Pete Loveday is a British underground

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

. He is best known for his series of

comics a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...

charting the adventures of

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

character Russell, including ''Big Bang Comics'', ''Big Trip Travel Agency'' and ''Plain Rapper Comix'' printed by AK Press. Since its initial publication in 1981, ''Big Bang Comics'' is Britain's most successful underground comic book series. His style is reminiscent of US underground comic creators Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, with a similar use of

cross-hatching Hatching (french: hachure) is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing (or painting or scribing) closely spaced parallel lines. (It is also used in monochromatic representations of heraldry to indicate what t ...

. Recurring themes in Loveday's comics are

drugs A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...

, Rock festivals, and environmentalism. ''Plain Rapper Comix'' #2 is Loveday's

pamphlet A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...

in comic book form on a history of

hemp Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a botanical class of ''Cannabis sativa'' cultivars grown specifically for industrial or medicinal use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest growing plants o ...

and why it would be beneficial for the environment to replace tree paper with hemp paper. This was the first publication in modern times to be printed on such paper. The Russell comics have been collected in book form, ''Russell, The Saga of a peaceful man'' published by John Brown Publishing. The character of Russell reappeared in the ''Big Trip Travel Agency'' series published by AK Press in six volumes released between 1995 to 2012. Issue 2 notably featured The Levellers. After Big Trip 5 (1999), Russell's story was to be continued in Volume 6, which it seemed would never appear. Then in 2012, to many fan's delight, AKPress made Big Trip 6 available through their website and through a mainstream Internet retailer where some reviews of Loveday's classic comics can also be read. As a champion of British small press comics, he drew many multi-artist jam strips in

B. Patston B is the second letter of the Latin alphabet. B may also refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Astronomy * Astronomical objects in the Barnard list of dark nebulae (abbreviation B) * Latitude (''b'') in the galactic coordinate syst ...

's '' Psychopia''. He drew a Russell comic in Danny King's ''Blah, Blah, Blah!'' He used to have a stall at Glastonbury Festival, selling his comics and other items and now, after a gap of more than a decade, has a stall at the

Secret Garden Party The Secret Garden Party, often colloquially shortened to the SGP, is an independent arts and music festival which takes place in Abbots Ripton near Huntingdon in England. This location is on part of the grounds of a Georgian farmhouse and has it ...

and Beautiful Days, both festivals for which he produces artwork. He has experienced some problems with his eyesight although has remained prolific, producing a wide range of artwork including advertising posters (including an unlikely 1998 campaign for Nike) through greetings cards, postcards, CD and record sleeve designs, book illustrations to flyers, and T-shirt designs. In July 2018, Freedom Seeds, a UK based seed bank, named a cannabis strain ‘Big Trip’ in tribute to Loveday. Pete created a logo for the product. Loveday attributes his black sense of humour to having spent the 1969

Summer of Love The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. ...

disembowelling chickens in a poultry processing factory, a traumatic experience that left him with a morbid fear of death. He currently lives in Devon with his wife Kate.

References

External links

Pete Loveday
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loveday, Pete Underground cartoonists British comics artists Living people Counterculture festivals activists Year of birth missing (living people)