Rand Holmes

Randolph Holton Holmes (February 22, 1942 – March 15, 2002) was a Canadian artist and illustrator probably best known for his work in underground comix.

Born in Truro, Nova Scotia, he grew up in Edmonton, Alberta.^[1] As a teenager Holmes taught himself to draw by copying comic-strip artists Wally Wood and Will Eisner. Harvey Kurtzman later published two of his drawings in Help! He married young and worked briefly as a sign painter. Holmes moved to Vancouver in 1969 and found work as an illustrator at The Georgia Straight, a weekly underground tabloid.^[2] He drew numerous covers for the publication and created the Harold Hedd comic strip, which ran in the paper as well as in other publications such as The Body Politic,^[3] during the early 1970s. Described by writer Dana Larsen as Holmes's "most well known cartoon creation",^[4] the one-page strip was collected in The Collected Adventures of Harold Hedd in 1972,^[5] with a smaller sized second volume in 1973.^[6]

Holmes's work appeared in underground comics titles such as White Lunch Comix #1 (1972, Georgia Straight), All Canadian Beaver Comics #1 (1973, Georgia Straight), Slow Death Comics #5 (1973, Last Gasp), #6 (1974) and Fog City Comics #1 (1977), #2 (1978), #3 (1979, Stampart) and Snarf #11 (1986, Kitchen Sink). He provided the cover for the debut issue of Gay Comix (1980, Kitchen Sink). He illustrated three horror story scripts for Pacific Comics: Twisted Tales #2, #5 (1983) and Alien Worlds #8 (1984). Hitler's Cocaine was Holmes's longest published story (26, 30 p.), published by Kitchen Sink in 1984.

In 1982, Holmes and his second wife Martha left Vancouver and moved to Lasqueti Island. In his last years he concentrated on his meticulous surrealistic oil painting. Rand Holmes died at Nanaimo, BC, undergoing chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma.^[1]

In 2007, Holmes was inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame.^[7]

References