Dry Shave · 14 October 2002
I met Rod Filbrandt once, in the mid Nineties or so, to talk about a book project in need of an illustrator. The book eventually died at the proposal stage, but still I enjoyed the meeting (at that point in life it was a pleasant surprise to meet anyone whose worldview was bleaker than my own; once, on the labels for his drawings in a gallery show, Rod had listed his medium as ‘ink and bourbon’).
After a run of several years, he had just retired Wombat, a nihilistic, rude-funny four panel that had appeared in the Georgia Straight (Vancouver’s version of any other city’s ‘alternative’ weekly repository of voice personals, spot advertising and Savage Love). I groused about this, but he said he was about to start a new comic, something ‘darker’. I asked what it would be called. Dry Shave.
It’s hard to pinpoint what made Dry Shave (which ran until 1999) so good. Certainly there was the stylistic hook: a sort of hungover film-noir lapsed hepcat vibe so embraced by myself and others of – for want of a less offensive term – the Coupland Demographic. And there were these characters, see, all losers, failed criminals, flatfoots, nogoodniks. Alleys, tiki lounges, coldwater flats, black humour, murder, potty jokes: everything good.
There is a book, which you should buy. Some favourites from the official site:
Still more here.
If nothing else, it must be the best title ever.
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