This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
The British comics scene has two representatives in the set: Return to the Forbidden Planet is based on my 2005 design for Josef Weinberger Ltd., and 2000AD artist Leigh Gallagher has his 2006 Rocky Horror Show poster for SWD included.
I was contacted by Webb & Webb, the stamps' designers, back in June 2009. Since the previous November they'd apparently been looking through over 150 years worth of musical posters and had somehow decided that my Return to the Forbidden Planet artwork merited inclusion. I believe it was originally going to be just part of a collectors' pack - not an actual postage stamp.
I didn't hear anything for months and presumed it was one of the many jobs that starts full of enthusiasm and then fades away quietly to nothing - there are a lot of those! Until one day a nice lady from the Royal Mail phoned up - it was all on, they'd finally contacted Bob Carlton, the author, Her Majesty the Queen was looking over the stamps personally to approve them, mine was going to be an actual postage stamp, and they were coming out in November 2010. Somewhere along the line this got put back to February 2011, and here we are - I'm now nationally available to lick for those wanting to send something that costs 97p (eg. a large letter weighing 101g to 250g in the UK or the price of a worldwide airmail letter from 11 to 20g).
You can see my initial sketches for the original job in this blog post and there's another post about the design here. You can buy special sets of the stamps and postcards at the Royal Mail website and in all good Post Offices across the land (the ones that are still open). So go and send some mail! Especially airmail letters to countries outside of Europe! Or slightly heavier large letters to your fellow citizens of the British Isles! And buy a Return to the Forbidden Planet stamp with which to send it!
