Five comfort reads

Five comics I can always turn to when I’m feeling down or unwell.

1. Asterix. Humour, adventure, incredibly lame puns and it takes the side of the barbarian resistance against the empire. What’s not too like?

2. Gaston Lagaffe. The world’s worst office boy, who spends his entire day avoiding work, experimenting with new, horrible recipes (sardines in apricot jam being one favourite) feeding his equally horrible seagull, inventing new Heath Robinsonesque machines to do things for him he’s too lazy to do himself, or playing battleship with Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street over the phone, when Jules is in New York with his boss…. It’s no wonder Gaston never made it in the US, a country where people keep working even if they’re no longer paid.

3. Giles annuals. A year’s worth of gentle satire about the issues of the day, as seen through an unforgettable cast of horrible grans, put-upon fathers, stoic mothers and way too clever kids, with walk-on parts for whichever celebrity that was in the news just then.

4. Tintin. The world’s most viriginial boy reporter and his much more interesting friends going on adventures around the world. Tintin makes the world cozy and orderly.

5. Calvin and Hobbes. It’s a magical world. Let’s go exploring.