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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