Sunday, August 3, 2008

Rand Holmes (1942-2002)



The Harold Hedd comic above is a reprint from the Quebec underground newspaper Mainmise which ran 76 issues from 1970 to 1978. Mainmise was full of the usual preoccupations of the counter-culture, hallucinogenics, pot, free love and revolution, but soon began stuffing the pages with reprints of underground comix from Crumb, Ron Cobb, Trina, Corben, S. Clay Wilson, even Jeff Jones' Idyll from the pages of The National Lampoon.

The Harold Hedd comics by Rand Holmes were borrowed from the pages of Vancouver B.C.'s Georgia Straight. Mainmise started out digest sized, printed on cheap newsprint, then for a period was printed in full-colour on slick paper with impressive covers borrowed from the underground comics. It changed size again , magazine-size, before ending up as a newsprint tabloid alternative newspaper (as did the Georgia Straight) in 1977-78. In the latter years Mainmise became an important outlet for Montreal's numerous underground cartoonists.

Holmes obituary can be found here, from Cannabis Culture magazine.



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