Comix historian, Patrick Rosenkranz will be in Vancouver this Saturday at Lucky’s Comics for an art show and retrospective on the work of underground cartoonist, Rand Holmes. Rand’s work was a fixture of Vancouver, gracing the covers the Georgia Straight during the early years. He is also known for his Harold Hedd Comic series. Patrick joined me this week to discuss his book about Rand and a variety of other topics.
I was at that autobio panel at Stumptown as well, there is one person you guys almost had. Emi Lenox can be found here: http://www.emitown.blogspot.com/
Her use of metaphor in autobio comics stands out as one of my favorite ways of obfuscating personal information when it’s being published online. Check out those Army Cats. Her work is scattershot, non-narrative and stands out in stark contrast to a great deal of other artists. I’m an enormous fan.
This was a great interview, I had never heard of Rand Holmes until this morning and I’ll be digging into this book as soon as it pops up in the library. There is this entire world of comics that I have never heard of, it’s great to start filling in the gaps.
I’m excited that Eriq is excited about Rand Holmes. Check out Rosenkranz’s book on Greg Irons, and his over-view history of underground comics, Rebel Visions (all from Fantagraphics). There would be no indie or alternative or “art” comics without the undergrounds. It’s important stuff!
Hey! Great to hear there was a show of Rand’s work (unfortunately I live at the other side of the ocean to make the trip). Actually I’m the only guy who left a review on the Rand Holmes book at Amazon, and it’s pretty sad to see that no one else seems interested in his work or even remembers him. Rand was quite popular in Europe, especially in Germany and the northern countries (Sweden, Denmark, etc.).
I loved Rand’s work so much, that even his style kept rubbing on my own work, and when I first showed my stuff in Spain (for the Spanish version of “Creepy”, a looong time ago), the editor over there told me my work looked like Rand Holmes’, which I found weird for someone editing a book that had nothing to do with underground comix to say.
Over the years I’ve collected all I could on Rand Holmes, even buying his books in German and Italian, as I would find some stuff in those books that I couldn’t find in the other books published in America. I can’t believe I’m one of the only guys out there who still remembers Rand Holmes. I can’t express how much I loved his work and how much it meant to me (he was my favorite comic book artist ever!).
My apologies to Patrick for saying that the work looked like it was scanned from the books and not the original art. But the problem is that original comic book art is scanned by people who know nothing of original inked art. I can’t understand why when I scan my own work it looks ten times better that when all this big publishers do their own scanning. Oh well. Anyway, this book is the best bio I’ve ever read on a comic book artist and I can’t stress how much I recommend it to every comic book lover out there. And Patrick, sorry for my nitpicking on your job, it was unfair from my part, but I’m such a huge fan of Rand’s work, that I went a little overboard with my criticism, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love it. Thanks for a great book! I’m just sorry I have never been able to see Rand’s original art. Maybe, sometime in the future we’ll have to organize a showing of his work in Europe…
Great interview though!
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yeah, I really loved Rand Holmes back in the day. I love eye-candy comics and he’s got that in spades.
I remember being perplexed by the story that showed him in a 69 position with another guy. the two gay guys are shown quoting an excerpt from that horrible “all you need to know about sex” book that made silly pronouncements about gay sex. I bought the “Best of Slow Death” a couple years ago and it included a self-portrait by Holmes of him kneeling in a bathroom sucking on a huge, hard dick and there’s a cop in the background closing in on this illegal tryst. beautiful illo.
Holmes always drew sexy young women to be hugely, droopily endowed. I think this showed his true feelings, i.e., aversion. he also did that story for Slow Death were the woman lures the young man home only to feed him to her pet T-Rex.
anyway, glad to see Holmes getting his due, so to speak. and it’s always a joy to listen to Patrick Rosenkrantz, another old duffer like myself.