HAROLD HEDD

RAND HOLMES

Rand Holmes (22 February 1942 - 15 March 2002, Canada) taught himself to draw as a teenager by copying stories drawn by Wallace Wood (Mad and E.C. comics) and Will Eisner (The Spirit). His first cartoons were published in Harvey Kurtzman's Help Magazine. In 1969 he landed in Vancouver and started working for the Georgia Straight, a weekly underground tabloid. There, he began to develop the adventures of Harold Hedd. One of the underground's most popular characters was born. A collection of those stories was published in the oversized comic The Adventures of Harold Hedd in 1972. A second popular volume was published in 1973.

Besides the 'Harold Hedd' comics, Holmes' work appeared in underground comix magazines like White Lunch, Slow Death, Snarf and Fog City. During the eighties Holmes came back on the comics front with the two-part comic Hitler's Cocaine and stories for Death Rattle, Snarf (Kitchen Sink Press), Alien World and Twisted Tales (Pacific Comics). With his wife Martha, he left Vancouver to live off the land on Lasqueti Island, where he put all of his artistic, creative energy into painting oils until his death in 2002.