The Sunday Funnies - Popeye 1986-1989!

It seems that in 1986, in the full bloom of the second Reagan administration, King Features Syndicate was faced with dilemma. Who was going to draw the long-running and highly successful Thimble Theater Starring Popeye the Sailor Man comic strip. 

Of course Popeye had been introduced into the Thimble Theater ensemble in the early 1930's when FDR was attempting to stem the dread effects of a worldwide depression on a nation which was staggering after a decade or more of wine and song. In that environment a tough frisky and salty sailor who threw punches first and took names later if at all was a nice release from tense times. Popeye proved invulnerable both literally in the strip and outside where in the era that produced Mickey Mouse he was the most popular cartoon character in the world as well as a dominant figure in the funny pages. But at the height of the strip's success its creator E.C. Segar died. 

The strip soldiered on with Dick Winner and other assistants holding the fort. Bud Sagendorf was one assistant who helped expand the Popeye empire by making a successful foray into comic books with new stories for an up and coming medium. Eventually in 1959 Sagendorf took control of the comic strip as well and remained at the helm until age brought him to seek partial retirement in 1986. He'd keep doing the Sunday page, but the daily needed a new talent to take the helm. The choice was a sage one, but not an obvious one. 

It begins with the aforementioned Mickey Mouse, a household name and powerhouse icon of the Walt Disney empire. Such potent symbols are ripe for satire but when cartoonist Bobby London took aim at the Mouse in the pages of Air Pirates Funnies it proved disastrous not only to London himself but to the very notion of satire and free speech. According to the courts the voice of freedom to mock was secondary to the power of the marketplace and a judgment was made against London which hobbled him for years. 

He kept cartooning of course. And it was one of his other creations named Dirty Duck that first introduced me to the talented and potent artist. I found dirty duck in the pages of National Lampoon in that magazine's comics section and for me reading London's Dirty Duck in Nat Lamp was like reading Don Martin in MAD, the first order of business whenever a new issue fell into my mitts. 

King Features turned over Thimble Theater to Bobby London who ironically had found some success working for the "House of Mouse" in the intervening years. As one might've expected of the artist who had done Dirty Duck, the denizens of Sweethaven were in for some ruckus. Comic strips had changed since Segar's day as had the newspapers that transported them. Other mediums like television had diminished the newspaper's hold on the public mind and consequently the comic strip's hold on the public imagination. And economics had made comic strips get smaller and smaller as the need for brevity became necessary. The luxurious artwork of bygone eras was disappeared and the original creators were long gone. In their place were gag-a-day cartoons by the likes of Mort Walker and Bobby Hart, punchy jokes that hit and then evaporated. Continuities were gone save for a few adventure strips like The Phantom and Prince Valiant and soaps like Mary Worth. But London was about to change that. 

After a year or so, some of it anonymous, London slowly make the strip more strident and pointed taking on not general notions of human nature, but news of the day. The aforementioned Reagan administration came in for some comments here and there as well as the all-consuming consumer culture which seemed to define the era. Later still London returned continuing storylines to Thimble Theater as Segar had always done in the dailies and we saw the Sea Hag become not a vile sorceress but something more heinous, a soulless property speculator who was intent on turning Sweethaven into an enormous shopping mall and only Popeye stood up to her. Later Popeye gets ensnarled in a wrestling match with invading Martians and Wimpy imagines what life would be like married to Olive Oyl. In these early years it was Olive Oyl who really stands out as she tries to stand on her own two feet out of her parents's home and apart from Popeye. She ends up accidently creating a deadly coffee which the military want to use in South America and which later still as "Agent Olive" comes back to mutate all manner of things in Sweethaven itself. 

It's a raucous ride with London's take on the denizens of Thimble Theater and that's what E.C. Segar would've love I suspect. More next time as London's tenure comes crashing down. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Me Li'l Sweepea!

The sixth and final volume of the Fantagraphics collection of the classic E.C. Segar Popeye comic strips has some real surprises in it. Tragically Segar feel victim to leukemia as a relatively young man and so lost the chance to really demonstrate his talent for decades unlike some of his peers. He died when Popeye was at the height of its newspaper popularity and was restructuring the way in which the newspaper syndicates were going about getting revenues from their Sunday page draws. 

As you'd suspect from the title more than a few stories involve the mysterious tyke Popeye takes and raises as his own, the bizarre baby named only "Swee'Pea". But first there is the saga of the "Mystery Melody" in which an unknown female plays haunting music to lure Poopdeck Pappy. It turns out it's the Sea Hag and she turns her attentions on Wimpy for some reason. Afterwards Popeye becomes invested in saving a starving young woman named "Susan". He becomes rather obsessed with seeing to her welfare and ultimately finds her home and makes sure that she is no longer being swindled. It's a touching sequence at times and alas a creepy one at times as well. Then Poopdeck Pappy gets involved with the court system when he tries to sow some wild oats. Then the secret of Swee'Pea is revealed when a man shows up and says the little kid is royalty, the king of "Demonia". Popeye and the gang tag along and help this new monarch deal with arranged marriages and mysterious demons under the ground. It's this storyline that Segar was unable to finish and it's where we leave to visit the Sunday pages. 

As usual the Sunday page cannot seem to pass up yet one more gag about Wimpy the mooch trying to finagle a free hamburger at Rough-House's diner. Interspersed with those are some tales of Toar, the fantastically strong caveman and loyal friend of Popeye, a long sequence where Popeye must battle against a boxer named "Kid Mustard" who alas also eats spinach to enhance his strength. In this color arena Swee'Pea gets the spotlight again as this time his mother returns to take him back but he runs aways and we follow him on his journey back to the swollen arms of his beloved Popeye. Poopdecak Pappy is a little spry and shaves off his beard to pitch woo to Olive who is convinced that Popeye has finally popped the question. And that's about where we leave it when Segar passed away. 

"Sappo" is back to its old basics after many months as a mere visual gag, with Sappo, his wife, and Professor Wottasnozzle heading into deep space and visiting a range of oddball planets in our solar system. Wottasnozzle always dreams up a device that will not only capture but freeze actual dreams and that causes a bit of ruckus in the Sappo home when it turns out they dont' dream about each other. All in all a very nifty batch of misadventures. 

Because Segar tragically died, there is little evidence of any drop off in quality, it was good right up to the end, at least for him. As we well known Popeye thrived long after his creator's demise and while the comic strip had many a high and low over the decades, it would offer some surprises. Among those was a very topical and evocative run by Bobby London in the late 1980's. Next time the Dojo focuses on those. 

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The Sunday Funnies - What's A Jeep?

Fantagraphics has a real winner in the fifth volume of E.C. Segar's Popeye series. As the title "What A Jeep?" reveals the delightful fanciful critter which can tell the future and walk through walls because of its fourth-dimensional nature is a big part of the action in these tales. 

The dailies pick up with Popeye still "Dictopater" of his "Sheeps" in Spinachovia, the land he discovered and fashioned to fill up his desire for a place to be his own boss and other peoples' too. These are some hilarious moments as Popeye with his itty-bitty crown in place atop his rounded noggin tries to soothe the uproar in his "Sheeps" (it's what he calls his citizens) as they demand wives, and later peace when another territory wants to go to war. The former demand for women results in some awkward solutions involving mermaids and later pre-ordered brides. The war is solved with typical Popeye logic when he goes and fights most of it on his own when his cowardly subjects prefer not to bother. Eventually he wearies of being a leader despite having the monstrous Toar on his side and heads back home with Olive where soon enough a box arrives for the latter and in it is a "Jeep". The delightfully mysterious Eugene the Jeep then becomes the focus for several storylines, one in which a rich man wants to buy the critter and we discover his mysterious powers, and finally one in which Popeye is led by the prognostications of the Jeep to seek out his long-lost father. The search for Poopdeck Pappy wraps up the run of dailies and they find him and bring him back to add to the rich cast of Thimble Theater. 

In the Sunday pages it's a lost less hectic with Wimpy once again dominating the proceedings. Much of the early entries deal with an odyssey to Slither Creek to look for gold. It ends up after much hijinks that only Wimpy stumbles across any and they return home where he opens up his own eatery which quickly goes bust. Some great gags are had when Olive tries to get Popeye to have a more modern attitude to dating and eventually the Jeep too invades the proceedings to grand effect. 

The "Sappo" strip undergoes the greatest transformation during this period. The series is as we left it focused on the inventions of Prof. Wotsasnozzle which reduce weight and size and later allow mirror images to come to life. But quickly the feature becomes a gimmick in which Segar plays with making images out of the alphbet and later numbers. This is an absorption of "Popeye's Cartoon Club" into the Sappo strip which gets smaller as the time wears on. 

Fun stuff indeed, but that's come to be expected. There's one more volume in the Fantagraphics run of Segar's classic run. More on that next week. 

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Who Says A Blog Has To Be Good??

A lot is happening in April if all goes as planned. Some features will be continuing and some will be returning after making for the "King of Monsters". The central focus though will be on one of the most riotous and raucous planets in the Marvel mythos, and that is Earth-665 the home of "Marble Comics" and of a certain fondly remembered spoof comic dubbed Not Brand Echh! 

I love Not Brand Echh! It speaks to all that was endearing about the Marvel Bullpen, a willingness to not take themselves too seriously and a willingness to invite all their readers to have a laugh or two or ten at their expense. This the realm of "Marble Comics" and features such luminaries as Spidey-Man, Charlie America, Ironed Man, the Fantastical Four, The Revengers, and a little guy named Forbush Man. I will be taking a good leisurely look at each of the thirteen issues of the classic Silver Age run. I've debated long and hard how best to respond to these delightful books and I think I've hit on a keen plan. I will write a classic LoC (Letter of Comment) to Stan and the Gang regarding each issue. That way I can indulge myself in the delightful fantasy of coming to each issue as a new reader, fresh and unbowed by the hoary weight of time. 

In "The Sunday Funnies" feature it will be all Popeye this month with the two final volumes of the wonderful Fantagraphics reprints of E.C. Segar's original strips followed hard by both volumes of the memorable and sometimes stunning strips by  Bobby London from the late 1980's. London tried his damnedest to make Popeye relevant to a modern world and get the strip some attention and he did, but it was a mighty struggle. 

On Saturdays look for reviews of books about comics. I've been reading a lot of great nonfiction about the men and women who make the comics I crave written by the fanboys who gobbled them up with such glee so many years ago. Expect to see some of these more curious tomes pictured above get a highlight as the month unfurls.  Pre-historical information about the genesis of Marvel Comics, a peek at the ultimate fanzine, and the intoxicating work of Fred Hembeck, if it all works out. 

And if time permits, I might even check out the funny animal tome above. But we'll have to see how the month unfolds. 

And finally the "Classic Crisis" series will return, representing some vintage Dojo material about some of the most incredible comics ever concocted, those featuring crossover between DC's Justice League of America and their Earth-2 counterparts the Justice Society of America. These teams are not alone and are joined by heroes and heroines from Quality Comics and Fawcett Comics as well DC heroes from the future and the past. 

Who says a blog has to be good? Well regular readers of the Dojo know full well it ain't me. Enjoy amigos! 

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The Sunday Funnies - Plunder Island!

 There is plenty of exotic adventure and action in this collection of the famous Thimble Theater Starring Popeye comic strip by E.C. Segar. The title of the collection says it all, announcing that Poeye and friends are headed to Plunder Island. Plunder Island is the dangerous and mysterious lair of the Sea Hag who had battled Popeye some years before. But now in partnership with his old mate Bill Barnacle, Popeye is scheming to sail to Plunder Island and take the treasure they find there despite the dangers of crossing the Sea Hag. Those dangers appear quickly with the appearance of  The Goon. 

It's exciting stuff and for once it's  happening in the Sunday color sections and not the dailies. Plunder Island stands out for this reason, a right proper adventure in full color for many months. They dod get to Plunder Island with much derring-do and other kinds of shenanigans as well. Along with Popeye on the voyage are Roundhouse and Geezil along with Wimpy as well. Both of the former want to kill the latter and that makes for many gag along the way. 

Other characters come and go and at long last of course they find the island and everyone gets rich. That doesn't last long as Popeye gives all of his booty as charity to help widows and orphans. Wimpy loses his in a gambling gambit in which he bets against Popeye. The strip devolves a bit once again after the adventure as Wimpy again begins to dominate the proceedings with his endless attempts to wheedle a free meal, preferably a hamburger from Roundhouse. 

On the bottom of the Popeye Sunday pages is Sappo and he and his permanent boarder O.G. Wotasnozzle have some screamingly funny antics as Wotasnozzle invents invisibility rays, a device to make Sappo shrink to microscopic size, and a gizmo that makes parts of the body grow. Sappo's nose becomes the source of countless jokes as it grows from week to week eventually even breaking the fourth wall as it snaps through the very borders of the strip itself. 

In the dailies though the adventure never lets up. Popeye gets it into his head to become a cartoonist and with that notion and Popeye's witless attempts Segar is able to have enormous fun with is own occupation. Then both he and Olive examine being rich as Olive gains money from an inheritance and proceeds to live the life of the upper crust, just as Popeye whom she has rejected for his lowdown ways, hooks up with an heiress by the name of June Vanripple. Her father is the "richest man in the world" and tries to give Popeye a reward when he saves June but Popeye refuses and the two become good mates. For a time it seems Popeye is really in love with June as at the same poor Olive's attempts to get famous as well as rich cause her to spend all her money on a feckless motion picture. She listened to Wimpy and that's never good. She contracts a rare malady which can only be cured with something called the "Unifruit" and which is only found in the dangerous northern regions of Nazila. Popeye of course heads an expedition there with the gang and Vanripple in tow and they find the cure pretty quickly. After more Nazila adventures the gang heads west to help stop some theives from stealing from Vanripple's operations, and in this one Popeye does a fair amount of time disguised as a dame. Castor Oyl returns as successful detective with scores of agents at his command and the solve the problem. Then it's off to the Pool of Youth guarded by the Sister of the Sea Hag and her prehistoric immortal henchman Toar. The battles are furious but Popeye wins the day of course and the abiding friendship of the painfully stupid Toar. The sections end with Popeye building an Ark to find a new continent where he can live as wants and rule the roost. There are antics aplenty as women are forbidden and Olive will not have that  as she, Castor board Wimpy's misbegotten boat to follow. 

And exciting and densely packed package. The storytelling by Segar is at it's optimum as far as I can tell and he has more ideas than he has time to pursue them. Characters pop up, dominate than disappear and always the rambunctious Popeye is at the center of the action, willing and able to withstand poison darts, bullets and even a broken neck to win the day. 

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Duck, Duck, Moose!

Man that went fast! I don't know about the rest of you, but for me the month of January rocketed by. It was no doubt due to the fact we focused on the specific date of January 20th when the United States could once again hold up its head and present a leader to world who didn't cover us in shame with his boorish utterances. But whatever the case we are now in the merry old land of February and winter has only a few months to work its will. 

One focus this month will be on Marvel's sarcastic waterfowl, the notorious and  immortal Howard the Duck. It's been many a moon since I last savored Howard's antics in our all-too human world, and I'm looking forward to diving into the feather-raising misadventure and bristling satire all over again. Steve Gerber along with artists Frank Brunner, Val Mayerik, Gene Colan, and John Buscema among others, struck gold with this one for sure. Look for these on Saturdays this month. 

And speaking of satire, I'm also going to try and read some classic comics featuring the television duo Rocky and Bullwinkle from Dell and later Gold Key. I might well give some of my favorites of the Jay Ward cartoons another glance as well. They never seem to get rusty. Look for updates on what I'm calling "Frostbite Fridays". 

"The Sunday Funnies" will continue with new entries for Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and E.C. Segar's Popeye. Prince Valiant enters the fabulous 50's as a husband and father, and Popeye will confront the heinous Sea Hag among other things. 

Also continuing this month will be the revisits of those awesome "Crisis"-averting encounters of the heroes from Earth-1 and Earth-2 and Earths beyond from the boys at DC. It's been a very long time since I read these stories and getting myself familiar has been a load of fun. 

If time there might be other surprises. 

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The Sunday Funnies - Let's You And Him Fight!

Popeye lifts Thimble Theater to new heights of popularity. It is while the comic strips in this volume are being produced that the Fleischer Brothers first reach out and begin their long and highly successful series of cartoons starring the Sailor Man and some of his sidekicks. It is during these strips that Popeye encounters Bluto in the daily strip and Wimpy takes over the scene in the Sundays. 

And that latter situation changes the tone of the comic strip quite a bit. In this third volume from Fantagraphics Popeye is solidly established as a success and Segar seemed content to explore others in the cast. Wimpy had started as a referee in some of Popeye's bouts and showed up at Roughhouse's eatery with his omnipresent desire to eat today and pay on some imaginary Tuesday. This becomes the focuse of the strip and we spend many a lazy Sunday at Roughhouse's place seeing Popeye somewhat in a secondary seat watching  Wimpy pull his latest shenanigans. What Popeye had done to Castor, now Wimpy seems to be doing to Popeye -- taking the limelight. Also the violence in the Sunday pages diminishes quite significantly. I can only imagine that the success of the strip had drawn more attention and the chaotic fighting which gave such verve to the earlier strips is pared back quite a bit to the strip's detriment. It begins to feel like many another gag cartoon. 

In the daily strip though the adventures continue and Popeye, Olive and gang head off with the always agonized King Blozo to seek fortune in "The Eighth Sea". They find there way by way of an inscrutable Black Parrot and a master of quick disguise named Merlock Holmes, but eventually they find a mythically sinking island and gather some signficant gold. During the sea voyage Popeye is in fine form, taking no guff from his mutinous crew and generally asserting himself as captain of his tiny vessel. When he finds the pirate Bluto hidden aboard the two have a tremendous two-week tussle for the ages. It's some blessed violent relief in a strip which was on the verge of getting a bit chatty. Popeye ends up again in Nazilia. King Blozo finds himself in a furious election to keep his position and let's just say the open cheating and fraud in this Segar election makes the real world quiver. There is even (preserve us) a host of late ballots that show up and change the result, the early presumed winner being displaced when the full will of the people is revealed. Later Popeye gets his own kingdom, but that proves a difficult proposition when his utopia is invaded by jaybirds and is threatened with war. 

Popeye eventually gives up being a ruler and along with Wimpy and Olive heads back to the United States where he promptly uses his wealth to buy a newspaper called The Daily Blast and installs himself as a "star reporter" with Wimpy as his photographer. He's not very successful at that, but while he's at the paper he gets a mysterious box and inside is a little baby who Popeye calls "Swee'Pea". It turns out Swee'Pea is a lucky charm for the people of a little territory called Demonia and they want him back. They attack Popeye who refuses to give up his new charge and as a result Popeye gets hit on the head very hard and contracts the nigh always fatal "Bonkus of the Konkus". It causes him to imagine he's a cowboy and he heads into the desert with Swee'Pea and they find some comfort with an old lady Popeye imagines is his mother but who simply needs help. As always Popeye steps in and saves the day, recovers from his illness and as the volume ends is set to take over a little paper in a little town as editor. On the horizon though is the dangerous Sea Hag. 

The daily strips still have the luster of wildness that Segar infused into the series with twists and turns coming quickly. I'm struck by the lack of repetition in the daily strips which makes reading them in this way much more enjoyable. 

 

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The Sunday Funnies - Well Blow Me Down!

 It's in this second hearty volume of Fantatagraphic's Popeye series that we really start to get the true-blue Sailor Man. As revealed in the last book, Thimble Theater was once home to the antics of the Oil brood and featured Castor and Olive's boyfriend Ham Gravy. The accidental addition of a minor character dubbed Popeye changed all that. The gruff two-fisted salt of the sea was popular and was brought back again and again and slowly first Ham left and in this tome we see that Castor too has departed the pages save for rare instances. This is the Popeye show now. 

The Popeye of E.C. Segar is an American original, a violent-minded tender soul who takes no guff and expresses himself equally with his "fisks" as with is distinctive voice and speech pattern. Popeye is pretty much consistently in love with Olive here save when she makes him crazy or vice versa and sometimes when he has ready cash they plan wedlock and at others she's trying to make him understand his salt-sea manner is not conducive to effective lovemaking. He sort of understands some of the time. This is also when Popeye's affinity for spinach begins to make itself known as he begins to make that lowly green a super tonic of the imagination. 

In the dailies Popeye spends time fighting a western outlaw named "Clint Gore" with some eventual success, and with the money he gets as a consequence opens the "One-Way Bank", a odd institution which gives out money to the needy but doesn't expect any back. Popeye's generous nature is revealed but his gullible side is also on display when pretty brunettes of all kinds take advantage and soon the bank is out of cash. Popeye as always is unfazed and he and Castor accept the odd job of becoming soliders of fortune in a war between "Nazila" and "Tonsylvania" on the side of the former. Castor quickly fades from view and a frequent character is "King Blozo", a anxiety-ridden coward. Popeye is quickly disillusioned with the war as he discovers no one is actually fighting on either side and neither can they remember what the fight is about. After he's done with this offbeat fracas he and Olive head out West again to tend a ranch Olive's dad bought near the town of  "Skullyville", a town full of owlhoots and shifty types. The story ends when Popeye rescues Olive from a life as a barroom dancer and scullery maid and they head back home somewhat richer but perhaps marginally wiser. 

In the Sunday pages Popeye stays pretty much at home around the Oyl residence dating Olive and fending off other potentential suitors, and fighting in the ring against opponents arranged by fight producer "Mr. Kilph". These fights are furious affairs and could and did last several weeks. When he wasn't fighting or wooing Popeye was often at Roughhouse's cafe eating hamburgers alongside the eternally broke Wimpy. Wimpy also was the fight referee and was easily corrupted to boot. In these colorful outings we see more of Popeye's philanthropy as he is as wont to spend his fight winnings on gambling as taking care of the poor and down and out he comes across. He buys one displaced woman and her family a house and takes in another little girl to reunite her with her real family after a time. Beneath the color Popeye strips are the misadventures of Sappo and his wife who welcome in a bearded inventor like Sappo himself -- O.G. Wotasnozzle has appeared and will be around for a while. 

These are actively funny comics and I laughed out loud on many occasions reading them, a real accomplishment when I'm reading alone. It's easy to see why Popeye the Sailor Man was such a hit. 

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Sunday Funnies - I Yam What I Yam!

It's hard to know when I first chanced upon Popeye the Sailor Man. It was certainly on TV in those cartoons that played each afternoon on the Mr. Cartoon show alongside The Three Stooges and other animated features. I saw Popeye get beat up by Bluto and then beat up Bluto and again and again again, all the while the Olive either instigated or fretted or both. It was a miasma of animated violence and not a lick of it made me into any kind of a psycho wanting to hurt my fellow man. I chanced across Popeye in the comic books before the comic strips because for some reason my local paper as awesome as it was did not carry the Bud Sagendorf comics. Later I fell in love with George Wildman's version of Popeye and still consider it underrated. 

Eventually I became aware of Popeye's true heritage, his long-standing tenure in the comic strips and I learned that he was the creation of a man named E.C. Segar -- the artist with the finest signature in the history of the form. And at some point I decided I'd gather up those vintage original Popeye adventures. And about a decade or more ago Fantagraphics issued the first of six volumes which gathered together these earliest Popeye tales in a definitive and lasting form. They were expensive but I had made the promise to myself and so I bit the bullet and over time got them together thinking all the time I'd read them when they all were assembled. I've had a few false starts, but this month I am determined to get it done if at all possible. 

In the first volume there are an atypical number of dailies, since Popeye's arrival on the stage of Thimble Theater was not all that well planned, and an extended stay not really planned at all. In midst of an adventure in which Olive's brother Castor Oyl is trying to deal with his present, a Whiffle Hem named Bernice which could bring good luck to its possessor he needs nautical transportation and so employs a rough and tumble gent named Popeye. 

This kicks of a wild adventure and at the end of it Popeye, a fellow not inclined to take insults lying down is shuffled off the stage. But the public, bless 'em, wanted more and so Segar brings him back and eventually over the course of time he displaces the long-standing Ham Gravy as Olive's primary boyfriend and becomes a partner to Castor. The two of them enter into some schemes involving recovering lost gambling treasure and later they fashion themselves detectives of a sort. They solve a complex mystery about a haunted house around which nothing will grow and anyone approaching suffers heart failure. Later they tackle a conundrum about a many who is being threatened by a mysterious figure announcing his death.

In all of these yarns Popeye is the sidekick, and every other day (at least once a week it seems) he punches someone out. Popeye of this early series doesn't have spinach, just an impossible invulnerability and beastly desire for violence. He was Wolverine before there was Wolverine, a ferocious loner who lived minute to minute and took his toll on those who messed with him. He's a middle-aged smoker who can survive dozens of bullets and by sheer will brings those villains he encounters to their knees or flat out unconscious. 

In these early yarns Popeye is somewhat inhuman, like a living callus filled with friendliness which erupts into fury at the drop of a word. He's the Id unleashed, and that is always fulfilling to people who have to restrain themselves in a civilized society. Popeye instinctively knows what is just and follows his instincts in all ways save when he relents to Castor's lead. Only Castor can restrain him, like a lion tamer who cannot show weakness or fear, but always the beast is there waiting to pounce. Vigor is the word that leaps to mind when I ponder the Popeye of these earliest Segar strips. 

This first Fantagraphics volume rounds out with the Sundays which featured Popeye where he sends poor Ham Gravy packing and them slowly but steadily becomes the dominant fixture in the color sections. Also there are the Sappo strips done by Segar which ran along with the Thimble Theater feature for many years and relate the ongoing doings of a husband and his loving but domineering wife. If you haven't read these earliest Thimble Theater tales you don't know Popeye. I thought I did and I was wrong. 

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