MMMS (Mighty Marvel mailing Society)
My whole life I have been someone who runs to get the mail. In it I might find checks or magazines or submission acceptances (or submission rejections) or misdelivered mail of someone else’s that I can look at with conjecture. (“Hm. The people one street over get Sanitation Monthly. What does this say about them?”)
Now, even though I’ve had a postal meter for years and generally use email or the internet rather than snailmail, I might actually use more stamps — just so that I can further share my love of these delightful images, which the Post Awful is releasing in 2007.
I do have some quibbles about the selections. In fact, they’re more than quibbles. I’m thrilled to see John Buscema represented with that beautiful and iconic Sub-Mariner #1 cover, and Gene Colan with Iron Man #1. And I’m actually just glad to have this set of stamps to begin with.
But… where’s Thor? When did Thor become a less important Marvel character than Sub-Mariner or, for Pete’s sake, SPIDER-WOMAN? If it’s about diversity — in this case showing a female superhero or two — then why not a black superhero? A case could certainly be made for Black Panther or Blade. Where is Dr. Strange? Certainly he’s a more important character than Spider-woman, and Steve Ditko did stunning visionary other-worldly work on that character — any number of covers or scenes would have made for a terrific scene. Ditko is represented solely by the cover of “Amazing Spider-Man” #1, and that’s in concert with Jack Kirby. Why not a purely Ditko cover to give Spider-Man’s co-creator his due? Or, again, a Doctor Strange cover?
The Daredevil cover selected is nothing special — and clearly was chosen because of the appearance of Elektra; when did Daredevil become secondary to Elektra? I guess when his movie did even worse than hers. And while the Hulk portrait depicted is in what I’ll call “The Trimpe Style,” it’s by Rich Buckler and (according to Mark Evanier) John Romita. I grew up on Trimpe’s work and I think the guy got a raw deal from the industry. (After 29 years with Marvel, and at age 56, he got summarily dumped.) It would have been a nice touch to finally give him a stamp of approval.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:33 am
As you note, the choices were probably made in part to meet political correctness standards. I imagine Black Panther didn’t make the cut because of his name. Maybe Blade and Doctor Strange had too much to do with the dreaded occult, bane of right-thinking Christians everywhere. Who the Hell knows? Personally I was hoping for a Howard the Duck and that rare nude She Hulk cover.
As a mail carrier I’m regularly seeing the DC superhero stamps. The USPO also made a book of postcards of all the DC images. If you can’t get it at your local PO, call 1-800-STAMP24 for a free catalog of postal products.
I use plenty of commemerative stamps, especially those to do with the Arts, popular, fine, or in-between. Loved the Universal monsters, jazz musicians and Andy Warhol. I figure that the more they sell, the more likely they are to make others along the same lines. It’s a great way to celebrate the ‘good stuff’. Besides, I love the idea of dull people looking at them and saying, “Why the heck did they put THAT on a stamp? I want flags, flowers, and Ronald Regan on MY postage.”
November 9th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Of course there have been far more significant Comic Book Characters depicted on US Stamps, for example, my favorite President (AFTER Bill Clinton) of the Modern Era
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON – who once said, “the Senate is easy as long as you have all of their peckers in your pocket.” One must remember that this was said in the 1960s.
Bless you, Uncle Zany! You make me feel like a Republican by comparison to your warp-driven sensibilities, and god-damn is that ever fuckin’ refreshing! Every syllable from Uncle Rich is like a slap that you’d like to deliver to DUBYA, and then you wake up in a cold sweat and remember that you ARE a liberal!
Relieved, you sleep once again! (They’ve lost this time around, you know.)
At least we won’t see any Ted Haggard stamps anytime soon, and don’t even think about LICKING that! Sheesh!
March 29th, 2018 at 2:49 pm
Hello, the link to the article about Herb Trimpe being fired from Marvel (which reads: got a raw deal from the industry) no longer works. It points to on an old site of mine which no longer exists. In its place, I created a new site. Please use the following link instead to access the Herb Trimpe article: https://marvelheroeslibrary.com/blog-post.aspx?title=Old+Superheroes+Never+Die%2c+They+Join+the+Real+World&id=5690 Apologies for the inconvenience.