Mad Peck

John Frederick Peck (November 16, 1942 – March 15, 2025), known as The Mad Peck, was an American underground cartoonist, rock poster artist and disc jockey. His most famous poster is a 1978 comic book-style poster that starts with the line, "Providence, Rhode Island, where it rains two days out of three except during the rainy season when it snows like a bitch." The poster has been reprinted many times and is widely available for purchase throughout Rhode Island.

Background Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 16, 1942, John Frederick Peck grew up in Connecticut and attended Brown University, where he studied engineering. Graduating from Brown in 1967, in the intervening years he also attended New York University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

By the mid 1970s, The Mad Peck was creating a regular comic which ran monthly in Creem, and also plugged products in a bizarre pop culture mish-mash similar to some of Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead work.

Averse to publicity or being photographed, the Peck co-hosted an oldies show in the 1970s on Brown's WBRU-FM radio station under the name "Dr. Oldie."

Books Mad Peck Studios: A 20 Year Retrospective (Doubleday, 1987).