Wombat is a cartoon strip from Vancouver artist Rod Filbrandt and the precursor to his long-lived and much loved strip, Dry Shave. In Wombat: The Collected Comic Strip the reader witnesses the development of a cartoon strip and the characters that fill its frames, from its nascent, raw stages, when it first ran in the Discorder (a UBC campus paper) in the early '80s, on through numerous growth spurts, to the amazingly polished strides of the early '90s, and finally to its sad and noir-ish end in 1994.

Praise for Wombat: The Collected Comic Strip:

Books Choice of the Week, Georgia Straight

"Few artists are as capable as Rod Filbrandt when it comes to sifting out the most obvious nonsensical idiocy in today's world, and slinging it back at us like the slop in the neck we all deserve." (Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog)

"Running from the mid '80s until 1994, Wombat showcased Rod Filbrandt's wry and jaded views on modern society and his incredible growth and progression as a cartoonist. ... a great representation of the formative years of one of the best cartoonists this country has produced." (Broken Pencil)

"Wombat: The Collected Comic Strip (Anvil Press, $16) shows aspects of Filbrandt's art getting slicker as the years go by, but his misfit hero - part punk, part Raymond Chandler reject - remains a bespectacled ball of sarcasm, bad nerves, and all-purpose rage. ... Of course, the booze never stops flowing, and every hard-edged drink is a possible door to hallucinatory black magic - or at least to a 'color fun' page inviting you to take your crayons to a black-and-white pillar of puke rushing from Wombat. It all adds up to a sharply funny portrait of a darker, less yoga-friendly time." (Georgia Straight, Books Choice of the Week)

Rod Filbrandt is a cartoonist, illustrator, and fake beatnik who really digs freaking out the squares with his raunchy doodles and cheaply glued-on goatee. Originally, Filbrandt aspired to be a punk rocker, but found the hours too rigorous. He is the creator of Wombat, Dry Shave, and, most recently, the strip Tar Paper Town. He lives in Vancouver.

Rod Filbrandt's profile page

John Armstrong is the author of the laugh–out–loud funny Guilty of Everything, an account of his time in early Vancouver punk band The Modernettes. It was a finalist for the Roderick Haig–Brown Prize for the best BC non–fiction book of 2002, and is being made into a feature film starring Jay Baruchel.

Armstrong lives in Chilliwack, BC, and is working on his third book, an account of his life with dogs.

John Armstrong's profile page