After
a Century- Comics Strips are Given the
Stamp of Approval... And The Approval of
STAMPS
by Rick Marschall
The
hundredth anniversary of the comic strip is around the corner—1995
or 1996, depending on how you read history, which means that celebrations
will logically and happily occur over two years—and it has taken
only the slowest amongst us by surprise. For some time our small
band of comics scholars and popular-culture feuilletonists have
looked toward the Centennial (yes, it’s momentous enough to merit
capitalization) as more than an excuse for late-night parties in
front of R.F. Outcault’s birthplace. Through all the years of articles,
books, speeches and Ph.D. theses; for all the apologia in conferences
and symposia; despite the many attempts to mount serious museum
and gallery considerations of the comics as an art form... by and
large we are still making same desperate arguments to closed ears,
hard hearts, and stiff necks; and to the same effect. The critical
establishment, the cultural elite, still regards comics as a vulgar
trifle instead of the vital—and indigenous—art form that it is.
For the most part, when museums like the Whitney and MoMA focus
on comics it is for strips’ amusingly recondite lowest-common-denominator
appeal, or their mere service as reference-points for modern artists.
For years the Museum of Cartoon Art mounted notable exhibitions
and The New York Times accorded increasing space to them: fine.
But the most ink the Times ever gave MoCA was when scores of Dick
Tracy and Prince Valiant originals were stolen in an inside job.
To add insult to injury, the congenitally staid Times hoked up the
headlines, calling for Dick Tracy himself to crack the case. (When
Munch’s The Scream was stolen from an Oslo museum last year, did
the Times or anyone else suggest that distraught art lovers scurry
across bridges with their hands astride their heads and mouths open
like knotholes?) The answer—and an appropriate manifesto for the
comics’ second hundred years—is to leave the incestuous group of
insiders alone. Let their galleries and museums promote artists
with less talent and certainly less enduring significance than average
cartoonists. They can be happy; the dupes who attend and purchase
can be happy; and we’ll save time—and be happy ourselves, knowing
the comics are a unique art form, a precious form of communication,
a plastic medium of ideas, excitement, commentary, humor, and fantasy,
and a marvelous mirror of the culture that produces them. Numbers
alone do not confer status upon art forms, but there are some numbers
worth considering here. Twenty millions of images have beenproduced
in comics’ century, testimony at leastto the solidity of this fluid
form. And numbers—of readers, of production activities, of references—count
for somethingin a society whereour culture is defined and continues
to assert itself by such numbers. It istime to recognize that America
is not a cultural cipher or (as the art-critic thugspropagate) that
we must define our arts in terms of traditions of canvas, concert
halls, ancient literature, and stages. Comics should not be crammed
into the nearest semi-logical cubbyhole, there to be more easily
denigrated, but rather should be seen as an independent and dynamic
form. Let other, perhaps future, forms of expression claim to be
“similar” to comics, or in the tradition of the strip form. As comics
close out their first hundred years, we look ahead not just at a
new century but a new millenium, and we should redefine our place
in society, in cultural traditions, and be proud rather than apologetic
for the comics’ role—both inthe rich century just ending, and the
exciting future. Suddenly... look who’s on this soapbox with us.
An unlikely ally in the battle for comics’ legitimacy and larger
acceptance is one of America’s primary grantors of various imprimaturs:
the United StatesPostal Service! This is not trivial norwithout
positive consequence. I have been the consultant to the USPS on
the project that will bring more than 200-million stamps before
the public early next year. Twenty stamps will compose the American
Comic-Strip Classics set. The USPS is confident that correspondents
will be attracted, that collectors will have special interest, that
foreign sales will be high. I am fascinated as much by what is not
happening as by what is. I have been among many who have long advocated
such recognition by the Postal Service (in the old nemo magazine
I urged a petition-campaign for block-sets pairing cartoonists and
their creations; the MoCA led cartoonists to advocate strip-stamps
in their syndicated features; and so forth), but among the factors
I thought doomed the prospects were the traditional arguments against
comics as worthy of respect—see above—and visions of angry protestors
picketing local post offices, their placards decrying taxpayers’
money being spent on, yuk, comics. More,
after all the lines we’ve crossed to bring us to this enlightened
age, how could stamps be politically correct (what was that strip
about the black female poetess who organized disabled rural cloggers?).
Well, those visions have not materialized, nor does the USPS think
they will. With the commercial success of the Elvis stamp the committees
are not chary of mass appeal nor overt plans to that end; and with
the surprising success of the Al Hirschfeld caricatures on stamps
they realize that cartoons can be user-friendly. Other obstacles
in my mind were not obstacles. The USPS has a policy of not picturing
living people on stamps; you have to be dead in this country to
be commemorated on a postage stamp (reflecting the old adage that
Americans never know when they’re licked), and I wondered about
depicting strips and characters that are still running. Commercials?
Copyright problems? No, the USPS wants to celebrate American icons
no matter their status; and copyrights theywill deal with in a straightforward
manner. Huzzah. Sometimes stamp-sheets feature selvage—information
about the series printed on the larger sheet—but for only the second
time in US Postal history (the first being Legends of the West,
currently in production too) stamps will feature information on
the backs of the stamps, under the glue. I have been chosen to write
this data, which will include facts
about the creators, the start-dates of the strips, and miscellaneous
details about the characters. Unfortunately the
space is virtually postage-stamp size (actually, they will be oversized
horizontal commemoratives) but we’ll get the basics covered. There
will also be a collectors’ book produced and sold through mail-order
and the nation’s 1600 post offices. I have been asked to write a
history of the comics featuring the 20 strips of this series and
their characters; so it will be a highlight narrative. But we will
include other strips and characters, material about the larger movements
in comics history; and the illustrations will be many, with 20 of
them designed to merge with the stamps’ images. At deadline for
this issue of Hogan’s Alley the stamps are still being designed.
In some cases I have nominated dozens and dozens of images for strip
characters; and more than 15 designs have been changed in recent
weeks from earlier dummies and mock-ups. (In spite of their marked-confidentiality,
early prototypes have circulated.) The stamps will be released early
in 1995, with a first-day of issue location yet to be decided at
press time. Hogan’s Alley readers will be informed of this and other
details in our next issue. Now to the 29-cent question: what strips
will be featured? Here they are,the result of many nominations,
long
discussions, many levels of decisions, and input from designers,
consultants, and postal authorities: The Yellow Kid; The Katzenjammer
Kids; Little Nemo in Slumberland; Bringing Up Father; Krazy
Kat; Rube Goldberg’s Inventions; Toonerville Folks; Gasoline Alley;
Barney Google;Little Orphan Annie; Popeye; Blondie; Dick Tracy;
Alley Oop; Nancy; Flash Gordon; Li’l Abner; Terry and the Pirates;
Prince Valiant; and—stick with me here, it’s
still a debate at press time, and most readers will know where my
vote is—either BrendaStarr or Pogo. There
were some arbitrary rules imposed—for instance, about strips created
subsequent to 1950—which left out many favorites like Peanuts,
Dennis the Menace, B.C., Beetle Bailey, and Calvin and Hobbes.
But neither stamp fans nor comics fans should despair. Another series
could follow, and we have already begun discussions about comic-book
character series; the stars of animation; political cartoonists’
icons and subjects; and, again, the cartoonists themselves. Unlike
postage stamps, dreams cannot be cancelled. And as we witness this
dream-come-true about recognition for the comics, let us all abandon
the thought, so often expressed, that philately will get you nowhere.
The
hundredth anniversary of the comic strip is around the corner—1995
or 1996, depending on how you read history, which means that celebrations
will logically and happily occur over two years—and it has taken
only the slowest amongst us by surprise. For some time our small
band of comics scholars and popular-culture feuilletonists have
looked toward the Centennial (yes, it’s momentous enough to merit
capitalization) as more than an excuse for late-night parties in
front of R.F. Outcault’s birthplace. Through all the years of articles,
books, speeches and Ph.D. theses; for all the apologia in conferences
and symposia; despite the many attempts to mount serious museum
and gallery considerations of the comics as an art form... by and
large we are still making same desperate arguments to closed ears,
hard hearts, and stiff necks; and to the same effect. The critical
establishment, the cultural elite, still regards comics as a vulgar
trifle instead of the vital—and indigenous—art form that it is.
For the most part, when museums like the Whitney and MoMA focus
on comics it is for strips’ amusingly recondite lowest-common-denominator
appeal, or their mere service as reference-points for modern artists.
For years the Museum of Cartoon Art mounted notable exhibitions
and The New York Times accorded increasing space to them: fine.
But the most ink the Times ever gave MoCA was when scores of Dick
Tracy and Prince Valiant originals were stolen in an inside job.
To add insult to injury, the congenitally staid Times hoked up the
headlines, calling for Dick Tracy himself to crack the case. (When
Munch’s The Scream was stolen from an Oslo museum last year, did
the Times or anyone else suggest that distraught art lovers scurry
across bridges with their hands astride their heads and mouths open
like knotholes?) The answer—and an appropriate manifesto for the
comics’ second hundred years—is to leave the incestuous group of
insiders alone. Let their galleries and museums promote artists
with less talent and certainly less enduring significance than average
cartoonists. They can be happy; the dupes who attend and purchase
can be happy; and we’ll save time—and be happy ourselves, knowing
the comics are a unique art form, a precious form of communication,
a plastic medium of ideas, excitement, commentary, humor, and fantasy,
and a marvelous mirror of the culture that produces them. Numbers
alone do not confer status upon art forms, but there are some numbers
worth considering here. Twenty millions of images have beenproduced
in comics’ century, testimony at leastto the solidity of this fluid
form. And numbers—of readers, of production activities, of references—count
for somethingin a society whereour culture is defined and continues
to assert itself by such numbers. It istime to recognize that America
is not a cultural cipher or (as the art-critic thugspropagate) that
we must define our arts in terms of traditions of canvas, concert
halls, ancient literature, and stages. Comics should not be crammed
into the nearest semi-logical cubbyhole, there to be more easily
denigrated, but rather should be seen as an independent and dynamic
form. Let other, perhaps future, forms of expression claim to be
“similar” to comics, or in the tradition of the strip form. As comics
close out their first hundred years, we look ahead not just at a
new century but a new millenium, and we should redefine our place
in society, in cultural traditions, and be proud rather than apologetic
for the comics’ role—both inthe rich century just ending, and the
exciting future. Suddenly... look who’s on this soapbox with us.
An unlikely ally in the battle for comics’ legitimacy and larger
acceptance is one of America’s primary grantors of various imprimaturs:
the United StatesPostal Service! This is not trivial norwithout
positive consequence. I have been the consultant to the USPS on
the project that will bring more than 200-million stamps before
the public early next year. Twenty stamps will compose the American
Comic-Strip Classics set. The USPS is confident that correspondents
will be attracted, that collectors will have special interest, that
foreign sales will be high. I am fascinated as much by what is not
happening as by what is. I have been among many who have long advocated
such recognition by the Postal Service (in the old nemo magazine
I urged a petition-campaign for block-sets pairing cartoonists and
their creations; the MoCA led cartoonists to advocate strip-stamps
in their syndicated features; and so forth), but among the factors
I thought doomed the prospects were the traditional arguments against
comics as worthy of respect—see above—and visions of angry protestors
picketing local post offices, their placards decrying taxpayers’
money being spent on, yuk, comics. 
More,
after all the lines we’ve crossed to bring us to this enlightened
age, how could stamps be politically correct (what was that strip
about the black female poetess who organized disabled rural cloggers?).
Well, those visions have not materialized, nor does the USPS think
they will. With the commercial success of the Elvis stamp the committees
are not chary of mass appeal nor overt plans to that end; and with
the surprising success of the Al Hirschfeld caricatures on stamps
they realize that cartoons can be user-friendly. Other obstacles
in my mind were not obstacles. The USPS has a policy of not picturing
living people on stamps; you have to be dead in this country to
be commemorated on a postage stamp (reflecting the old adage that
Americans never know when they’re licked), and I wondered about
depicting strips and characters that are still running. Commercials?
Copyright problems? No, the USPS wants to celebrate American icons
no matter their status; and copyrights theywill deal with in a straightforward
manner. Huzzah. Sometimes stamp-sheets feature selvage—information
about the series printed on the larger sheet—but for only the second
time in US Postal history (the first being Legends of the West,
currently in production too) stamps will feature information on
the backs of the stamps, under the glue. I have been chosen to write
this data, which will include 
facts
about the creators, the start-dates of the strips, and miscellaneous
details about the characters. Unfortunately 
the
space is virtually postage-stamp size (actually, they will be oversized
horizontal commemoratives) but we’ll get the basics covered. There
will also be a collectors’ book produced and sold through mail-order
and the nation’s 1600 post offices. I have been asked to write a
history of the comics featuring the 20 strips of this series and
their characters; so it will be a highlight narrative. But we will
include other strips and characters, material about the larger movements
in comics history; and the illustrations will be many, with 20 of
them designed to merge with the stamps’ images. At deadline for
this issue of Hogan’s Alley the stamps are still being designed.
In some cases I have nominated dozens and dozens of images for strip
characters; and more than 15 designs have been changed in recent
weeks from earlier dummies and mock-ups. (In spite of their marked-confidentiality,
early prototypes have circulated.) The stamps will be released early
in 1995, with a first-day of issue location yet to be decided at
press time. Hogan’s Alley readers will be informed of this and other
details in our next issue. Now to the 29-cent question: what strips
will be featured? Here they are,the result of many nominations,
lon
g
discussions, many levels of decisions, and input from designers,
consultants, and postal authorities: The Yellow Kid; The Katzenjammer
Kids; Little Nemo in Slumberland; Bringing Up Father; Krazy
Kat; Rube Goldberg’s Inventions; Toonerville Folks; Gasoline Alley;
Barney Google;Little Orphan Annie; Popeye; Blondie; Dick Tracy;
Alley Oop; Nancy; Flash Gordon; Li’l Abner; Terry and the Pirates;
Prince Valiant; and—stick with me here, 
it’s
still a debate at press time, and most readers will know where my
vote is—either Brenda Starr or Pogo. There
were some arbitrary rules imposed—for instance, about strips created
subsequent to 1950—which left out many favorites like Peanuts,
Dennis the Menace, B.C., Beetle Bailey, and Calvin and Hobbes.
But neither stamp fans nor comics fans should despair. Another series
could follow, and we have already begun discussions about comic-book
character series; the stars of animation; political cartoonists’
icons and subjects; and, again, the cartoonists themselves. Unlike
postage stamps, dreams cannot be cancelled. And as we witness this
dream-come-true about recognition for the comics, let us all abandon
the thought, so often expressed, that philately will get you nowhere.