On March 20th the Royal Mail are to issue a set of commemorative stamps on the theme of British comics. Very nice looking designs too, each featuring a different cover with a head shot of a character related to that comic in the foreground.
The comics featured are: The Dandy (with Desperate Dan), The Beano (Dennis the Menace), Eagle (Dan Dare), Topper (Beryl the Peril), Tiger (Roy of the Rovers), Bunty (The Four Marys), Buster (Hugh McNeill version of Buster), Valiant (The Steel Claw), Twinkle (Twinkle), and 2000AD (Judge Dredd).
The First Day Covers are produced by Bradbury and feature a Girls and Boys set at £20 each. Curiously, Valiant and 2000AD are in the girls' set, although it doesn't seem that they've chosen the comics to be gender specific. Besides, some women do read 2000AD!
What's more puzzling is the commemorative strapline '75 Years of British Comics'. I'm assuming the Royal Mail and Bradbury know that British comics have been around a lot longer than that (over 120 years) and it just means they've selected comics from the last 75 years.
The main thing is that UK comics are being celebrated and that the stamps will hopefully get the public thinking about comics and perhaps even encourage some to seek out current issues of Dandy, Beano and 2000AD.
For more details on how to order these highly collectible items see this website:
http://www.bfdc.co.uk/2012/comics/resources/stamps/6163.html
Thanks to 'stevezodiac' on Comics UK for bringing this news to my attention.
I would assume the "75 Years" strapline is more likely a reference to The Dandy's upcoming Diamond Jubilee this year. Which, as the first of what may be described as 'modern UK comics', is used as the benchmark. Not entirely accurate, I agree, (Ally Sloper, Tiger Tim, Illustrated Chips, Funny Wonder, et al all forgotten?) but a narrower definition of UK comics that many people would relate to.
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