The Ephemerist

In 1980, DC wanted to make some fuzz about the extra content pages they were adding to their books. The back-up stories were supposed to feature a whole stable of regular also-rans (if you don’t count Batman and Robin), and for some reason, it seemed like a good idea to sell all this as a stamp collection. You’ll want to own all backup stories, just like you want to have your collection complete, get it ?

I don’t know whether the inspiration for this were the Marvel Value Stamps of a few years earlier, but in any case, it was only an ad campaign. With cheesy copy to boot.

(via Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin)

While waiting to post some christmas cards, I picked up these new Duostamps from my local post office. Duostamps are typically standard value stamps that have a second stamp attached with a certain topical image. In this case, from left to right, the following themes are used :

• The smurfs, with elements from several Smurfs albums (rather shoddily cropped, if you ask me). It would seem that these stamps were issued just in time for the 50th anniversary of Peyo’s characters, which will be celebrated this year.
• A set of five stamps with characters by Hergé, branded with the “Une Vie, Un Oeuvre” logo. These stamps feature Totor, Leo et Lea, Quick et Flupke, Jo et Zette and Tintin, respectively.
• A second set of stamps with Hergé art (featuring Tintin and a portrait of Hergé himself. This set too is branded with the “Une Vie, Un Oeuvre” logo.

These stamps are available from Belgian post offices, and (most probably) also on the De Post Eshop. (Smurfs © Peyo; Totor, Leo et Lea, Quick et Flupke, Jo et Zette and Tintin © Moulinsart)

In 1990 the Deutsche Post celebrated the 125th Geburtstag of seminal German comic heroes Max Und Moritz by publishing one of the very few comic-related sets in their history. Four stamps were published, featuring scenes from the comic book by Wilhelm Busch in 1865. Above is a self-addressed envelope from the day these stamps were published, featuring the First Day Cancellation. I won it on Ebay around Christmas, and it was a bargain as well.

An online version of a 1925 Max Und Moritz reprint can be found at Children Books Online.

Ever Meulen has a long history of illustration related to books, reading and writing. These stamps are the latest in that line. They were issued earlier by the Belgian Post Office, and deal with all forms of writing (with the motto “What’s written, stays”). I like the fact that Ever didn’t limit “writing” to books, but also included music, letters and even emails. In fact, he focuses on letter writing - after all, this is the post office. On that note - check out the sad git in the last stamp : is it any wonder that the only person in these stamps using a computer is crying his eyes out ? The Post Office needs your business, people, so stop emailing and start writing letters !

Also, check out the git’s t-shirt on the last stamp. This is a reference to the comic series “Stamp & Pilou“, which the Belgian Post Office has been publishing for quite a while now. I don’t really care for it much myself, but it has introduced a lot of kids to stamp collecting, which is a good thing.

Finally, a little philatelist phact. These stamps are among the first to be issued in Belgium without an actual monetary value. Instead, they have a “1″ in a circle in the top right corner, indicating that they can be used for all regular mail, regardless the rise in tarriffs in the future.

(artwork © Belgian Post Office)

Used to be a time when you could find stamps with US comic characters from countries all over the world, except from the US themselves. Since 2005, the US Post Office is finally catching on. Brilliant move, although I think the choice of characters is a bit too much driven by marketing, and the art is not that representative. Personnaly, I would have had one artist doing all the portraits (Darwyn Cooke, or Alex Ross). Still, it beats licking the back of a president…

More stamps. The Hulk, from Madagascar. ‘Nuff said…

A couple of years ago I won an Ebay auction for some envelopes, featuring art from Al Capp’s Advice Fo’ Chillun. Little did I know that they proved to be customised envelopes, with the art lovingly glued to them by some doting family member who from 1937 until 1938 frequently exchanged letters with one Frances Ann Skillins from Portland. When necessary, the captions in the cartoons were changed to suit the occasion.

Which made them even more valuable to me…

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In the late 1970’s, the French department store La Samaritaine held a competition in which contestants could buy sealed envelopes containing one of four sheets of specially designed Tintin stamps. They could also win bikes and stuff, but the stamps themselves proved to be a big enough incentive to have people storm the stores…

Later, the same art was used on a single stamp sheet issued by the chocolate maker Côte d’Or to celebrate Tintin’s 50th anniversary.

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I browsed around on ebay recently and found a literal deluge of Tintin related stamps, issued by countries like Tibet (I didn’t know they still issued stamps), Eritrea, Crimea and Equatorial Guinea. They are no doubt meant as a means to cash in on the Hergé centenary this year. As the production value of these stamps is very low (the art on the Eritrea ones is ridiculous, to be frank), I doubt these are officially Moulinsart licensed products. Nevertheless, here they are. Read on for a full list.

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The rather excellent Moors Magazine, a Dutch webzine about stuff that its founder is interested in (a bit like the Ephemerist, I guess), has high quality scans of the magnificent Children’s stamps that Joost Swarte did in 1993. I particularly liked them because Swarte used a comic book language to spread their “story” beyond the confines of the stamps themselves. It looked as if somebody had torn fragments from existing comic books and cut them down to stamp size. They also echoed the narrative device used in one of my all time favorite comics, “Kinderen baas”, by having children and adults switch roles. Brilliant stuff !

Swarte’s release for this year is also very beautiful (also shown above), but a lot less inventive (in my opinion).

If you’re looking for good examples of mr Swarte’s work, Moors Magazine has plenty, as well as stuff by that other Low Countries luminary, Ever Meulen.

(Thanks to my mom for the link)