“I’ve been wondering about some things lately.
Like, what if I had another me?
The idea came to me when I was watching
this episode of The X-Files in the bath.” 

Your text and comic piece "Fight Club" takes its title from a well-known 90s film, and was also inspired by an episode of The X-Files. Can you tell us a bit more about how you created and developed this work?

I like inside jokes, especially with myself. There’s a lot of them in the stuff I make. The main joke of this piece being I don’t care about the movie Fight Club, but I do care about The X-Files. That’s where the title is taken from, an X-Files episode called “Fight Club.” It has nothing to do with the movie.



Once I found a way to link the theme of Doubles with The X-Files, I just built it from there. I wrote the stream-of-consciousness bit first. I like writing that way; it’s authentic and easy, cause it’s just whatever I’m thinking. Then I drew scenes to match what I’d written.

You make comics, collages and zines under the name Gloomy Doom - how did this character first come about? 

Gloomy was the character/alter-ego I made for the West Coast Comic Anthology in 2021. I’ve been Gloomy Doom ever since.

What do you enjoy about comic-making?

I enjoy story-telling and filling the stories with bits and pieces of me. And the inside jokes. Stuff that isn’t integral to the story at all, but it makes me smile knowing that they’re in there. I have a lot of fun with it. Like, when you finish building a house and all the hard work is done, you can just decorate, fill it with trinkets and stuff.



In the kitchen scene of the comic, there’s a mug with the Carlton Football Club logo on it—my team. The last time they played in the grand final was 1999. The movie Fight Club, even though it has nothing to do with my comic, came out in 1999 too. Wanna guess what year I was born?

Stuff like that, it’s my favourite part of making comics or collages or anything. I can add what I want, reference whatever I enjoy, what makes me happy, what annoys me, what makes me me, cause it’s mine.

Do you have any other creative projects currently in the works?

I’ve always got comics going, whether they end up anywhere isn’t very important to me. Everything I do creatively is for fun. I’ve got a lot of ideas, and most of my stories come from me and my experiences. I'm Gloomy, Gloomy is me; it’s an infinite source of content. When I’ve made enough stuff, I think I’d like to publish them in a book.

Who are some writers or artists whose work you often return to? 

Comic-wise I really like the Amy and Jordan stories by Mark Beyer and the Norwegian comic strip Nemi by Lise Myhre. You can tell too, especially when you look at Nemi and my earlier Gloomy drawings.

What is on your reading list at the moment?

Even though I work in a bookshop, I don’t actually read as much as people think I should. Sometimes all I can manage is an X-Files novelisation or something by Agatha Christie or Virginia Andrews; something familiar and easy and fun. I usually go for murder mysteries, classics or trashy guilty pleasures. I’m a big fan of whodunits and book adaptations of movies or TV shows.

Besides The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix, my reading list is mostly books I read a decade ago that I’d like to read again; classics like Musashi, Wuthering Heights and The Once And Future King, then newer titles that I feel didn’t get much love when they were released; You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce and The Last by Hanna Jameson.