HIPPIE-ERA CARTOONIST WHO CREATED HAROLD HEDD DIES

Rand Holmes Was A Renowned Comic Artist

Internationally renowned underground comic artist Rand Holmes died Friday
in Nanaimo. He was 60 years old.

Holmes was Vancouver's premier underground cartoonist during the
psychedelic era in the late 1960s/early '70s. His strip, Harold Hedd, was
the Canadian equivalent to American underground favourites like The
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Wonder Warthog, and Mr. Natural.

Harold Hedd first appeared in the Georgia Straight, back when it was a
radical hippie weekly. The strip featured the misadventures of a
bespectacled dope smoker, Harold Hedd, who was forever being hassled by the
super-straight Constable Leroy. It was a classic of its time, riddled with
pot references, hairy hippies, and lots of free love.

"It was a treatise on the counter-culture," said Holmes, who was paid $25
per week for the strip. "I was living it at that time."

Georgia Straight publisher Dan McLeod said Holmes was an integral part of
the Straight's alternative persona.

"Rand was a huge part of the Straight," said McLeod. "A lot of our response
to what was going on in those days was crystallized through his comics.

"He had a very sharp satirical sense, and a lot of [issues] got argued
through the strips rather than through editorials. We never wrote
editorials per se, so the arguments were presented in comic strip form. He
was the perfect guy to do them. He was one of the best guys in the genre in
the world."

Partly because he lived in Vancouver, Holmes never enjoyed the commercial
success of American underground artists like R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton or
S. Clay Wilson. But San Francisco publisher Ron Turner of Last Gasp comics
said Holmes was one of the best underground artists.

"He was a real master draftsman, just incredible," said Turner, who
published a couple of Harold Hedd collections.

"I think Rand was one of the greatest humourists I ever saw. He could make
you roll around and split a gut laughing. I was always surprised he didn't
end up in film-making, because his work was perfect storyboards [for movies]."

Turner said Holmes' abilities were showcased when he was chosen to do the
cover for the History of Underground Comics, which was published by Rolling
Stone magazine's book wing, Straight Arrow.

"It was quite brilliant," said Turner. "There were all kinds of in-jokes he
put in. His favourite was that he put both him and Robert Crumb playing the
banjo together."

Holmes published three Harold Hedd collections in the early 70s. He also
contributed to underground collections like All Canadian Beaver Comix,
White Lunch Comix, and Fog City Comix. He enjoyed some success in Europe in
the 1980s with a series called Hitler's Cocaine, and kept active doing
artwork for science fiction comics like Death Rattle, Alien Worlds and
Twisted Tales.

One of his biggest fans was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who hired
Holmes to do a comic just before Garcia's death.

In 1982, Holmes left Vancouver to live a simple life on Lasqueti Island
with his second wife, Martha. It was a bare bones, back-to-the-earth
existence -- it took 10 years to finish building their house.

"We lived in a tent the first year, and for five years we lived in a
dirt-floor tar paper shack," Holmes related in a 1997 interview. "I was
doing comics every night in that shack too, to a propane lamp. My wife
would be next to me, inches away, making beer in a big vat."

On Lasqueti, Holmes' comic output slowly petered out, and he took up oil
painting, supplementing his income by doing carpentry. His paintings still
had underground themes -- his wife Martha said one of his favourites is
called The Bud Clippers.

"It's an amazing hippie scene of grandparents, parents and kids all sitting
around the kitchen table clipping buds [from marijuana plants]," she said.
"As the family business."

Holmes was born Randolph Holton Holmes in Truro, N.S., on Feb. 22, 1942.
(His father's name was even more colourful -- Cecil Ulysses McDonald Holmes.)

When Rand was a baby, the family moved to Edmonton, where he grew up,
married young and had two kids.

"He came out to B.C. in '67 or '68 for a visit, found the hippie scene and
said, 'I'm outta Edmonton,' " said Martha Holmes. "And he never looked back."

Holmes is survived by his wife, their 14-year-old son Sirett, two children
from his first marriage (35-year-old Michelle and 32-year-old Ron) and a
10-month-old grandson, Denton Rand Holmes.