Chris Ware stamps coming this summer

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2025/0428-usps-announces-stamps-celebrating-its-250th-anniversary.htm

The second release, 250 Years of Delivering, is a pane of 20 stamps by cartoonist Chris Ware that invites the public to spot a fun array of familiar postal items and icons while following a mail carrier on her rounds through four seasons of the year.

Both the prestige booklet which includes the Ben Franklin Stamp and the 250 Years of Delivering pane are scheduled to be released in July. There will be additional stamps in the 2025 stamps program announced soon. These designs are preliminary and may change.

Postal Products

Customers may purchase stamps and other philatelic products through The Postal Store at usps.com/shopstamps, by calling 844-737-7826, by mail through USA Philatelic or at select Post Office locations nationwide. For officially licensed stamp products, shop the USPS Officially Licensed Collection on Amazon. The stories behind the stamps and more are available at stampsforever.com.

Elsa Charretier postal labels get fancy

She had been creating simple drawings for them for years, but her recent print club mailing has this lovely Batgirl. Details on the subscription at https://www.patreon.com/elsacharretier

Designing Herblock's Bill of Rights stamp

 In 1966, Herbert "Herblock" Block designed a stamp about the US Bill of Rights, which was issued on July 1, 1966. Recently I was shown the following article on his process for designing it. 

On the Record: Bill of Rights; 5-cent commemorative issued July 1, 1966 at Miami Beach, Fla. [aka Herblock Designs a Stamp].

Belmont Faries

S.P.A. Journal 30 (3; November 1967); cover, 163-170

It's worth quoting part of the article now.

The stamp's designer, also a speaker raised the question of how the Bill of Rights would fare if it were up for ratification today, quoting critics who ask 'Must our government be weak in the face of men accused of crime, who demand legal advice; weak before those who take the fifth amendment, weak before those who openly express differences with government policy even in time of war?

"The answer", he said, "is that the restriction imposed on government by the Bill of Rights - these so-called weakness of our government in relation to the rights of the individual person, of the poorest, the meanest or the most misguided of its people -- these are in fact our nation's greatest strength."

Update: the photograph from the cover is in the Library of Congress, but only available at low-resolution unless you visit. Thanks, Sara Duke!

SpongeBob SquarePants stamps coming sometime this year

SpongeBob SquarePants Date & Site TBD | PSA pane of 16 stamps Click to see full pane. SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. Each episode chronicles the adventures of the perpetually optimistic and generous main character SpongeBob SquarePants and his aquatic friends in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Only a month after its TV premiere in 1999, the show became the highest-rated and most viewed animated Saturday morning program that year, beating Pokemon. Its popularity made it a multimedia franchise and the highest rated Nickelodeon series. SpongeBob SquarePants has won a variety of awards including six Annie Awards, eight Golden Reel Awards, four Emmy Awards, two BAFTA Children's Awards, and a record-breaking twenty-one Kids' Choice Awards. A Broadway musical based on the series opened in 2017 to critical acclaim.

U.S. Stamp Design: Infamous American Felons by Daniel Boris

I have in the past printed out similar cartoons and used them to mail an empty envelope to myself.

Peanuts stamp designer interviewed

 https://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2024/11/meet-antonio-alcala-usps-stamp-designer.html

Combat Insignia / War Insignia albums for World War II Disney unit stamps

These were done by Disney cartoonists, and other animation studios, and at least 201 were printed. There's information from Douglas H. Henkle about the first 5 volumes (#s 1-201) at https://www.folklib.net/fdc/wwii-combat-insignia.shtml and https://www.folklib.net/fdc/wwii-combat-insignia2.shtml and for the mysterious volume 6 which apparently had 200, most of which were not repeats of the first 200. Also, he's found horizontal and vertical versions of the stamps.

 

Box cover

 

One thing Mr. Henkle may have missed is that the first 4 albums were also sold as a boxed set. I recently bought one on e-Bay. I've emailed him my photos.