Rand Holmes, 60; Drew Underground Cartoons

Rand Holmes, 60, an underground cartoonist during the psychedelic era of the 1960s and early ‘70s, died Friday in Nanaimo hospital in British Columbia, Canada. The cause was complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Born in Truro, Nova Scotia, Holmes grew up in Edmonton and started drawing cartoons as a teenager. He moved to Vancouver at age 27.

His strip, Harold Hedd, was the Canadian answer to such U.S. underground favorites as Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural.

Harold Hedd, featuring the misadventures of a bespectacled marijuana smoker hassled by Constable Leroy, first appeared in the weekly Georgia Straight.

Holmes published three Harold Hedd collections in the early 1970s and did the cover for “History of Underground Comics,” published by Rolling Stone magazine’s book wing, Straight Arrow.

He also contributed to the All Canadian Beaver Comix, White Lunch Comix and Fog City Comix underground collections, found some success in Europe in the 1980s with a series called “Hitler’s Cocaine” and did artwork for Death Rattle, Alien Worlds and Twisted Tales science fiction comics.