July 26th marked the 250th anniversary of national mail delivery in the United States, and the USPS (founded later, in 1971) has issues a special set of stamps to mark the occasion. I enjoy a good postage stamp, and Ware’s art might not have the iconic quality enjoyed by classic stamps, but the medium is ideal for Ware’s particular artistic perversion: tiny panels. What is a postage stamp, but a tiny little panel in which to cram a picture? I’ve read enough of Ware’s work to know that the USPS probably had to specify in their contract with the artist that Ware could not subdivide the stamp into even smaller panels, because I bet that was absolutely his first instinct. Ware’s comics are pretty much fractals; if you peer closely enough at his panels you discover that they subdivide into even smaller panels. Although this set of stamps fit together into a larger design, they also read from left to right as a comic.
