Bobby London's tenure on the venerable Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye comic strip was brief but potent. He took a comic strip which had become mostly a moribund vehicle designed mostly to keep out front a popular icon who could move product in other media and elsewhere. He turned it into a savage satire which not only bit the hand that fed it, but snapped said hand off at the wrist. It's no wonder the powers-that-be didn't put up with him for long. It's sadly the evidence of the success of satire that its targets fire back and sometimes with deadly aim.
As this second volume of strips from 1989 to 1992 kicks off we will be treated to some of London's most ferocious commentaries on the world, so brutal in fact that not all of the strips contained in this collection actually saw the light of day, but were suppressed when London was removed from his Popeye duties. Finally the full glory of Bobby London's Popeye can be known.
The fiery tome begins with A wild fracas that begins with Toar, the immortal caveman getting fascinated with modern pop culture and ultimately both he and Popeye fall in with a motorcycle gang and head down to South America were they seek the waters that grant immortality. Along for the ride is the alluring Sutra Oyl who cause Popeye more than a panic when she uses her considerable charms to woo him. Also we see what happens when a fountain of youth is marketed to the modern world and how that becomes a particular attractant for the mopes in Hollywood and such.
Then Popeye, Wimpy, and Castor get swept up in the rabid doing of Madison Avenue (or simply "Mad Avenue" as London dubs it). Popeye becomes a marketing spokesman for oat bran and as a consequence loses control of his image and even his ability to control his own body. His ups and downs as the tries to make sense and then free himself of the mind-numbing and dehumanizing aspects of modern advertising culture are truly hilarious. And yet another Oyl shows up, the magnate "Standard Oyl" who turns his fortune and his company over to Popeye and wait until you see where that leads.
When Popeye is confronted by the end of the world as he knew it, a stunning series of cartoons is generated by London which takes the Thimble Theater gang into the Fourth Dimension and beyond. With Eugene the Jeep on the mend they used another method to enter this weird new world, a little craft Popeye dubs the "Yeller Submarine". Yep, the old vehicle which took the Beatles over the edge is on hand in recognizable shape to take Popeye and his allies on an epic journey too. After they return they find the world is threatened by "Sadarn Sashame" a brutal dictator from "Bananastan". In one of the best satirical roastings of the Bush administration's Gulf War, Popeye fights the mope with funny effect.
And then Bluto returns from the misty past. He's pretty upset at all the posers who have been appearing over the decades under the rotten name of "Brutus" and once he seizes control of Sweethaven makes hit illegal to even say that name. We get a look at a lot of different men named "Brutus" from different eras and regions that Popeye has been popular. But once Bluto has been dealt with Popeye is forced by the powers that run licensing to wear the stupid little hat he once had as an enlisted sailor. It makes him appear less than smart according to his neighbors and London is able to have a great deal of fun with the effects of appearance on the inner self.
Sadly it's nearly the end of London's wonderful run on the series. His desire for sharp satire has made the owners of Popeye nervous and they prefer a lighter gag-of-the-day approach to blunt criticism. London sails off into the distance with a final storyline which focuses on Oliver Oyl and her addiction to TV shopping shows and when she ends up a with a robot baby she wants to get rid of the church is concerned for her very soul. This last blast at the subject of abortion never saw the newsstands as these strips were recalled and never sent by the syndicate. Now at long last they are available for the reader and they are great indeed.
The failure of Bobby London's Popeye to be free to do what comics often do best, hold a sharp distorted lens to reality, is a tragedy in many ways. At at time when the United States and the larger world needed to reflect and make hard choices about its very nature and its direction in the world it chose to kick away its critics and insteand bumble down a path which led ultimately to the attacks of on 9-11 and to the disastrous wars in the Middle East. There's no way that Bobby London was going to stop our culture from descending into the mess it has become, but he might at the very least have shown us a mirror so that we might see ourselves more clearly.
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