The Greek Little Hero motorcycle stamp

This autumn (2024) Greece delighted us with an official series of four stamps, including a motorcycle stamp. On October 23, the Hellenic Post issued the series "The Little Hero" (Greek: Mikros Heros) in the series "Child and Stamp". The series shows four covers of this comic strip series, which was published from 1953 to 1968. The comics were illustrated by Byron Aptosoglou and, under the pseudonym Thanos Astritis, written by Stelios Anemodouras.
Thanos, who consciously experienced World War II, used militarism, death and resistance to the rulers in his stories in the comics that were intended for children. This met with resistance from critics, who felt these were not themes to use in children's (comic) stories. Nevertheless, the "The Little Hero" series, with its almost 800 continuous editions, written and drawn by the same authors all along, was immensely popular with youngsters and was one of the leading educational cartoons on Greek soil. So it is rightly that attention is now given to this series in this stamps issue.

Although there is another issue of Mikros Heros adorned with an image of a motorcycle (see image below), the choice for this stamp series fell on (among others) the ninth comic strip of and with our motorcycle hero with the fictitious name: Giorgos Thalassis. This album is entitled "Trumpet Sound of Victory", and issue date April 21, 1953.

A fleeing partisan on a motorcycle is persecuted by soldiers, also on motorcycles, who shoot at the person, which did not quite "fit" in a youth story. Of course, the hero is not hit and escapes, to continue his struggle.

Although images of the front cover of volume number nine with a blue background can be found on the internet, the original probably had an orange background, just like the image on the stamp (provided by Anthoula Lygka who "Signed" for the stamp design).

Thema volume from the magazine Anti about Little Hero

Front cover of Little Hero no. 9

eBay adverisement for an original copy of the 1st issue of Little Hero no. 9

The value of "our" stamp amounts to € 1.20, and it is printed in sheets of 16 stamps (4 x 4), with on the left a connected tab with an enlarged part of the stamp image on it.

In total 50,000 of each stamp have been printed. 4000 of them have been used to make the official FDC, and 500 have been included in a special folder issue of this stamp series.

FDC

Folder set

Hans de Kloet

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