Before Alfred

1944 - US Navy

Me Worry? H--- No! I'm Gonna Join the Navy

1945 Hermosa Beach Ca

Me Worry? H--- No! I'm Gonna Join the Armed Forces by Crackey!

1945-Shamrock Tx

Me Worry? H--- No! I'm Gonna Join the Navy

1945-Harbor Or

Me Worry? H--- No! I'm Gonna Join the WACS, and Quite Milking Cows

1945 - Hermosa Beach Ca

Me Worry? H--- No! I'm Gonna Join the U.S. Navy and fight.........

Patriotic covers produced during the second World War utilizing the Simp character

A popular anti New Deal, anti Franklin Roosevelt celluloid pin, featuring the character known as IMA Simp, a forerunner of MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. Mr. Simp was a famous image for a clueless person. The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938 - Pinback Travels

Alfred E. Neuman is the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the American humor magazine Mad. The character's distinct smiling face, gap-toothed smile, freckles, red hair, protruding ears, and scrawny body dates back to late 19th-century advertisements for painless dentistry, also the origin of his "What, me worry?" motto. The magazine's founder and original editor, Harvey Kurtzman, began using the character in 1954. He was named "Alfred E. Neuman"

 

Business envelopes - The Comics

Even though I have slowed down on obtaining hand-drawn art, I still research information for my collection. Since both of my parents worked for an envelope manufacturing company, and my father was a stamp collector, I was always had an interest in illustrated envelopes. In the late 1890s the envelopes were decorated with fantastic engraved images representing the sender's business. Recent improvements in methods of communications (e-mail, text, facebook, instagram etc) have made it easier to reach someone quickly, but the message is sterile and lacks anticipation of having to wait and then open the envelope to reveal the message. Therefore I still have a fascination for certain envelope that have been placed through the mail. 

Some of these business envelope offer a postage meter that features a slogan that may represent their business interests. I recently came across a few envelopes that are comic related:

Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mostly mute in the comics 

Dick Tracy meter used by Chicago News Tribune

Chester Gould - Dick Tracy business envelopes

Charles Schulz, Snoopy business envelopes

Garry Trudeau - Doonesbury - 1996 meter

Calvin & Hobbes - Bill Watterson c 1987

Calvin & Hobbes - Bill Watterson c.1988

Calvin & Hobes - Bill Watterson c.1994

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth - 1989

Walter Lantz - Woody Woodpecker - 1972

Keith Haring Inc - 1989

Dik Browne - Hagar the Horrible - 1978

Buster Browne - Outcault Advertising - 1910

1994 Mirage Studios - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles