John Peck (The Mad Peck) – RIP
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Cartoon artist John Peck, also known as The Mad Peck, has passed away.
John F. Peck aka The Mad Peck
November 16, 1942 – March 15, 2025
From the WPRI obituary:
John Peck, the artist behind the poster who signed his art as “The Mad Peck,” died at the hospital on Saturday after a sudden illness, according to his friend. He was 83.
After graduating Brown University, Peck rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s making concert posters for famous acts like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Cream. His Cream poster is perhaps the most famous, still seen selling on the auction block to rare poster collectors.
Peck was also an avid cartoonist and part of an underground comic book collective that gained a national cult following, and was billed among the likes of Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar.
The Mad Peck was an early, late 1960s, part of the underground comix scene. From a Comics Journal interview:
I did go into New York a few times. Primarily became friendly with Spain Rodriguez and Kim Deitch, who was editing Gothic Blimp Works (the comix supplement connected to the East Village Other hippie newspaper) at the time. So I contributed some work to some of their later issues. I always felt a kinship to the East Village Other because that’s how I got started.
At some time in the 1970s John had a weekly comic strip syndicated to underground newspapers. In lieu of not finding any samples of his Burn of the Week we offer a few samples of his Flash Burn Funnies from Fusion (whose only connection that i am aware of is the word “burn” in the titles):
Sean Howe posts a 1980 alumni biography of John Peck from Brown University.
The Brown University profile details John’s love for and involvement in music which flowed into his cartooning as he soon made a name for himself with his illustrated record reviews for Creem and others.
Speaking of music and Creem, John also created posters for concerts, most famously for Cream’s last live appearance:
Though John was an early contributor to underground newspapers his involvement in the comix was very limited. From that Comics Journal interview:
You were never really expelled from the UG comix establishment, were you? How is it even possible to be expelled from the UGs?
The nicest way that I can put the situation, is that living in Providence and not wanting to leave Providence, I was never able to pal around with the underground comics establishment particularly.
But he did manage to publish one comix book and contributed to a couple more.
Providence, Rhode Island where it rains two days out of three except during the rainy season when it snows like a bitch, and Friendship is a one-way street. Rich folks live on Power Street, but most of us live off Hope.
Back to Providence, this time a great 2016 Providence Journal feature article on The Mad Peck:
Following Peck’s belated graduation from Brown in 1967 (“time off for bad behavior at NYU downtown and Rhode Island School of Design”), Peck took his first and only job as the assistant manager at the Shipyard Drive-In movie theater in Providence. It was here that Peck became an expert in the field of B movies.
This appreciation of low art became a tenet of Peck’s art and criticism. It also flung him together with other Providence-based pop-culture savants, notably writer Les Daniels, comedian Martin Mull, and Rudy Cheeks, bandleader for the New England-famous Young Adults. Daniels and Cheeks, birth name Bruce McCrae, used to provide live narration for obscure horror movies at the West End Cafe, the same venue where Peck would deliver encyclopedic lectures on the corniest rock ‘n’ roll exploitation films known to man.
This proximity paid off well for Peck. In 1971, Peck and Daniels published the first “serious” history of the comic book which, according to Peck, had been largely overlooked by art and literary critics. “Comix: A History of Comic Books in America” was a hit, and the New York Times wrote it up as a suggested gift for the holiday season, though they warned, “To be given with discretion.”
Despite the book’s popularity, Peck and Daniels made relatively little money from it. Peck’s first commercial success was a T-shirt he designed for the ascending J. Geils Band. It went the 1971 equivalent of viral, but Peck, a perennial cheapskate, dismantled the T-shirt business “after the price of cotton boomed in ’74.”
In the mid-1970s, the gag advertisements from Peck’s mail-order catalog evolved into comic strip album reviews that ran in national publications like Rolling Stone and Creem.
The Mad Peck Facebook page where John’s passing was first made known.
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