Traditional stamp collectors in America have become furious over new designs from the US Postal service that feature everyone’s favourite rodent-themed Superhero (sorry Squirrel Girl), Batman.


Created to honour The Caped Crusader’s 75th birthday, the stamp set is made up of 8 different designs and include the artwork of several well-known Batman artists – but the purists aren’t happy.

“They have really ruined the stamp program,” former Postmaster General Benjamin Bailar told Businessweek. Bailar, who resigned from the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee in August as a protest to stamp series like this, went on to say: “They have prostituted it in an effort to make money.”

This isn’t the first time that commercial stamp sets have raised the ire of philatelists; in November of last year, the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee were furious when a certain boy wizard popped up on a new stamp design.

“Harry Potter is not American,” John Hotchner, a former president of the American Philatelic Society, told the LA Times. “It’s foreign, and it’s so blatantly commercial – it’s off the charts.”

“The Postal Service knows what will sell, but that’s not what stamps ought to be about. Things that don’t sell so well are part of the American story.”


It’s a shame, but it looks like the incorporation of pop-culture to stamps just won’t stick. (Boom boom!)