50s), especially that of Sebastian Zorn (saxophone), Idálio Alzheimer (piano), Ignacio Kagel (bass), and Anatole Kopek, all members of a band with vaguely jazzy intentions, strictly zero talent and purely chaotic results. The reader will also cross Flugelhorn Thomas, the compiler of coincidences, Elvino B. Weiss, a leading activist of the Foundation for the Decline of Science, Roberto Rosz, museum director of the accessory and the insignificant, Kaspar Grosz, General Secretary of the Unpopular Idiosyncratic Party, and many more...

The stories are independent of each other but the pleasure of reading grows as we find a particular character, plunged into a turmoil that rarely decreases. The fates of each other intersect and sometimes collide, adding to the confusion. While everything looks normal, the absurd spreads inexorably. Stubborn, philosopher, meticulous, obsessive, stunned, skeptical, scrupulous: whatever the nature of each of these characters, all struggle to find their way through the maze of the city (and life). José Carlos Fernandes depicts small chronicles of the ordinary madness, brief slices of life of hypochondriacs, fools and maniacs's in a world that is very similar to ours.

An imaginary tour through the most unlikely tourist destinations, like Dulia — the city desperately looking to have some interesting element — to the inhospitable Manzil, which grows like a tumor despite all its inhabitants wanting to leave; or from Gallupi — city of fickle moods and statues withdrawals — to Kwinz, the city of cemeteries; it's a whole geography of distant places that turn out to be too close; of cities never seen that in the end, we know too well. -->