I’ve been a big fan of illustrator Roman Dirge’s work since I first spotted his comic, Lenore, on the shelves of Sydney’s Kings Comics in 1996. Dirge hails from L.A. but his work is decidedly more devilish than you would expect from the City of Angels. While Lenore tells darkly humorous tales about a little dead girl and her murderous exploits, Dirge gets even blacker in his book Something at the Window is Scratching, a short volume of poems guaranteed to give children nightmares and adults fits of criminally insane laughter. My favourite poem, entitled Boodini and Choobie, is about a ‘rotting magician’ and his ‘decomposing hare’. Every time I read it I giggle like an escaped mental patient, which works well when I want the bus seat all to myself. This year Dirge has a ‘best of’ volume coming out called Taxidermied, as well as a full-length Lenore book entitled Wedgies.

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Best for reading in the warm glow of an existential crisis, Dorothy Gambell’s Cat and Girl is a brilliant online comic series. It’s my daily fix of clever puns, political satire, pop culture references and biting wit, lovingly rendered in cute black and white drawings. Cat and Girl are housemates and best friends, and like all best friends, they can talk about anything: from literature, to the economy, to the perils of playing ping pong with a rotten egg. Sure, there are arguments, but most are resolved by Cat’s unwavering sense of surreal humour that balances out Girl’s eternal pessimism. ‘How do you stay warm in the cold shadow of death?’, she asks him, pleadingly. ‘Fireworks’, he replies. Gambell will also draw a personalised comic for you if you make a donation to her site via Paypal. Mine is framed and on my wall at home.