My introduction to comics was looking at my mum’s Calvin and Hobbes collections. My burgeoning ability to read meant I’d sometimes not be able to read the balloons but the pictures were so good that I could intuit what was going on and how warm and lovely and exciting the friendship between the two was. I wanted an animal best friend to go adventuring with! And that’s the familiar feeling I was met with when I dug into Cindy and Biscuit earlier in the year. Originally published as part of the legendary MindlessOnes comics blog, creator Dan White first started Cindy and Biscuit in 2008. The strip tells the stories of Cindy and her dog biscuit, monster hunters extraordinaire, in bite-sized chunks each dedicated to a particular confrontation. Each encounter uses a different colour palette in a sparing, masterful use of the form. Some of the monsters are dangerous and the pair face a good amount of peril, but then there’s also a tenderness to some of the encounters; maybe the creatures aren’t so monstrous after all, just lonely and misunderstood.